The Heart Sutra: A Comprehensive Guide to the Classic of Mahayana Buddhism [Paperback]

An illuminating in-depth study of one of the most well-known and recited of all the Buddhist texts—by the renowned modern translator. Now in paperback.


The first-century classicPrajnaparamita Hridaya Sutramay be the best known of all the Buddhist scriptures. It's a key Zen text, chanted daily by many, but it is studied extensively in the Tibetan tradition too. In just forty-two lines, it expresses the truth of impermanence and the release of suffering that results from the understanding of that truth with a breathtaking economy of language. Kazuaki Tanahashi's guide to theHeart Sutrais the result of a life spent working with it and living it. He outlines the history and meaning and then analyzes the text line by line in its various forms (Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tibetan, Mongolian, and various key English translations), providing a deeper understanding of the history and etymology of the elusive words than is generally available to the nonspecialist, yet with a clear emphasis on the relevance of the text to practice. It includes a fresh, modern translation of the text by the author and Roshi Joan Halifax. Kazuaki Tanahashi’sHeart Sutra: A Comprehensive Guide to the Classic of Mahayana Buddhismdelivers exactly what its subtitle promises—and much more. Most books on the sutra provide expositions of the by now well-known emptiness teachings (however much those teachings continue to resist our understanding). But such exposition, though lucidly present here, is the least of what this book offers. In addition, it traces the history of the text, its translation, and its dissemination throughout Asia and the West in ancient and modern times, and it includes a discussion of important and ground-breaking contemporary scholarship. It includes a biography of Xuanzhang, the sutra’s most famous Chinese translator, who famously journeyed to India to find it, as well as the recounting of a contemporary pilló(