Emptiness for Beginners

Enso

Not surprisingly, some of the most abstruse doctrines in Buddhism are widely misunderstood, or the terms are used vaguely. One of the most abused terms in our Buddhist lexicon is śūnyatā. Since I've been responding to questions about the Heart Sutra recently, I thought I'd put together a basic guide to the term.

So lets begin, as usual, with etymology. The word śūnya means 'empty, void, barren'. Mayrhofer in his Etymological Dictionary lists this word under śūna from a Proto-Indo-European root *kuer (the change from PIE k to Sanskrit ś is regular). According to Mayrhofer "This is probably from *keur 'swell', as in 'bulge, bulge, cavity' (possibly via 'bloat', 'inwardly hollow out')". Porkony lists this PIE root under keu-. In English it can be seen in words such as 'cave, cavern, and church'. It is related to the Greek κύαρ (kuar) 'a hole, an orifice'. Our word zero ultimately comes from the Sanskrit word śūnya via Arabic sifr 'cifer', and Medieval Latin zephirum. In Sanskrit, this idea seems to manifest as the verbal root √svi 'to swell', which may also have forms √śū and √śvā. It's worth keeping in mind another word which appears in the Heart Sutra: ūna 'deficient, defective'. Thieme has speculated that śūna might be from su+ūna where su means 'well, good'. However, I think the latter seems unlikely and that the connection with swelling is much more plausible.

Those familiar with the image of the ball of foam for śūnyatā will immediately see that the simile might have another connotation than the obvious one - i.e., that a bubble is something that has swelled up leaving it's internal space is empty, i.e. it is hollow. I'll come back to this image.

Translating śūnya from a philological perspective is not difficult. It means  'empty, void, devoid, zero' and  possibly 'hollow, barren'. 'Empty' is a good basic translation. And 'emptiness' is the abstract noun from 'empty' in exactly the same way that śūnyatā is an abstract noun from śūnya. Here the -tā suffix is an equivalent of -ness. So literally śūnyatā is the state or quality of being empty; or the characteristic of something which is empty. However, the word is used in a specific context and we do need to be sensitive to that context.

In order to best understand this word we need to know something about the context in which it was used. In fact, the word is found in the Pāli texts, but as a techinical term of Mahāyāna Buddhism it is used quite differently. Firstly, by this time it is deeply engrained that 'dharmas arise in dependence on conditions'. A thinker like Nāgārjuna lived in a time when this had been the worldview for some centuries. It is fundamental to the discussion. It's worth stressing this if only because it seems to be lost sight of sometimes. Dependent-arising is a given.

The second thing to understand what is empty, and what it is empty of? We find the answer in the Heart Sutra in the two phrases: sarvadharmāḥ śūnyatā-lakṣanāḥ and pañcaskandhān svabhāvaśūnyān.

The first tells us that "all dharmas are characterised by emptiness". Thus the focus is dharmas. And what are dharmas? Dharmas are the objects of the mind sense or manas. This is a theory that applies to mental phenomena. It's important that we don't fall into the trap of saying or thinking that "all things are characterised by emptiness". This is not a doctrine about "things", this is a doctrine about dharmas.

The second phrase is aimed at the skandhas. But consider that the skandhas are aspects of experiece -- embodiment, sensations, names, volitions, discriminations. Sue Hamilton has shown that skandha is synonymous with duḥkha, which  in its broadest sense means 'unawakened experience'; and also with loka, 'experience'. Indeed, duḥkha and loka are both described as products of the process described in the nidānas so they are not only synonymous, but equivalent. (See Is Paṭicca-Samuppāda a Theory of Everything? for a discussion of this correspondence). The skandhas divide experience into useful chunks for vipaśyana meditation (and Avalokiteśvara was doing a skandha reflection practice at the beginning of the Heart Sutra); dharmas are the 'atoms' of experience from a Buddhist point of view. For the sake of this discussion, then, we could subsitute sarvadharmān svabhāvaśunyān here since dharmas are the focus. And this would mean 'all dharmas are devoid of svabhāva'. The word sva-bhāva is a compound. The sva bit means 'own'. If I wanted to say "I'm going to my house" it would be: sva gṛhaṃ gacchāmi. Bhāva comes from the root √bhū 'to be, to become'. Buddhists are sometimes a little too insistent that bhū means 'to become' and want to shy away from the 'to be' meaning, but this is an error. And we see it here because bhāva means 'being, existing'. So svabhāva means 'existing on its own or in it's own right; 'own-being' as Conze quite literally puts it. It's also translated as 'intrinsic-existence, inherent-existence, self-existent, self-nature, etc.' Thus "dharmas are empty of svabhāva" means that dharmas don't exist on their own or in their own right.

Now svabhāva is a technical term that exists in the worldview I described above. For something to exist on its own means that it is its own condition. So for a dharma to have svabhāva means that the condition upon which it arises is itself. Nāgārjuna points out that there is an inherent contradiction in a dependently arisen dharma being its own condition.

1. If a dharma with svabhāva (itself as a condition for its own arising) is currently non-existent, then that dharma can never come into existence.
2. If a dharma with svabhāva is currently existent, then it could never cease to exist.

And, just as Nāgārjuna does, in his Mūlamadhyamakakārakā (15.7), I will now point out that the Kaccānagotta Sutta  is the authoritative text on this subject (Pāli SN 12.15; Chinese Taishō 2.99 85a-86c [my translation]; a Sanskrit version is also extant). I've written a lot about this text - in particular, my long essay Is Paṭicca-Samuppāda a Theory of Everything? The Kaccānagotta points out that in practice we experience dharmas arising (utpāda) and passing away (nirodha). Now, if a dharma arises then it cannot be non-existent. The term used here is (nāsti) but Nāgārjuna uses abhāva. And, if a dharma ceases then it cannot be existent (asti/bhāva). So, if a dharma that presents itself to our awareness arises and passes away then it cannot be self-existent. And the Buddhist argument is that our mind only processes dharmas. Thus, we can say with some confidence that dharmas lack svabhāva or, in Sanskrit, sarvadhamāḥ śūnyatā-lakṣana. In the Kaccānagotta, the Buddha tells the Kaccāna that the terms 'existence' (astitā) and 'non-existence' (nāstitā) do no apply to the world of experience (loka). Thus we really ought to drop them from our discourse. Whenever we find out selves talking about real/unreal or existent/non-existent then a red flag should go up - we've strayed into wrong view. And this is the basis of my critique of the so-called Two Truths.

By a quirk of history, the development of Abhidharma thinking drifted towards the opinion that dharmas, as the fundamental building blocks of experience, must actually exist. This wrong view is why Buddhism had to produce whole new categories of sūtra and śāstra. Outside of this context of contradicting a particular wrong view, the doctrine of śūṇyatā doesn't really make sense. This wrong view is said to be the reason behind the name of the Sarvāstivāda sect of Buddhism. The name beaks down to sarva (all) + asti (exists) + vāda (ideology). I understand that the crude depiction of Sarvāstivādins as Realists has been challenged by some scholars, particularly Collette Cox, but I haven't had the time to look into it yet.

As I have previously observed, Nāgārjuna was, to some extent, stuck with this idea because the Abhidharma was canonical (I've referred to this as the Post-Abhidharma Doctrine Disaster). The easiest way to deal with the problem of starting to think in terms of existence ought to have been to start over, but Buddhism is a deeply conservative religion and, rather ironically, it clings on to existing ideas. They can be superseded, but not done away with altogether. So Nāgārjuna was stuck with this idea about the existence of dharmas. His response was to employ the term śūnyatā to undermine the Realism of the Abhidharmikas and get Buddhist thought back on track. It allowed him to agree with tradition--yes, dharmas exist--(conventional truth); but to refute this notion in the same breath--no, dharmas don't really exist (absolute truth). But the Two Truths were a workaround, and if we don't buy into dharmas with svabhāva (and who does these days?) then we don't need them. We can stay with the singular truth outlined in the Kaccānagotta Sutta, namely that dharmas arise in dependence on causes and by definition lack svabhāva. (And because I maintain this position, I have been called a NeoSautrāntika). Buddhist thought is important because it informs Buddhist practice. From time to time (every couple of centuries or so) we need to be reminded that, having calmed down and become focused, our next task is to turn our attention to our experience as it arises and passes away, because that is where the truth about experience is. In my view this is precisely what Nāgārjuna attempts to do in his works.

Thus, experience itself really is like a ball of foam. We definitely have experiences, but they don't seem to exist in the way that the 'things' we experience do. Keep in mind that this is a simile for the arising of a dharma present to the manas: the foam defines a shape but offers no resistance; the foam can be seen, but close up is transparent; the foam defines a volume of space, but it is hollow; the foam shape exists briefly and then bursts and is gone.

Another favourite analogy is to say a dharma is like rabbits' horns. I can say the phrase "rabbits' horns" and you can hear, correctly parse, and understand what I've said. The words are said and heard and understood and you can imagine what a rabbit with horns might look like. Yet at no time does a rabbit ever have horns. So is the image of a rabbit with horns that the words evoke real or unreal? The Buddhist answer is that neither applies so let's not go down that road. Just because you can name (samjñā) something does not make it real (or unreal).

Trying to unravel and comment on the myriad uses and misuses of the word śūnyatā would be a book length project and I have no intention of undertaking something like that. But it won't hurt us to reflect on how the usages that we encounter map onto this basic meaning. Keep in mind that it's not always wrong to reframe Buddhist doctrine - in fact, it is essential. Buddhism is not made up of eternal truths. Buddhism is a collection of methods and associated ideas which aim to produce a particular experience -- the experience of seeing through (vipaśyana) and understanding (prajñā) the nature of experience itself. And, in the meantime, the exploration of experience is itself a fascinating area of inquiry. And the way we talk about the ideas that inform our practice must reflect the times and places we are in. If we are to communicate the Buddhadharma then we need to use a language and idiom that people can understand.

To do this we must be thoroughly versed in what is meant. Like a jazz musician must be thoroughly versed in scales before they can be truly free to improvise. And Buddhism ought to be like jazz rather than some crusty old classic music always read from the page.

~~oOo~~

Thinking it Through

I haven't felt the urge to blog lately because I've been caught up in various things. At the same time I've been involved with a desultory discussion about the value of inter-religious dialogue with Elisa Freschi on her blog. In response to something I wrote, Elisa responded:

"But I do not think that one's religious beliefs are tantamount to the degree of psychological "biasedness" or to one's lack of insight. What about being sincerely trying to think through one's beliefs?

Don't you believe in the possibility of theology (i.e., rational thinking within the framework of some key beliefs)?" 

My reply is the comments on that post, but I thought it would be worthwhile to expand on my answer. My response consisted of a critique of the idea of "rational thinking". I began by invoking a paper by Daniele Cuneo (who is currently working on the Sanskrit Manuscripts Project at Cambridge University). In Thinking Literature: Emic and Etic Approaches, Daniele makes an interesting point about emic and etic viewpoints. Most people who study religion will be be familiar with this distinction which might be summed up as "insider" and "outsider" views. We will almost certain be familiar with the idea that Buddhism cannot be understood from the outside and one must practice it to understand it. I'm no longer convinced of this and why this is so may become clear as I proceed.

Daniele makes the excellent point that when we study a religion or a textual tradition as an outsider (and etic approach) we tend to project our own emic assumptions onto the subject. For instance we may refer to Buddhist literature, but "literature" is an emic concept for us. It comes loaded with cultural baggage. It is never the case that we can stand outside a tradition and study it objectively, we can only stand outside it and study it in terms of other traditions. There is no god-like positionless position. Or in other words we always make assumptions when we interpret information.

What I said about "rational thinking" was that it is an emic concept. Rational thinking is an idea about how humans process information that owes a great deal to the European Enlightenment. It's a modernist concept. But in recent years that very idea of rational thinking has come under heavy fire (to invoke the argument is war metaphor) from rational thinkers. I'm interested in at least two strands of the arguements against the idea of rational thinking - both of which have featured heavily in blogs of the last few years. The first is from neuroscience, particularly (for me) in the popular works of Antonio Damasio and Thomas Metzinger (though I've delved into Metzinger more deeply as well).

Antonio and Hannah Damasio have both looked at the consequences of damage to the medio-ventral prefrontal cortex (MVPC: see my blog here) and discovered that minor damage disrupts out ability to make certain kinds of decisions. The theory is that we don't just judge how true a proposition is, but that we judge how important it is to us (or at least how important it is to the decision at hand); which is to say we judge the value or salience of the information. And we experience the value of the information somatically as emotional states or feeling. When MVPC is disrupted then the link between information and its value or salience is disrupted and thus while we know what is true, we can no longer decide which true facts are more important than others. Thus we lose the ability to make decisions. It is my informal suggestion that we generalise this - that we experience the salience of all kinds of information as emotions.

Allied to this is something that a highly successful advertising expert once told me: "People don't make rational decisions, they may emotional decisions and then rationalise them." It doesn't take too much deconstruction of the adverts of top companies to realise that they all behave as if this were implicitly true. And if it wasn't their ads would not work. Pragmatism suggests that there is something in this - whatever Myers and Briggs say.

The second strand of critique of rational thinking comes from philosophy. I usually confess that I don't like philosophy and have not read any. This is not entirely true. I did have a period of reading the books of Geroge Lakoff and to some extent his coauthor Mark Johnson. Lakoff is a philosopher of language whereas Johnson is a philosopher of the mind (more or less). The thesis here is that language reflects embodied consciousness. They argue for instance that all abstract thought is metaphorical in nature, and that the metaphors we use draw on our physical experience of being embodied and interacting with the world. To give a very simplistic example or their very sophisticated idea: when we say "things are looking up" or "I'm feeling down" we invoke a spatial metaphor related to our bodies orientation in space. "Up is good" because when we are alive, healthy and alert we are upright; "down is bad" because when we are dead, ill or unconscious we are prostrate. Lakoff's more indepth work on categories in the wonderfully named "Women, Fire and Dangerous Things" shows that we tend to construct categories based on how we physically and mentally interact with the world; and we tend to understand relationships between members of categories metaphorically based on our own embodied experience. The broader category for these ideas (more associated with Johnson I think) is Embodied Cognition.

In short all thought is embodied, all thinking involves working with metaphors that rely on our experience of being embodied. "Rationality" -- as disembodied abstract thought -- is like Harold Bloom's joke about Freudian Literary Criticism being like the Holy Roman Empire... not Holy, not Roman, and not an empire. Empirical support of these theories has been found in the form of types of brain cells known as mirror neurons and canonical neurons. Mirror neurons are part of the motor cortex that controls voluntary muscles and are active both when we perform an action and we observe someone else performing an action. The implication is that we understand our observations in part by using the same part of the brain that we would use if we were performing the action. Canonical neurons are also part of the motor cortex and they are active when we perceive an object - the theory here being that in understanding an object we assess how we might physically interact with it, how we might manipulate it.

So to sum up "rational thinking" doesn't really exist. We can't think without using our emotions to assess the importance of information to us; to assess the salience of the information for the issue at hand. Similarly we can only think in abstract terms by employing metaphors that relate to how our body feels and functions; how we physically interact with the world. When we "grasp" an idea (a metaphor also available to Sanskrit speakers) we are invoking the felt experience of grasping. When we choose one idea over another, it is always because one feels right, or more right (i.e. of more value to us, and more salient to the issue).

With regard to the issue of sincerity I reported on a BBC Radio 4 interview with creationist Malcolm Bowden (the interview is archived here). Mr Bowden is eminently sincere, and as an engineer he knows how to think, but his conclusion is that all science is mistaken: that the sun goes around an earth created in 6 days by God about 6000 years ago. Mr Bowden sounds calm, reasonable and rational. He argues his case based on a series of assumptions that I certainly do not share, but argues logically from those assumptions. He says, and I believe him, that he has examined his assumptions about the world and this is his conclusion. He acknowledges the difficulties his confession has caused him, but is committed to his view.

How can someone like me make sense of someone like Malcolm Bowden? I think the foregoing argument shows one way to do it. Mr Bowden is sincere and rational and using reason to assess the information available to him, but he is giving certain information a much higher salience than I am. I give the bible no salience as a set of facts, so it plays no role in my decision making. He places the highest value on it. I don't need to think of the man as an idiot or to feel angry about it as many people might. I do feel a bit angry, but I'm aware enough to suppress it for the greater good. On the other hand Mr Bowden could use the same argument to understand what I've just written. After all, what am I doing but telling readers what kinds of stories about experience feel right to me; what kinds of metaphors help me to grasp my situation in life; to make sense of what is going on around me. I believe what I say I believe in this essay not because it is absolutely true, but because my life experience predisposes me to feel that way. I would not say that there is nothing I can do about it, but the conditioning is both strong and largely transparent.

I think this notion of transparency is vitally important. On the whole we don't think our own thoughts, we think the thoughts of our culture. "Rational thinking" is a very good example. The concept is so transparent that we don't even see it as a social construction. "Rational thinking" is an emic concept. We just assume that there is a function we do called "rational thinking", and some people are better at it than others. But no one does rational thinking in the sense that we generally mean. There's no doubt that some people are more articulate and better at justifying their decisions; better at persuading others. But again persuasion is not a simple matter of presenting the facts and leaving it at that. Malcolm Bowden is an engineer who despite being capable of disproving his own belief, maintains a Ptolemaic view of the universe - he rejects all astronomical observation since Galileo discovered moons in orbit around Jupiter. Presumably Mr Bowden is fully cognisant of the facts. He just doesn't care about them in relation to what's in the Bible. And I would argue that though Mr Bowden is a fairly extreme example, he is not qualitatively different from any other human being.  He's doing what we all do to make sense of our worlds. And our worlds do seem to need making sense of!

So is there scope for inter-religious dialogue? Does it achieve anything? I'm very doubtful. The very nature of belief makes it difficult to discuss with non-believers precisely because of the salience problem. However in my response to George Adams (in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 47(2), Spring 2012. 282-287 [paywalled unfortunately]) I realised that I shared some fundamental values with him. I could certainly empathise with his desire to see his loved ones no cease to exist, though as I pointed out it is Adam's eternalist views that cause him pain with regard to this prospect - because he believes the only alternative to eternal (after)life is annihilation and is thus caught in the trap outlined over 2000 years ago by Buddhists. Never-the-less I felt that despite his false assumptions, poor/circular logic and unreasonable conclusions I could connect with him as a human being. But this is not an inter-religious dialogue - its only possible when we set aside our respective religious doctrines and meet as human beings who love other human beings. Religion only gets in the way of this discussion. I said that my interest in dialogue was with precisely the people I have mentioned in this essay: with neuroscientists and philosophers who help me to see through the transparent conditioning I've taken on board and thus to potentially free myself from it. Conditioning causes us to think and act in ruts. This helps us fit into a society, but it restricts and limits our ability to respond creatively to experience.

The issue I have not addressed is "insight". I may come back to this, but usually it is expressed in culturally specific forms. On the other hand I am a great fan of Jill Bolte Taylor's Stroke of Insight on TED.

Heart Sutra: Horiuzi Palm-leaf mss. Transcription

"Facsimile of the two palm-leaves of Horiuzi, sent to Prof. Max Müller in 1880.
Catal. of Japanese books and mss. in the Bodleian Library, No. 45."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Falongsibeiye.png
CLICK IMAGE TO EMBIGGEN

Provenance

The image is a facsimile of the so-called "Horiuzi Palm-leaf MSS." of Hōryū-ji monastery. The manuscript was preserved in Hōryū-ji, and is said to date from 609 AD.  Georg Bühler notes in Müller (1881) that a comparison of the script with India manuscripts and inscriptions argues for a date in the 8th century. He hypothesises that all of those later scribes and stone masons of other editions were being deliberately archaic. However the simpler hypothesis is that the Horyuji manuscript is late.

The manuscript begins with the Heart Sūtra. From page 2, line 2 we find the Uṣnīṣavijaya Dhāraṇī. The last line is a complete Sanskrit syllabary in Siddhaṃ script - preceded by the word siddhaṃ and ending with llaṃ kṣa. Each texts begins with the auspiscious mark ࿓ called yigmo in Tibetan, which is often erroneously interpreted as oṃ.

Transcription of the Heart Sutra

Numbers in square brackets are line number. Syllables in curly brackets are doubtful readings.  Note the complete lack of punctuation and syllables are fully separate - except for the mantra where they clump into words.

RECTO [1] ࿓ na ma ssa rva jñā ya ā ryā va lo ki te śva ra bo dhi sa ttvā ga mbhī raṃ pra jñā pā ra mi tā yaṃ ca ryāṃ ca ra mā no vya va lo ka ya ti sma paṃ ca ska ndhā stā śca sva bhā va śū nyaṃ pa śya ti sma [2] i ha śā ri pu tra rū paṃ śū nya tā śū nya tai va rū paṃ rū pā nna pṛ tha k śū nya tā yā na pṛ tha grū paṃ ya drū paṃ sā śū nya tā yā śū nya tā ta drū paṃ e va me va ve da [3] na saṃ jñā saṃ skā ra vi jñā nā ni i ha śā ri pu tra sa rva dha rmā śū nya tā la kṣa ṇā a nu tpa nna a ni rū ddhā a ma lā vi ma lā nā nā na pa ri pū rṇa ta smā cchā ri pu tra śū nya tā [4] yāṃ na rū paṃ na ve da nā {na} saṃ jñā na saṃ skā rā na vi jñā ni na ca kṣū śro tra ghra ṇa ji hvā kā ya ma nā {msi} na rū paṃ śa bda ga nda ra sa spra ṣṭa vya dha rmā na ca kṣu rdhā tu yā va nna ma [5] no dhā tu na vi dyā nā vi dyā na vidyā kṣa yo nā vi dyā ksā yo yā va nna ja rā ma ra ṇaṃ na ja rā ma ra ṇa kṣa yo na duḥ kha sa mu da ya ni ro dha ma rga na jñā naṃ na pra pti tvaṃ bo dhi sa tva sya pra jña pā ra mi [6] tā a śri tya vi ha ra ti ci tta va ra ṇa ci ttā va ra ṇa nā sti {tva} da tra sto vi pa rya sā ti krā ntaḥ ni ṣṭha ni rva ṇaḥ trya dhva vya va sti tā sa rva bu ddhāḥ pra jñā pā ra mi tā a śri tyā nu tta rāṃ sa mya ksaṃ bo dhi {sa hi} [7] saṃ bu ddhā ta smā jñā ta vyaṃ pra jñā pra mi tā ma hā maṃ trā ma hā vi dyā maṃ traḥ a nu tta ra maṃ tra a sa

VERSO [8] ma sa ma maṃ tra sa rva duḥ kha pra śa ma naḥ sa tyaṃ a mi thya tvā {d} pra jñā pā ra mi tā yā mu kto maṃ tra  ta dya thā gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā || pra jñā pā ra mi t {hrid} yā sa ma pta.

Notes

The handwriting is not too bad compared to some manuscripts. Some of the conjuncts are difficult to read. The syllables a sa śa and ma are easily confused.

This text has a different maṇgala to Conze's edition: namas sarvajñāya 'homage to the omniscient'.

Mistakes include: anānā for anūna; prajñāpramitā for prajñāparamitā; vijñāni for vijñānaṃ (plural for singular); na vidyā nāvidyā na vidyākṣayo nāvidyāksāyo when only nāvidyā nāvidyāksāyo makes sense in context of nidāna sequence; na missing from na saṃjñā; sa hi, or perhaps a hi, where expect samyak; niṣṭha-nirvaṇaḥ should be niṣṭha-nirvāṇāpraptaḥ (else it doesn't make sense); hṛda(?) yā  for hṛ da ya possible because of space constraints. Lots of odd sandhi, missing anusvāra and visarga but this could be down to Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit.


Text

I've added minimal punctuation to aid reading - but read carefully, previous editors have frequently got the punctuation wrong. A couple of insertions were required and are in square brackets. There are many errors in the ms. and it's possible I've made some as well.

࿓ namas sarvajñāya | āryāvalokiteśvara-bodhisattvā gambhīraṃ prajñāpāramitāyaṃ caryāṃ caramāno vyavalokayati sma paṃca-skandhās tā[ṃ]ś ca svabhāva-śūnyaṃ paśyati sma | iha śāriputra rūpaṃ śūnyatā śūnyataiva rūpaṃ rūpān na pṛthak śūnyatāyā na pṛthag rūpaṃ yad rūpaṃ sā śūnyatāyā śūnyatā tad rūpaṃ evam eva vedana-saṃjñā-saṃskāra-vijñānāni | iha śāriputra sarva-dharmā śūnyatā-lakṣaṇā anutpanna anirūddhā amalāvimalā nānān aparipūrṇa | tasmāc chāriputra śūnyatāyāṃ na rūpaṃ na vedanāna [na] saṃjñā na saṃskārā na vijñāni na cakṣū-śrotra-ghraṇa-jihvā-kāya-manāmsi | na rūpaṃ-śabda-ganda-rasa-spraṣṭavya-dharmā | na cakṣur-dhātu yāvan na mano-dhātu na vidyā nāvidyā na vidyākṣayo nāvidyāksāyo yāvan na jarāmaraṇaṃ na jarāmaraṇakṣayo | na duḥkha-samudaya-nirodha-marga | na jñānaṃ na praptitvaṃ | bodhisatvasya prajñapāramitā aśritya viharati [a]cittavaraṇa | cittāvaraṇa-nāstitvad atrasto viparyasātikrāntaḥ niṣṭha-nirvaṇaḥ | tryadhvavyavastitā sarvabuddhāḥ prajñāpāramitā aśrityānuttarāṃ samyak saṃbodhi [sam yak] saṃbuddhā | tasmā jñātavyaṃ prajñāpramitā mahā-maṃtrā mahāvidyā-maṃtraḥ anuttara-maṃtra asamasama-maṃtra sarva-duḥkha-praśamanaḥ satyaṃ amithyatvād | prajñāpāramitāyām ukto maṃtra  tadyathā gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā ||
prajñāpāramit [hṛda]yā samapta.

This text forms the basis of the Sanskrit edition published by Max Müller, which in turn forms the basis of the edition by Vaidya, This is significant because Vaidya is widely available on the internet and is the text which appears in the Digital Sanskrit Buddhist Canon. The text is quite different from the critical edition by Conze (1948, 1967).

In terms of the history of the study of Prajñapāramitā texts in the West this is an important document. Though it is far from perfectly copied, and probably not at old as the priests of  Hōryū-ji monastery say it is, it is never-the-less old. It ought to have been carbon dated before now, but I've seen no reference to any attempt. The ms. dates from not long after the Heart Sutra was composed and probably can claim to the the oldest ms. of it in existence. Not only that but it continues to influence study and perception of the Heart Sutra. The excellent calligraphy book by John Stevens reproduces this text with only minor amendments for example; and much of it survives into Vaidya's Sanskrit text.


Bibliography

• Conze, Edward (1948) ‘Text, Sources, and Bibliography of the Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya.’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, April 80(1-2): 33-51.
• Conze, Edward. (1967) ‘The Prajñāpāramitā-Hṛdaya Sūtra’ in Thirty Years of Buddhist Studies: Selected Essays, Bruno Cassirer, pp. 147-167.
• Müller, Max. (1881) ‘The Ancient Palm Leaves containing the Prajñāpāramitā-Hṛidaya Sūtra and Uṣniṣa-vijaya-Dhāraṇi.’ in Buddhist Texts from Japan (Vol 1.iii). Oxford University Press. Online: http://archive.org/details/buddhisttextsfr00bhgoog
• Vaidya, P.L. (1961) Mahāyāna-sūtra-saṁgrahaḥ (part 1). Buddhist Sanskrit Texts No. 17. Darbhanga: The Mithila Institute. Online: http://dsbc.uwest.edu/