Mercedes bahleda - heart sutra meaning

What Is the Heart Sutra?

As the late Zen teacher Robert Aitken has written, “the Heart Sutra is a very brief text, abbreviated from a monumental work, the Prajnaparamita Sutra, probably the Astasahasrika edition of 8,000 lines, which was composed just before the Common Era.

The Heart Sutra was produced shortly thereafter. it is recited every day in almost all Mahayana temples in Japan, China, Korea, and Vietnam, except those of the Pure Land, and has been recited there every day for 1,600 years and more.

Today you will hear it daily throughout the Buddhist diaspora beyond East Asia.” You will also find it recited in Buddhist groups of varying backgrounds in the West and elsewhere. 

Explaining the main thrust of its message, Aitken Roshi writes, “The Heart Sutra says that form is emptiness; emptiness is form; form is exactly emptiness; emptiness exactly form.

Moreover, sensation, perception, formul