Heart Sutra -　心經

Hi everyone,

today I want to write a short introduction to one of the most important Buddhist scriptures, the Heart Sutra (心經).

One reason why it is so popular might be its length. As you can see the text on the image below consists just of a couple of characters.

The most important and famous sentence is: 色不異空，空不一色。 (色 = form, 不 = is not, 異 = different, 空= emptiness) So it means „Form does not differ from emptiness and emptiness does not differ from form. To understand this sentence you need to understand the basic teaching of Buddhism.

Buddhism teaches that everything is in constant change (無常). Because of that nothing really has substance. Nothing can be of substance if it changes every second. This is what 空, emptiness, stands for. It‘s not like the nihilist emptiness where everything gets denied. It just means it exists, at least for a short while, till it changes again.

色, the form, is in constant change and is therefore of no substance = empty. The Heart Sutra goes even further and says that not only 色 does not differ from 空, but also 受想行識 (Feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness).

It‘s a radical school of thought. It is the complete opposite of Hinduism or Christianity where there is something like an eternal soul. In Buddhism nothing is eternal.

Even if this thinking is sad, because good moments are changing to bad moments for example you also need to think about the situation when bad moments or feelings also won't last forever and will change in the end.

With Buddhist thinking you could for this reason also heal yourself from stress, anger, anxiety etc., just through the concept of emptiness, 空. Healing through emptiness :)