(With thanks to David Taylor)
At the end of the Heart Sutra, there’s a mantra:
Gya tei gya tei
Hara gya tei
Hara so gya tei
Bo ji so wa ka
This is simply a Chinese/Japanese inflection of the original Sanskrit which is
Gate gate
Pāragate
Pārasaṃgate
Bodhi svāhā
The ‘ga’ in gate, pāragate and pārasaṃgate is the same ‘ga’ as in ‘Tathāgata‘, ‘Thus-come’ or ‘Thus-gone’, by which we mean the Buddha. So, ga means both come and gone.
‘Para’ has various meanings, including ‘beyond’ and ‘the opposite shore'(of a river)
‘Sam’ means ‘with’, ‘together with’
So, the mantra is often translated as
Gone, gone
Altogether gone
To the far shore
So the suggestion is that we leave this shore, cross the river, and reach the far shore of nirvana. But, in this interpretation, the metaphor is confused, because both this shore and the river are identified with samsara.
But if we re-render ‘gone’ as ‘come’, then a different possibility emerges, of the far shore arriving. Thus, it isn’t that we cross over the water of samsara to reach the far shore of nirvana, leaving this shore behind, but rather that both shores are manifested.
And this suggests Zazen, coming at the end of the sutra, which started with an explicit exchange between Śāriputra and Avalokiteśvara about Zazen ( which significantly, is the practice of the latter, not the former). When we sit, we don’t abandon our particularity, our form, our karmic existence ( this shore), but equally, we manifest the self that is not separate from all things ( the far shore)
And both these shores make manifest the river of our true life, held by both.