《心·經》（Book through Heart) 徐洪波美国威斯康星州府麦迪逊公共艺术項目
《心·經》（Book through Heart)
当我飞机降落到USA时正是9.11这个令美国及世界永远记住的日子。当我第一脚踏入麦迪逊市的土地时，正好在Chazen（Cha+Zen茶+禅?) 美术馆大门前。当我知道该美术馆1990年为当年在UW执教的我曾非常喜欢的中国当代艺术家徐冰第一次在美国展出他重要作品《天书》（Book from the Sky）时，想起其时正是我刚进入大学时。
大学毕业后我来到肇庆这个中国禅宗六祖慧能的家乡于肇庆学院执教。1300年前唐代的慧能对禅宗的世俗化改造让禅宗迅速在中国大地传播开来，不再是某些富人或出家人的事情。禅宗传入韩国日本及欧美，影响至今。注重日常生活修行的中国禅宗不仅间接影响了现代人的科技生活（比如乔布斯·斯蒂文斯和苹果手机），还直接影响了当代艺术的发生（比如约翰·凯奇和激浪派），“直指人心”、“人人有佛性”等禅宗思想都让生活直接涉入艺术成为可能。生活和艺术的关系不再是过去的镜像反”映“的关系，而进入了对两者的灵魂和思想的反“应”阶段，一直到现在。
“应无所住生其心”是令慧能顿悟的一句经文。“非幡动，非风动，人之心动”，是慧能的世界观。世间万物万事（尤其最近的恐怖事件及中美南海对峙），无不由人之心动而发生之。《心经》即一部围绕“心”展开的佛家核心经典，据说是南海观世音菩萨（慈悲与智慧的化身）对弟子舍利子的开示。唐代译文仅260个汉字，其中心思想是色相为空（Form is emptiness), 万相皆由心生。在生活中空（放下超强的自我之心，倾听和接受非我的声音，这声音也应来自他者的内心）的妙用，及越过事物和人的的表象，穿透内心、核心看问题和由心对心的对话交流，是禅宗对我们现世世界的启示。
从心出发，一切心外之物可能都不是过份该执着的，包括《心经》的文本。“经”本来也具有“经过”、“穿过”的意思。所以该项目中文题目《心·经》（中间用间隔号分开），作品不是对心经的解释，也不是在推广佛教。经文（被抠出，空留其形）和每位参与制作者的文字（message）一起，构筑起“心经”的也或是“经心”的“隧道”（Channel）。两端可以对视相望，虽然可能有点远，可能中间还隔着无形有形的“墙”（幕）。心对心的对话。
“HEART - EARTH - THE ART”
徐洪波
2015年11月24日
于美国麦迪逊
（附：《心经》中英原文）
观自在菩萨行深般若波罗蜜多时照见五蕴皆空渡一切苦厄舍利子色不异空空不异色色即是空空即是色受想行识亦复如是舍利子是诸法空相不生不灭不垢不净不增不减是故空中无色无受想行识无眼耳鼻舌身意无色声香味触法无眼界乃至无意识界无无明亦无无明尽乃至无老死亦无老死尽无苦集灭道无智亦无得以无所得故菩提萨埵依般若波罗蜜多故心无罣礙无罣礙故无有恐怖远离颠倒梦想究竟涅槃三世诸佛依般若波罗蜜多故得阿耨多罗三藐三菩提故知般若波罗蜜多是大神咒是大明咒是无上咒是无等等咒能除一切苦真实不虚故说般若波罗蜜多咒即说咒曰揭谛揭谛波罗揭谛波罗僧揭谛菩提萨婆诃
Shorter Prajñāpāramitā Hṛdaya Sūtra
Translated from Taishō Tripiṭaka volume 8, number 251
When Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva was practicing the profound Prajñāpāramitā, he illuminated the Five Skandhas and saw that they were all empty, and crossed over all suffering and affliction.
“Śāriputra, form is not different from emptiness, and emptiness is not different from form. Form itself is emptiness, and emptiness itself is form. Sensation, conception, synthesis, and discrimination are also such as this. Śāriputra, all dharmas are empty — they are neither created nor destroyed, neither defiled nor pure, and they neither increase nor diminish. This is because in emptiness there is no form, sensation, conception, synthesis, or discrimination. There are no eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, or thoughts. There are no forms, sounds, scents, tastes, sensations, or dharmas. There is no field of vision and there is no realm of thoughts. There is no ignorance nor elimination of ignorance, even up to and including no old age and death, nor elimination of old age and death. There is no suffering, its accumulation, its elimination, or a path. There is no understanding and no attaining.
“Because there is no attainment, bodhisattvas rely on Prajñāpāramitā, and their minds have no obstructions. Since there are no obstructions, they have no fears. Because they are detached from backwards dream-thinking, their final result is Nirvāṇa. Because all buddhas of the past, present, and future rely on Prajñāpāramitā, they attain Anuttarā Samyaksaṃbodhi. Therefore, know that Prajñāpāramitā is a great spiritual mantra, a great brilliant mantra, an unsurpassed mantra, and an unequalled mantra. The Prajñāpāramitā Mantra is spoken because it can truly remove all afflictions. The mantra is spoken thusly:
gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā
（更多图见后）
BOOK THROUGH HEART
-----Heart-Earth-The Art
A Statement from the Artist
My plane landed in Chicago on September 11, a date permanently itched in our collective memory, in the US and elsewhere around the world. When I first put my feet on the ground of Madison, I found myself right in front of the Chazen Museum (Is it a combination of "Cha" and "Zen," I wondered). I later learned that this was the very place where Bing Xu, the now internationally renowned contemporary Chinese artist, had his seminal work "Book from the Sky" first exhibited in the US. It was back in 1990, a time when he was teaching at UW-Madison, and it was also the same year I entered college. After college, I accepted a teaching position at Zhaoqing University and began my career as a professor and artist in Zhaoqing, the hometown of Huineng, the sixth master of Zen Buddhism.
Thirteen hundred years ago, in Tang Dynasty, Huineng's reformation allowed Zen Buddhism to spread widely and rapidly across the land of China. Freed from its exclusive and confining services only to the rich and the monastic few, Zen Buddhism has since become part of the secular world, with its influence reaching Korea, Japan, Europe and the US over time.
Stressing practice and cultivation in everyday life, Chinese Zen Buddhism not only had its impact on modern life of science and technology (in the case of Steve Jobs and the Iphone, for instance), but it was also a catalyst for contemporary art (e.g. John Cage and Fluxus). "Go directly to the human heart." "There is Buddha-nature in everyone." These principal Zen thoughts have made it possible for life to become art, and the relationship between art and life is no longer one in which the former is a mere mirror reflection of the latter, but one of mutual reflection and soul-touching.
As is well known, Huineng's moment of epiphany came from his encounter with a line from a Buddhist script: "Abandoning desire for the worldly gives birth to the heart." In his proverbial worldview, "The flag did not flap, nor did the wind blow; the turbulence/disturbance comes only from the human heart." Anything and everything that happens in this world (from the most recent terrorist attacks in Paris to the military tensions in the South China Sea) is caused by disturbances in the human heart.
The Heart Sutra is a classic Buddhist script centering on the heart, believed to be a revelation from the Guanshiyin Bodhisattva of the South Sea (incarnate of compassion and wisdom) to Sariputra, a disciple of the Buddha. Its Chinese translation from the Tang Dynasty contains only 260 characters. Central to the text is the concept that "form itself is emptiness," and that all forms are born from the heart. An enlightening message from Zen Buddhism to the present world is for us to empty our life of our possessively egoistic heart, to open ourselves up to other authentic voices and hearts, to transcend false appearances of things and people, to see the world through the heart, and to let heart communicate directly with heart.
To begin with the heart means that we are not to be overly adhered to all the things outside of the heart, including the script of The Heart Sutra itself. In Chinese semantics, "经“（pronounced as "jing," meaning sutra or script) also means "to pass through" or to "go through," therefore, the Chinese title of this project is 心·经 (Heart·Sutra), with the two characters separated by an interpoint. The project does not purport to be exegetical of The Heart Sutra. Nor is it intended for promoting Buddhism. With the characters from the script hollowed out, leaving only their shapes, the bricks, together with the messages from all the community participants of this project, constitute a channel or passage for the heart, allowing us to see each other from the two ends of the passage, despite the distance or the tangible or intangible “walls” or obstacles in between.
Cor ad Cor Loquitur.
Xu Hongbo
in Madison, Wi,USA
2015/11/24
(Translated by Dr. Fu)
(Thanks a lot to Janice Havlena, David Smith，Binbin Fu...)