Translation:The Longer Heart Sutra

by Anonymous

For other English-language translations of this work, see Heart Sutra.

All praise to the perfection of wisdom!

• Once upon a time Avalokitesvara, an ascended master, vowed to work for the liberation of all sentient beings, was meditating in the tradition of The Perfection of Wisdom. He saw there are five aggregates of phenomena. He saw that these are however void of essence.

• "Here, Sariputra, form is simply emptiness, emptiness is simply Form. Form is the same things as emptiness, and emptiness is the same thing as Form. As much can be said of the other four aggregates -- feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness -- all of these are simply empty."

• "Sariputra! Here in the nature of emptiness it is nothing born, nothing expiring, nothing pure, nothing tainted, nothing magnified and nothing diminished.

• Thus, in the state of emptiness, there is no form, feeling, thought, will, nor consciousness. There are no eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, mind, seeing, listening, smelling, tasting, touching nor conceptualization; it cannot be visualized or conceived. In emptiness there is no ignorance nor cessation of ignorance; neither senility nor death, nor the end of old age and death. The emptiness is no suffering, nor cause for suffering, nor end of suffering, nor a path. Nor is it the realization of wisdom, nor is it the negation of realization."