Hello, I’m Cheng Qing. Welcome to Relief for Life: Forty Introductory Lectures on Buddhism.

In the previous lecture, I briefly introduced the basic Buddhist meaning of emptiness: all phenomena arewithout essence、and without inherent nature. Although no Buddhist scripture departs from the premise of emptiness, the Prajñāpāramitā sutras discuss wisdom and emptiness in a particularly concentrated way.

For most people, the best-known Perfection of Wisdom scripture is undoubtedly Xuanzang’s translation of the Prajñāpāramitā Heart Sutra, usually called the Heart Sutra. Although this scripture of only 268 Chinese characters has circulated widely and been reverently copied and recited by countless people, most may still be unclear about what it seeks to express. This is naturally related to the difficulty of understanding Buddhist emptiness. Over the next two episodes, I will briefly introduce this familiar yet unfamiliar Heart Sutra.

The translation history of the Heart Sutra remains an important academic subject. The Sutra of the Great Mantra of the Perfection of Wisdom, attributed to Kumārajīva and included in the Taishō Canon, should chronologically be the earliest version. Yet its source is the Fangshan Stone Sutras from the Liao-Jin period, and scholars still question whether Kumārajīva actually translated it.

The familiar version was translated by Xuanzang around 649 CE. According to the Biography of the Tripiṭaka Master of the Great Ci’en Monastery, Xuanzang once met a sick man covered in sores while in Sichuan. Moved by compassion, he gave the man alms; in gratitude, the patient taught him the Heart Sutra, which Xuanzang often recited. Later, traveling secretly toward the Western Regions, he had to cross the eight-hundred-li desert called the Moheyan Sands. He accidentally overturned his water skin and, tormented by hunger and thirst, experienced many hallucinations. He recited Avalokiteśvara’s name and the Heart Sutra to dispel those demonic visions, endured immense hardship, found the Wild Horse Spring, and survived. This story lent Xuanzang’s translation an added aura of miraculous protection.