Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/28/2007

The Heart Sutra

The Heart Sutra is believed to have been written about the first century BCE. Although this is a very short text - about a page in length - it has been enormously influential. Essentially it expounds the concept of 'emptiness' (sunyata), a key term in Mahayana philosophy. In short, sunyata refers to the absence of self or essence in all conditioned phenomena: 'form is emptiness and emptiness is form'. The world is seen as a complex of ever-changing, fluctuating elements (dharmas): 'Here, O Sariputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness'. The texts culminates with the mantra: 'Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, O what an awakening, all-hail!'.