A new commentary on the Heart Sutra, by Karl Brunnholzl.
Overcoming fear, the Buddha teaches, is not to be accomplished by shutting down or building walls around oneself, but instead by opening up to understand the illusory nature of everything we fear—including ourselves. In this book of teachings, Karl Brunnhölzl guides practitioners through this "crazy" sutra to the wisdom and compassion that lie at its core.
"With lively humor and deep scholarly knowledge, Mitra Karl Brunnhölzl brilliantly unpacks the profundity of the Heart Sutra here for modern readers. In practical and accessible ways, he invites us to join the great practitioners of India and Tibet in contemplating the Heart Sutra's wisdom. We are fortunate to have teachers of Karl's acumen among the growing body of inspiring Western Buddhist teachers."—Dzogchen Ponlop, author of Rebel Buddha and Mind Beyond Death.
"When the Buddha revealed the Prajñaparamita sutras, teaches Karl Brunnhölzl, the arhats in attendance, “were so shocked by what they were hearing that they died on the spot.” The Heart Attack Sutra seeks to preserve this same spiritual shock for Western minds (but perhaps without the grim consequences that Buddha’s earlier students had to face!) by presenting and commenting in detail on the Heart Sutra, arguably the most well-known sutra in the Mahayana tradition. Brunnhölzl begins by contextualizing his commentary with rich introduction to the concept of emptiness and dependent origination in Mahayana thought, the three cycles of the Buddha’s teachings, the figure of Lady Prajñaparamita and the genre of literature within which the Heart Sutra falls. Next follows the actual line-by-line commentary, a meditation on Lady Prajñaparamita and the Heart Sutra itself from the siddha Darika, and Brunnhölzl's translation of the sutra for reference."—Michael Joliffe, Mandala
Karl Brunnhölzl works as a translator and interpreter for the Tsadra Foundation, Nalandabodhi, and the Nitartha Institute, where he teaches and where the Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche recently bestowed on him the title of khenpo. He is the author and translator of The Center of the Sunlit Sky, Luminous Heart, and Gone Beyond.
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