Heart Sutra (Korean version)

The Korean version of the Heart Sutra. This is a recording of a small group of lay Buddhist practitioners during our regular Saturday morning meditation practice in Rockville, MD. Here is the url for that group: www.zenmind.org/daedosah.html. In addition to silent sitting meditation we also do quite a lot chanting.
The "Heart" Sutra is called that because it represents the "heart" or essence of Buddhist teaching. This particular version is from Korea, but it is not in the Korean language. In most of East Asia, the Heart Sutra is usually chanted in Chinese, or, more precisely, using the local pronunciation of the Chinese characters. So in the Korean version one chants "mu dug i mu so duko", while in the Japanese version one chants "mu toku i mu sho toku". The English translation of that part is "no attainment and nothing to attain." (This at about 1:21 on the video.) But both Korean and Japanese Buddhists can use the same Chinese characters to "read" from when chanting. Of course the pronunciation is different again in China itself, as well as in Vietnam. And to make things even more complicated, parts of the chant are in Sanskrit, and the Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, and Vietnamese all have their own (different) ways of pronouncing Sanskrit!