The Heart Sutra

A very short Mahāyāna sutra, only a page or two long, that condenses the Perfection of Wisdom (Prajñāpāramitā) literature. In the common short version the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, practising the deep perfection of wisdom, sees that the five aggregates (form, feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness) are empty, and explains this to the disciple Śāriputra. Its best-known line states that form is emptiness and emptiness is form. All phenomena are said to be marked by emptiness: they neither arise nor cease, are neither defiled nor pure, and neither increase nor decrease. In emptiness there are no sense organs or objects, no twelve links of dependent origination, no Four Noble Truths, no wisdom and no attainment. Relying on the perfection of wisdom, the bodhisattva's mind is free of obstruction and fear. The text closes with a mantra, gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā. A longer version adds a frame story set on Vulture Peak. It is chanted daily across East Asian Buddhism.

In a few lines it states the central claim of Mahāyāna philosophy, that nothing has a fixed nature of its own, and shows how that idea is meant to free the mind from fear and grasping.