The 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 Sariputra, form is emptiness and 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 of feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness.
Here, O Sariputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness, they are not produced or stopped,
not defiled or immaculate, not deficient or complete.
Therefore, O Sariputra, 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 Sariputra, it is because of his non-attainmentness that a Bodhisattva, through
having relied on the perfection of wisdom,dwells without thought-coverings he has not been
made to tremble, he has overcome what can upset, and in the end he attains to Nirvana.
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 prajnaparamita 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 prajnaparamita has the spell been delivered. It runs like
this: *Gone,gone,gone beyond, gone altogether beyond,O what an awakening, all-hail!
This completes the Heart of perfect wisdom.
From Buddhist Wisdom Books, translated by Edward Conze, © 1958
*gate, gate, paragate buhdi svaha!