The Heart Sutra and the Diamond Sutra are two short texts from the Prajnaparamita, the “Perfection of Wisdom” literature that became the foundation of Mahayana Buddhism, the Buddhism of China, Japan, Korea, Tibet and Vietnam. They were probably composed in India in the early centuries CE. Their subject is shunyata, emptiness: the teaching that nothing exists independently, on its own, apart from causes and relations.
In fewer than three hundred words in its short form, the Heart Sutra has the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara explain to the disciple Shariputra that the five aggregates that make up a person (form, feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness) are all empty.
“Form is emptiness, and emptiness indeed is form. Emptiness is not different from form, form is not different from emptiness.”The Heart Sutra, larger version (tr. F. Max Müller, 1894)
“Empty” here does not mean nothing exists. It means nothing has a fixed, separate self: a wave is real, but it is not a thing apart from the ocean. The sutra ends with a mantra, chanted daily in temples across East Asia: gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha, “gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, awakening, so be it”.
Palm-leaf folio from a Perfection of Wisdom manuscript, the literature the Heart and Diamond Sutras belong to, dated 1119 — Cleveland Museum of Art, CC0
The Diamond Sutra, a dialogue between the Buddha and his disciple Subhuti, is called the “diamond” because it cuts through illusion. Again and again it takes an idea, a self, a being, even the Buddha’s own teaching, and shows that clinging to it as a fixed thing is a mistake. It closes with one of the most famous verses in Buddhism:
“Stars, darkness, a lamp, a phantom, dew, a bubble. A dream, a flash of lightning, and a cloud — thus we should look upon the world (all that was made).”The Diamond Sutra, 32 (tr. F. Max Müller, 1894)
A copy of the Diamond Sutra found in a sealed cave at Dunhuang, China, printed from wood blocks and dated 868 CE, is the oldest dated printed book in the world. It is now in the British Library.
Tradition: Mahayana Buddhism, especially Zen (Chan), Tibetan and Pure Land schools
Key idea: shunyata, emptiness, explained philosophically by Nagarjuna around the 2nd century CE
Related: The Dhammapada, The Buddha, Zazen and other meditation
In 1900 a monk in the Mogao caves at Dunhuang, on the Silk Road, found a sealed library of tens of thousands of manuscripts. Among them was a copy of the Diamond Sutra printed from woodblocks and dated 868 CE: the oldest complete printed book with a date in the world. It is now in the British Library, nearly six centuries older than the Gutenberg Bible.
The Heart Sutra is chanted as an Indian text, but the scholar Jan Nattier argued in 1992 that it may first have been composed in Chinese, drawing on a longer sutra, and translated back into Sanskrit. Many scholars accept the argument; others dispute it. Either way, it shows how Buddhist texts travelled and changed along the Silk Road.
Heart Sutra on Wikipedia · Diamond Sutra on Wikipedia · British Library: the Diamond Sutra · The Buddha
