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Sutras

A sutra is a scripture, a sacred dialog or a prayer.

Perfect Instinct Wisdom Heart Sutra

Observe your presence,
Knowing One,
Enable deep and perfect
Instinct wisdom;
In this moment
Realize
The five links of thought
All are empty,
Pass beyond each and every
Anxious trouble.

Sariputra,
What you see is no different from the empty;
The empty is no different from what you see.
What you see is just the empty;
The empty is just what you see.
Perceiving what you see,
Conceiving, enabling,
And remembering it
Are also just the same as this.

Sariputra,
All thoughts are empty virtualities:
They do not begin, do not end;
They are not tainted, not clean;
None can be added
Or taken away.

Thus, in the empty no things are seen,
No sights perceived, conceived,
Enabled, remembered.

There is no eye,
No ear, nose, tongue,
No skin, no mind.
No sight,
No sound, smell, taste,
No touch, no thought;
No field of vision
And through the rest to
No field of the mind;
No ignorance and no end to ignorance,
And through the rest
To no old age and death

And no end to age and death;
No Anxiety, Complexity,
Extinguishing, or Way;
No knowledge
And no getting it,
Because there is nothing to get.

The Knowing One rests
On perfect instinct wisdom;
So her heart is never distracted
Because there is nothing to distract it.
She has no fear,
Is distanced far
From topsy-turvy dream thoughts
And absolute nirvana.

Buddhas of the triple worlds
Rest on perfect instinct wisdom
And keep infinite concentration.

Thus know perfect instinct wisdom is
A great and spirit chant;
A great and brilliant chant;
A chant with no equal,
It casts out all anxiety;
Is true and solid,
Is not hollow.
Thus it is called
The perfect instinct wisdom chant.

Thus goes the chant:
Out of reach, out of reach,
So completely out of reach;
Near at hand yet out of reach—
The still within you.
Sha Po Hah!

Translated from Chinese by Larry Schulz, November 2006