Heart Sutra

Homage to the Perfection of Wisdom, the Lovely, the Holy!

Avalokita, the Holy Lord and Bodhisattva, was moving in the deep course of the Wisdom which has gone beyond. He looked down from on high, He beheld but five heaps, and He saw that in their own-being they were empty.

Here, O Śāriputra, form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form; emptiness does not differ from form, form does not differ from emptiness; whatever is form, that is emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is form. The same is true with feelings, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness.

Here, O Śāriputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness; they are not produced or stopped, not defiled or immaculate, not deficient or complete.

Therefore, O Śāriputra, in emptiness there is no form, nor feeling, nor perception, nor impulse, nor consciousness; No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind; No forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touchables or objects of mind; No sight-organ element, and so forth, until we come to: No mind-consciousness element; There is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance, and so forth, until we come to: There is no decay and death, no extinction of decay and death. There is no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path. There is no cognition, no attainment and no non-attainment.

Therefore, O Śāriputra, it is because of his indifference to any kind of personal attainment that a Bodhisattva, through having relied on the perfection of wisdom, dwells without thought-coverings. In the absence of thought-coverings he has not been made to tremble, he has overcome what can upset, and in the end he attains to Nirvāṇa.

All those who appear as Buddhas in the three periods of time fully awake to the utmost, right and perfect Enlightenment because they have relied on the perfection of wisdom.

Therefore one should know the prajñāpāramitā as the great spell, the spell of great knowledge, the utmost spell, the unequalled spell, allayer of all suffering, in truth—for what could go wrong? By the prajñāpāramitā has this spell been delivered. It runs like this:

The Heart Sutra is the essence of the Prajñāpāramitā (Perfection of Wisdom) literature, condensing the vast teachings on emptiness (śūnyatā) into a concise, powerful text. It reveals that all phenomena are empty of inherent existence—they arise dependently and have no permanent, independent nature.

The sutra teaches that the five aggregates (form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness) that constitute our experience are empty. This emptiness is not a void or nothingness, but rather the true nature of reality—interdependent, impermanent, and without fixed essence.

Through understanding this emptiness, one can transcend suffering and attain liberation. The famous mantra at the end—"gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā"—expresses the journey from the shore of suffering to the shore of enlightenment.