The Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya (Heart Sutra) with my commentary

The text analyzed here is Stephen Batchelor's translation of the Heart Sutra, taken from “The Heart Sutra,” DharmaNet, dharmanet.org/coursesM/40/HSint2.htm, accessed 19 August 2019.

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One of the most famous and philosophically suggestive ideas in Mahayana Buddhism is the doctrine that everything is "empty." This doctrine features prominently in the Heart Sutra. At first glance, the Heart Sutra's emptiness teaching has several puzzling features:

• The text states that things are "empty of essence," but it does not define "essence" (svabhāva).
• The text then leaps from the claim that things lack essence to the apparent claim that things do not exist at all.
• The text ends with some fairly engimatic remarks, such as the claim that those who possess prajñāpāramitā (perfect wisdom) "live without walls of the mind."

Analytic philosophical treatments of Mahayana Buddhist "emptiness" typically interpret essence (svabhāva), as "intrinsic nature"—that is, as a nature that is not borrowed from anything else. On this reading, it is almost trivially true that things are empty of essence: each thing is caused by or composed of other things, so it borrows its nature from other things; hence, its nature is not an intrinsic nature (see, for example, Mark Siderits, Buddhism as Philosophy (Hackett, 2007), Chapter 9, and Jay L. Garfield, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (Oxford University Press, 1995), 221). Although this may be an accurate interpretation of emptiness in, say, developed Madhyamaka philosophy, it throws little light on the Heart Sutra's claims. From the fact that things lack intrinsic natures, how does it follow that things do not exist at all? And what does all this have to do with "walls of the mind"?

I have found that the Heart Sutra makes a great deal more sense if "essence" is given the meaning that it has in present-day analytic philosophy: the "essence" of x consists of the properties that make x be x instead of something else. For example, the essence of a triangle is three-sided polygon. The following commentary presents my interpretation of the Heart Sutra given this definition of essence.

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The noble Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, while practicing the deep practice of Prajnaparamita, looked upon the Five Skandhas and seeing they were empty of essence, said: 

Commentary: Prajñāpāramitā (perfect wisdom) reveals that each skandha (each part of a person) lacks essence.

“Here, Shariputra, form is emptiness, emptiness is form; emptiness is not separate from form, form is not separate from emptiness; whatever is form is emptiness, whatever is emptiness is form. The same holds for sensation and perception, memory and consciousness. 

Commentary: All five skandhas⁠—form, sensation, perception, memory, and consciousness⁠—are empty in the sense that they lack essence.

“Here, Shariputra, all dharmas are defined by emptiness, not by birth or destruction, purity or defilement, completeness or deficiency. 

Commentary: If x is defined by y, then x is x by virtue of having y. Therefore, if x is defined by y, then x cannot lack y. Things are born, but they also die. They can be pure, but they can also be defiled. They can be complete, but they can also be deficient. Therefore, things are not defined by birth, death, purity, defilement, completeness or deficiency. In fact, they are defined by nothing at all: whatever defines a thing is called the thing’s essence, and we have seen that all things lack essence. In a sense, we could say that all things are defined by that very emptiness, that very lack of essence.

“Therefore, Shariputra, in emptiness there is no form, no sensation, no perception, no memory and no consciousness; no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body and no mind; no shape, no sound, no smell, no taste, no feeling and no thought; no element of perception, from eye to conceptual consciousness; no causal link, from ignorance to old age and death, and no end of causal link, from ignorance to old age and death; no suffering, no source, no relief, no path; no knowledge, no attainment and no non-attainment. 

Commentary: The essence of x is the part of x that makes x be x instead of something else. Therefore, a thing counts as x by virtue of having the essence of x. Hence, if there is no such thing as the essence of x, then nothing can count as x. In other words, if x has no essence, then x does not exist. Because all things lack essence, none of them exist. Hence, we might say that there is no form, no sensation, no perception, etc.

“Therefore, Shariputra, without attainment, bodhisattavas take refuge in Prajnaparamita and live without walls of the mind. Without walls of the mind and thus without fears, they see through delusions and finally nirvana. All buddhas past, present and future also take refuge in Prajnaparamita and realize unexcelled, perfect enlightenment. 

Commentary: The essence of x distinguishes what is x from what is not x. Prajñāpāramitā reveals that all things lack essence. Thus, prajñāpāramitā eliminates the distinctions that our minds draw between things (“walls of the mind”), thereby dissolving all separate things. Even nirvāṇa is dissolved. Because all separate things have dissolved, there is no longer anything to fear.

“You should therefore know the great mantra of Prajnaparamita, the mantra of great magic, the unexcelled mantra, the mantra equal to the unequalled, which heals all suffering and is true, not false, the mantra in Prajnaparamita spoken thus:  

“Gate gate, paragate, parasangate, bodhi svaha.”