The Heart Sutra

by Red Pine

“The statement ‘form is not separate from emptiness’ destroys the ordinary person’s view of permanence. This is because ordinary people think that only their material body is real. And because they consider it permanent, they make hundred-year plans and don’t realize their body is an empty fiction and subject to the ceaseless changes of birth, old age, illness, and death. But even when it reaches old age and death and finally becomes impermanent and turns out to be empty, this is still the emptiness of origination and cessation and not yet the final truth. Consequently, the illusory forms of the Four Elements are basically no different from true emptiness. But ordinary people don’t know this. Thus, it says, ‘form is not separate from emptiness.’ This means that the physical body is basically not different from true emptiness.