To begin the day with your Heart Sutra

What exactly does the Heart Sutra convey then?

 Its full title is the Prajna Paramita Heart Sutra [S. Prajna paramita Hṛdaya Sutra]; it enables sentient beings to acquire the wisdom to reach the opposite shore and allows learners to accomplish the Three-Vehicle Bodhi - Sound-hearer bodhi, Solitary-realizer bodhi, and Buddha bodhi.

 The Heart Sutra actually teaches about the True Mind possessed by every sentient being. None of the phenomena pertaining to the aggregates, sense-fields, and elements and none of the dharma such as the Three-Vehicle Bodhi and so forth can exist without this mind. It is impossible to talk about the Heart Sutra or to discuss about the aggregates, sense-fields, elements or any other dharma beyond this “mind.” The theme of this True Mind (Alayavijnana; the eighth vijnana) recurred throughout the Second Turning of the Dharma Wheel over a time span of twenty-two years.

 PRAJNA PARAMITA HEART SUTRA

(Translated by the Dharma Master Xuanzang in the Tang Dynasty)

Bodhisattva Guanzizai, in practicing the profound prajna paramita, observes and perceives that the five aggregates are all empty, thus transcending all suffering and distress.

 Sariputra! Form is none other than emptiness; emptiness is none other than form. Form is emptiness; emptiness is form. The same is true of sensation, perception, formation, and consciousness.

Sariputra! All phenomena are emptiness-appearances, which are neither arising nor ceasing, neither defiled nor immaculate, neither increasing nor decreasing. Therefore, in emptiness there is no form, sensation, perception, formation, or consciousness; no eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, or mental faculty; no form, sound, odor, taste, touch, or mental object; no element of eye-consciousness, all the way through to no element of mental consciousness. There is no ignorance or the ending of ignorance, all the way through to no old age and death or the ending of old age and death. There is no suffering, accumulation, cessation, or path. There is no wisdom or attainment. Since there is no attainment, the bodhisattva’s mind relying on prajna paramita is free from worries and obstructions; without worries and obstructions, it has no fear, leaves delusions far behind, and attains the ultimate nirvana.

All Buddhas of the three times attain anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi through reliance on prajnaparamita.

Hence, the prajna paramita is the great incredible mantra, the great illuminating mantra, the unsurpassed mantra, and the peerless mantra. It can remove all sufferings; it is genuine and not illusory.

For these reasons, the prajnaparamita mantra is delivered. Thus, recite it like so: “Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha!”

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