Our new course brings the focus to a central Buddhist text: The Heart Sutra
A new translation by Sean Feit Oakes and Hareesh :: Presented by Sean ::
12 hours of content that you can keep forever.
Chapter 1 - An introduction to Buddhism. Context and Basic Philosophy (longer videos)
Chapter 2- The Sutra in the usual format of short videos.
Chapter 3 - The meditation practices.
Our aim with The Sutra Project is to illuminate the teachings while honoring your life's rhythm. We know that most of you don't have hours and hours per week to dive into videos and intense study. That's why we have created this format, without compromising on the integrity and content of these rich and deeply resonant texts.

The Heart Sutra
The Heart Sūtra is part of the Prajñāpāramitā Literature, which is a collection of about 40 early Mahāyāna Buddhist texts composed between 100 BCE and 500 CE. The Heart Sūtra is a presentation of profound wisdom on the nature of experience and existence, focusing on the absence of a separate, individual essence in any phenomena.
It is framed as a teaching by Avalokiteśvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, to the monk Śariputra. It is chanted regularly by followers of Mahāyāna Buddhism both in ritual and as part of meditation practice. Although The Heart Sūtra is very brief it references many key concepts of Buddhist Philosophy. These include the Five Aggregates, the Four Noble Truths, the Six Senses, the cycle of Dependent Origination, and a powerful and central concept of Mahāyāna Buddhism, Emptiness, or śunyatā.
Mahāyāna means “great vehicle” or “great knowledge”, and is the basis of the Buddhisms of China, Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Mongolia, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, known as “Northern Buddhism”. It arose around the first century BCE within the early schools of Buddhism which had developed in the 400 years since the time of the Buddha. Zen/Ch’an, which appeared around 800 CE in China, spread to Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, leading to the many Zen traditions maintained today.
My first relationship with the Heart Sūtra was in Zen monastic practice, where we would chant the text, in Sino-Japanese, several times a day. I didn’t know it, but this is actually a very traditional use of the Sūtra, which may have been used as a magic spell more often than a philosophical or teaching text. As I grew in my practice, I found myself drawn to simpler and more useful (to me) aspects of Buddhism, including its psychological, ethical, and social-action components. But the vision of emptiness and radical feminine transformative magic stayed like a ghost in my heart, till in recent years it reappeared at the heart of my practice.