The Heart of Perfect Wisdom Sutra

Edward Conze (trans.) edited by Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

The personification of Wisdom: Prajna Paramita (Indonesia)

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Thanks to Edward Conze we have the Heart Sutra in poetic English. It's not a perfect translation, but it was better than anyone could do to put it into modern English we could understand. The short version runs like this with minor updates by Dhr. Seven):

The beauty of Sofia ("Wisdom")

Om! Homage to the Perfection of Wisdom (Prajna Paramita), the lovely, the holy!

Avalokita, the deva and bodhisattva, was moving in the deep course of the Wisdom that has gone beyond.

He looked down from on high, beheld but five heaps, and saw that in and of themselves they were empty.

Here [in this Teaching or Dharma], O Sariputra, form is emptiness [impersonal], and the very emptiness is form;

1. emptiness does not differ from form, form does not differ from emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is form,
2. the same is true of feelings,
3. perceptions,
4. impulses, and
5. consciousness.

Here, O Sariputra, all things (dharmas) are marked with emptiness; they are not produced nor stopped, not defiled nor immaculate, not deficient nor complete.

Therefore, O Sariputra, in emptiness there is no form, nor feeling, nor perception, nor impulse, nor consciousness.

There is no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind; there is no form, sound, scent, savor, sensation, nor object of mind; no sight-organ element, and so forth, until we come to: There is no mind-consciousness element.

There is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance, and so forth, until we come to: There is no decay and death, no extinction of decay and death.

There is no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path. There is no cognition, no attainment, and no non-attainment.

Praja Paramita personified: What's better than wisdom?

Therefore, O Sariputra, it is because of his non-attainmentness that a bodhisattva, through having relied on the Perfection of Wisdom, dwells without thought-coverings.

In the absence of thought-coverings, one has not been made to tremble.

One has overcome what can upset, and in the end, one attains to nirvana.

All those who appear as buddhas in the three periods of time fully awake to the utmost, right and perfect enlightenment, because they have relied on the Perfection of Wisdom.

Therefore, one should know the prajna-paramita as the great mantra, the mantra of great knowledge, the utmost mantra, the unequalled mantra, allayer of all suffering. In truth -- for what could go wrong?

By the prajna-paramita has this mantra been delivered. It runs like this:

Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.

("Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, O, what an awakening, so good to call!")

This completes the Heart of Perfect Wisdom.