Chapter 1. The Heart Sūtra: a cancellation inventory and a mantra¶

I. Its origins¶

The standard circulating Prajñāpāramitā Heart Sūtra is attributed to Xuanzang as translator. The body of the Taishō text has 260 Chinese characters. It has neither an introductory section nor a concluding section on the text's transmission. Its opening sentence goes straight into the main text, and its final sentence goes straight into the mantra.¹ A sūtra without the three divisions is not unique among Chinese Buddhist translations, but the fact deserves to be kept in mind. It means that this text, by its very form, is not intended to be read as a complete record of a sermon.

Several longer versions also survive, in translations by Fayue, by Prajñā together with Liyan, by Facheng, and by Shihu. They add an introductory section at the beginning and a transmission section at the end. The Buddha enters meditation on Vulture Peak; Avalokiteśvara and Śāriputra exchange questions and answers; the Buddha emerges from meditation and gives his approval. The longer versions give the text the outward form of a sūtra. The commonly circulated shorter version lacks this frame.

There is also a Sūtra of the Great Illuminating Mantra of Mahāprajñāpāramitā, traditionally attributed to Kumārajīva as translator. It likewise has neither an introductory nor a transmission section, and its body has 298 Chinese characters.² A paragraph-by-paragraph comparison with the standard version shows that the differences are unevenly distributed. The portion outside the mantra section has 239 characters in this version and 195 in the standard version, a reduction of nearly one fifth. The mantra section has fifty-nine characters in this version and sixty-five in the standard version, an increase of six. Its share of the whole sūtra thus rises from about one fifth to one quarter. The greatest difference is in the paragraph on the five aggregates. This version reads, "Because form is empty, it has no characteristic of affliction and disintegration; because feeling is empty, it has no characteristic of feeling; because perception is empty, it has no characteristic of knowing; because formations are empty, they have no characteristic of making; because consciousness is empty, it has no characteristic of awareness." It names one characteristic for each of the five aggregates, in a paragraph of sixty-three Chinese characters. The standard version reads, "Form is not different from emptiness; emptiness is not different from form. Form is precisely emptiness; emptiness is precisely form. Feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness are likewise," in twenty-seven characters. Between the two versions, the doctrinal portion expands and contracts far more than the mantra portion.

This book's judgment on the sūtra's origins is already set out in the discussion of the Heart Sūtra's provenance appended to Chapter 4 of Essay 10 in Part I. The core passages of the short version correspond almost word for word to the relevant passages in Kumārajīva's translation of the Larger Prajñāpāramitā. The surviving Sanskrit text also shows signs of translation back from Chinese. Given the evidence now available, composition in China followed by back-translation is therefore more likely than direct translation from a Sanskrit text. The Biography of the Tripiṭaka Master of the Great Ci'en Monastery records that Xuanzang received the sūtra in Shu before his journey west, whereas the formal Chinese translation is recorded under the twenty-third year of Zhenguan. This is a chronological contradiction that the biography leaves unexplained.³ This chapter does not repeat that discussion's arguments. It takes only the point useful here. In the early Tang account, this sūtra is first an object to carry and recite, and only second a document. The emphasis in Xuanzang's relation to it falls on his carrying it out, rather than bringing it back.

II. What it actually says¶

The whole sūtra can be divided into four sections.

The first section previews the conclusion in a single sentence. When the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara practices prajñāpāramitā at its deepest, he "clearly sees that the five aggregates are all empty, and crosses beyond all suffering and distress."¹ This sentence already states both the claim and the efficacy of the whole sūtra. What follows expands on it.

The second section gives the general outline in four statements. "Form is not different from emptiness; emptiness is not different from form. Form is precisely emptiness; emptiness is precisely form." Feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness follow by the same reasoning.¹ These four statements are often read as four successive levels. In fact, the first two and the last two express the same point in two ways. "Not different" says that the two cannot be separated; "is precisely" says that their referent is one. For form, the content is this. Identifiable material phenomena and their lack of intrinsic nature are not two things, nor do they occupy two levels. The sūtra then gives a more general formulation. "This empty character of all dharmas neither arises nor ceases, is neither defiled nor pure, neither increases nor decreases."¹ The subject here is "empty character," not "all dharmas." The claim is that the condition of lacking intrinsic nature does not itself fall within arising and ceasing, defilement and purity, increase and decrease. It does not say that the phenomenal world neither arises nor ceases.

The third section is the longest and the best known. It does just one thing. It lists all the categories of the teachings current at the time and adds 无, "no," to each in turn. The five aggregates, no; the twelve bases, no; the eighteen elements, no; the twelve links of dependent origination in both forward and reverse order, no; the four truths, no; knowledge and attainment, no. This inventory comes from the Abhidharma outline of the teachings, and follows that outline's order. There is only one operation, repeated more than ten times.

What matters is this section's opening four Chinese characters, 是故，空中, "therefore, in emptiness."¹ Every "no" in the section falls within their scope. The sūtra does not say that there is no form. It says that, viewed at the level of the absence of intrinsic nature, form is not established as an intrinsic nature. This accords with the reading given in Chapter 10 of Essay 18 in Part II of this volume. The string of "no" statements is a list of rejections, not a declaration of annihilation.⁴ Reading the third section while omitting the four characters 是故空中 has long been this sūtra's most common misreading. It arises almost entirely from habits of typesetting and recitation. Four characters are too brief, and the occurrences of "no" too many. Readers' attention falls on the latter.

The fourth section concerns efficacy and the mantra. "Because there is no attainment," bodhisattvas rely on prajñāpāramitā, and "the mind is unobstructed; because it is unobstructed, there is no fear, distorted imaginings are left far behind, and they reach ultimate nirvāṇa." The Buddhas of the three times rely on it to attain unsurpassed complete awakening.¹ Four statements of praise follow, saying that this method "is the great divine mantra, the great illuminating mantra, the unsurpassed mantra, the unequalled mantra, able to remove all suffering, true and not false."¹ Finally comes one line of mantra, in the Chinese transcription cited here, "揭帝　揭帝　般罗揭帝　般罗僧揭帝　菩提　莎婆诃".¹ Commonly circulated versions usually have 波罗 here, while the Taishō text has 般罗. The pronunciation is the same, but the written forms differ.

A seam needs to be noted here. The fourth section opens with the five Chinese characters 以无所得故, "because there is no attainment." "No attainment" follows on from "no knowledge and no attainment" at the end of the third section, and belongs to the ultimate side of the judgment. "The mind is unobstructed" describes a state of a mental continuum and belongs to the conventional side. Between them stands only the character 故, "because." Two readings can be given, each with its own failing. There is no third. If "no attainment" has its ultimate sense, this "because" has one end in the ultimate and the other in the conventional. It is precisely the first type of slippage in argument recorded in Chapter 6 of Essay 5 in Part I, where an ultimate statement is moved into a conventional context with the distinction between levels of truth omitted.⁵ Later commentators defend it by appealing to the two truths, saying that ultimate nonattainment and conventional attainment do not obstruct one another. But the sūtra does not mark the distinction between truths. The distinction that this defense needs is absent from the text. If "no attainment" is instead reread as a mind that does not grasp marks at the conventional level, both ends are on the same level and "because" is legitimate. The loss is elsewhere. What now does the work in the mechanism of liberation is the mental disposition of not grasping marks, which was already present in the early teachings. The account of emptiness by which the prajñā tradition distinguishes itself from those teachings has no place here. One route is illegitimate; the other adds nothing.

The crossing cannot be avoided. Everything the fourth section promises to deliver lies on the conventional side: the mental continuum's freedom from obstruction, absence of fear, ultimate nirvāṇa, and the Buddhas' attainment. If the crossing does not occur here, it must occur later. The sūtra itself leaves the clearest evidence. The third section ends with "no attainment." More than fifty Chinese characters later, the fourth section says, "Because the Buddhas of the three times rely on prajñāpāramitā, they attain unsurpassed complete awakening."¹ The same character 得, "attain," is first cancelled and then affirmed. If both occurrences have the ultimate sense, the earlier statement denies the later one. If the later statement has a conventional sense, there must be a transition from the ultimate to the conventional between the two, and the sūtra does not mark where it occurs. "Because" is where this transition first shows itself. "Attain unsurpassed complete awakening" is where it can no longer be postponed.

The sūtra does not choose between the two. It writes the single character 故, "because." The weight of the whole text rests on that one character. Not choosing does not remove either side's cost. It merely leaves those costs unwritten.

Put plainly, what the whole text says can be restated in one sentence. If a person no longer takes self and world to be assemblies of real components, fear has nowhere to attach. The first three sections supply the reason; the fourth gives the result. The rest of the sūtra casts this sentence into an inventory of categories and a ritual form.

III. What it implies¶

The first implication lies in the seating order. Throughout the sūtra, the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara speaks to Śāriputra. In the Āgama and Abhidharma traditions, Śāriputra is foremost in wisdom and represents the outline of the teachings. Having a bodhisattva teach him, with a teaching that consists precisely in placing "no" before each item of the outline he represents, is itself a classification of the teachings. It is never stated outright. If readers do not know who Śāriputra is, the whole text loses half its weight.

The second implication lies in the change of grammar. Before the third section, the sūtra's verbs are "clearly sees," "is not different," and "is precisely," which belong to cognition and judgment. From the fourth section onward, the verbs become "rely on," "attain," and "remove all suffering," which belong to reliance and efficacy. Here the text moves from knowing to relying. The first three sections resemble an analysis; the fourth asks for acceptance in faith. The sūtra gives no explanation, and readers who follow it through often accept this transition without noticing it at all.

The third implication lies in the scale of the praise. 大神, "great divine," 大明, "great illuminating," 无上, "unsurpassed," and 无等等, "unequalled," are four titles used in succession. The last repeats 等, "equal," in its superlative form. Placing a sūtra of more than two hundred Chinese characters under such titles amounts to declaring that it is not one method among many. Such self-rating is frequent in prajñā sūtras. This text's brevity makes it especially concentrated. The praise, the announcement "then he spoke the mantra," and the mantra itself total sixty-five characters, one quarter of the whole sūtra.

The fourth implication lies in the title. "Heart," Sanskrit hṛdaya, means both an essence and the bodily heart. In esoteric literature it also often refers to the dhāraṇī itself. A recent article treats this sūtra directly as a dhāraṇī.⁶ The title Heart Sūtra can mean the essence of the prajñā tradition, or that tradition's mantra. Both readings coexist within the text. The first three sections resemble the former; the fourth resembles the latter. Here lies the source of the sūtra's simultaneous use in China as a doctrinal summary and an object of recitation.

IV. Where it might lead people¶

First, "form is precisely emptiness" is often read as an assertion about an ontological entity, as though it said that the underlying basis of matter is something called emptiness. The sūtra's four statements are arranged precisely to prevent this reading. They first say "not different," then "is precisely," and state each in both directions, cancelling the very possibility of emptiness as another entity. Yet as the text circulates, the two Chinese characters 即是, "is precisely," consistently outweigh "not different." Readers often come away with the impression that there is something called emptiness, of which form is the surface. This reading runs counter to the text, but the text itself can do very little to prevent it, because the Chinese 即是 construction already serves to make identity judgments in everyday use.

Second, the third section's "no" is read as an ontological denial. As Section II explained, the four characters 是故空中, "therefore, in emptiness," govern the whole string. Once those characters cease to have effect, however, "no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, or mind" becomes a denial of the sense faculties, and "no suffering, origin, cessation, or path" becomes a denial of the four truths. Commentators through the ages have spent enormous effort explaining this point. That fact itself shows how widespread the misreading is.

Third, "no suffering, origin, cessation, or path" is in a more difficult position than the other items. The five aggregates, twelve bases, and eighteen elements are frameworks of analysis. Saying that they lack intrinsic nature does not prevent their establishment as expedient designations. The four truths, however, are the very route of practice. When the sūtra places them in the cancellation inventory without further explanation, readers can infer that practice too has no basis. The Madhyamaka tradition developed an account in terms of two truths to address this, saying that the four truths hold at the level of conventional truth and lack intrinsic nature at the level of ultimate truth. This account came later; the sūtra itself does not supply it. The gap is not a problem invented by commentators. The text leaves it there.

Fourth, the mantra section is often taken as the conclusion of the whole sūtra. In the text's order, the mantra comes last. In doctrinal terms, there is no relation of derivation between the first three sections' analysis and the mantra. When the sūtra says that this is the great divine mantra, it says that the method of prajñāpāramitā has a mantra's efficacy. It does not say that the mantra can replace the first three sections' analysis. The practice of recitation, however, has no need for this distinction. As a result, the sūtra's most widespread use has little to do with the analysis in its first three sections.

Fifth is the illusion created by brevity. Its 260 Chinese characters make the sūtra easy to memorize in full, and make it easy for readers to feel that they have mastered it. In fact, unless they already know what the five aggregates, twelve bases, eighteen elements, twelve links of dependent origination, and four truths refer to, the third section is just a string of unfamiliar terms followed by a string of "no" statements. What readers get is rhythm, not content. The sūtra's readability depends on their already having mastered the outline of the teachings it cancels. Using it as an introduction to Buddhism reverses the proper order.

References¶