Heart Sutra

The Heart Sutra is a popular sutra in Mahāyāna Buddhism.

Quotes

Longer Prajñāpāramitā Hṛdaya Sūtra (Lapis Lazuli Texts, Wikisource)

• 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 phenomena are empty of characteristics:

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 phenomena.

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 nothing to attain, bodhisattvas rely on Prajñāpāramitā, and their minds have no obstructions.

With no obstructions, they have no fears.

Because they are far removed from backward dream-thinking, their final result is Nirvāna.

See also

• Apophatic theology (negative theology)
• Nothingness
• Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite