The Heart Sutra engraved (dated to 1723) on a wall in Mount Putuo, bodhimanda of Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva. The sutra concludes with the mantra gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā, meaning "gone, gone, everyone gone to the other shore, awakening, svaha." Popularity and stature Thus the bodhisattva, as the archetypal Mahayana Buddhist, relies on the perfection of wisdom, defined in the Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra to be the wisdom that perceives reality directly without conceptual attachment, thereby achieving nirvana. This is interpreted according to the two truths doctrine as saying that teachings, while accurate descriptions of conventional truth, are mere statements about reality-they are not reality itself-and that they are therefore not applicable to the ultimate truth that is by definition beyond mental understanding. Emptiness is Form", and declares the other skandhas to be equally empty-that is, dependently originated.Īvalokiteśvara then goes through some of the most fundamental Buddhist teachings such as the Four Noble Truths, and explains that in emptiness none of these notions apply. Avalokiteśvara famously states, "Form is Emptiness (śūnyatā). In the sutra, Avalokiteśvara addresses Śariputra, explaining the fundamental emptiness ( śūnyatā) of all phenomena, known through and as the five aggregates of human existence ( skandhas): form ( rūpa), feeling ( vedanā), volitions ( saṅkhāra), perceptions ( saṃjñā), and consciousness ( vijñāna). 4.2 Source of the Heart Sutra - Nattier controversy.4.1 Earliest extant versions and references to the Heart Sutra.