The Heart Sutra

by Red Pine

The Sarvastivadins, as their name indicates, believed the doctrine (vade) that all (sarva) dharmas exist (asti) and that the self-existence (svabhava) of dharmas traverses the three periods of time. The Sarvastivadins were quite familiar with the Buddha’s teaching that the skandhas are empty of a self, but they were not willing to admit that the skandhas were completely empty. They believed that each dharma included an underlying substrate, a defining characteristic that persisted through time. The Heart Sutra counters this by saying that all dharmas are empty of any self-existent quality, substance, or entity that would set them apart in time, space, or mind, and that the only sense in which they are real is as emptiness, and that it is only in terms of their emptiness that we can distinguish them at all. Thus, all dharmas are marked, characterized, and distinguished by emptiness and emptiness alone.