仏説摩訶般若波羅蜜多心経
Bussetsu Maka Hannya Haramita Shingyo
The Heart Sutra of the Great Perfection of Wisdom.
Listen · Read · Contemplate
The Heart Sutra heard as teaching, music, and living practice.
Music can make room for a teaching without turning it into worship. These performances accompany the sutra’s radical account of emptiness, fearlessness, and compassionate awakening.
A clear orientation
Chanting is not prayer to a deity.
The Temple of the Unborn Mind does not pray to gods or bodhisattvas for supernatural intervention. The Heart Sutra speaks through Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva who embodies compassion, but chanting it here is recitation, study, memory, breath, and shared attention.
People may listen devotionally, aesthetically, or contemplatively. No supernatural belief is required.
Selected media
Four ways into the teaching.
Kanho Yakushiji
Heart Sutra Music (Chinese version) × Encho-en
A musical setting filmed at Encho-en, offered as an accessible meeting with the sutra.Kanho Yakushiji
One-hour Heart Sutra chill out
A long-form meditative arrangement for quiet listening, rest, or optional sitting.Kanho Yakushiji
Heart Sutra × Ikkyu-ji Temple, Kyoto
The Heart Sutra performed in the setting of Ikkyu-ji Temple.Asangoham
The Lazy Way To Enlightenment: Bankei's Unborn Zen
A video introduction to Bankei's rejection of manufactured awakening.Why this sutra matters
Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form.
The Heart Sutra is one of Mahayana Buddhism’s most important and widely recited texts. In a few lines it applies emptiness to the body, mind, senses, Four Noble Truths, wisdom, and attainment itself.
Its denial is not nihilism. The sutra removes fixed, independent essence so that reality can be seen as relational and free from obstruction. This is why emptiness and compassion belong together, and why its climax is fearlessness rather than withdrawal.
Read Thich Nhat Hanh’s translation and explanationJapanese liturgical text
The Heart Sutra, line by line.
The text below is Classical Chinese as chanted in Japanese Zen, followed by a Sino-Japanese reading and a close English rendering. Romanization varies by lineage.
観自在菩薩 行深般若波羅蜜多時
Kan ji zai bo satsu, gyo jin han nya ha ra mi ta ji
Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, practicing the deep perfection of wisdom,
照見五蘊皆空 度一切苦厄
Sho ken go on kai ku, do is sai ku yaku
clearly saw that the five aggregates are empty and passed beyond all suffering.
舎利子 色不異空 空不異色 色即是空 空即是色
Sha ri shi, shiki fu i ku, ku fu i shiki, shiki soku ze ku, ku soku ze shiki
Shariputra, form is not other than emptiness; emptiness is not other than form. Form is exactly emptiness; emptiness exactly form.
受想行識 亦復如是
Ju so gyo shiki, yaku bu nyo ze
Feeling, perception, formation, and consciousness are also like this.
舎利子 是諸法空相 不生不滅 不垢不浄 不増不減
Sha ri shi, ze sho ho ku so, fu sho fu metsu, fu ku fu jo, fu zo fu gen
Shariputra, all phenomena bear the mark of emptiness: neither born nor destroyed, neither stained nor pure, neither increasing nor decreasing.
是故空中 無色 無受想行識
Ze ko ku chu, mu shiki, mu ju so gyo shiki
Therefore, within emptiness there is no fixed form, feeling, perception, formation, or consciousness;
無眼耳鼻舌身意 無色声香味触法
Mu gen ni bi zetsu shin i, mu shiki sho ko mi soku ho
no fixed eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, or mind; no fixed sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, or object of mind;
無眼界 乃至無意識界
Mu gen kai, nai shi mu i shiki kai
no separate realm of sight, continuing through no separate realm of mind-consciousness;
無無明 亦無無明尽 乃至無老死 亦無老死尽
Mu mu myo, yaku mu mu myo jin, nai shi mu ro shi, yaku mu ro shi jin
no fixed ignorance and no ending of ignorance, through no fixed aging and death and no ending of aging and death;
無苦集滅道 無智亦無得 以無所得故
Mu ku shu metsu do, mu chi yaku mu toku, i mu sho toku ko
no fixed suffering, origin, cessation, or path; no wisdom and no attainment, because there is nothing separate to attain.
菩提薩埵 依般若波羅蜜多故 心無罣礙
Bo dai sat ta, e han nya ha ra mi ta ko, shin mu ke ge
Because bodhisattvas rely on the perfection of wisdom, the mind is without obstruction.
無罣礙故 無有恐怖 遠離一切顛倒夢想 究竟涅槃
Mu ke ge ko, mu u ku fu, on ri is sai ten do mu so, ku gyo ne han
Without obstruction there is no fear; leaving every inverted dream behind, they realize complete nirvana.
三世諸仏 依般若波羅蜜多故
San ze sho butsu, e han nya ha ra mi ta ko
All Buddhas of past, present, and future rely on the perfection of wisdom
得阿耨多羅三藐三菩提
Toku a noku ta ra san myaku san bo dai
and realize unsurpassed complete awakening.
故知般若波羅蜜多 是大神呪 是大明呪
Ko chi han nya ha ra mi ta, ze dai jin shu, ze dai myo shu
Know that the perfection of wisdom is the great transformative mantra, the great illuminating mantra,
是無上呪 是無等等呪 能除一切苦 真実不虚
Ze mu jo shu, ze mu to do shu, no jo is sai ku, shin jitsu fu ko
the unsurpassed mantra, the incomparable mantra. It can release all suffering; it is true, not false.
故説般若波羅蜜多呪 即説呪曰
Ko setsu han nya ha ra mi ta shu, soku setsu shu watsu
Therefore the mantra of the perfection of wisdom is proclaimed:
羯諦 羯諦 波羅羯諦 波羅僧羯諦 菩提薩婆訶
Gya tei, gya tei, ha ra gya tei, hara so gya tei, bo ji sowaka
Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond: awakening, fulfilled.
般若心経
Hannya Shingyo
The Heart of Perfect Wisdom Sutra.
This is an original study rendering for the Temple, not a replacement for a lineage’s authorized liturgical translation.