Chanting the Heart Sutra

This is a photo from a sutra book I frequently use for daily services. I bought this book years ago from the temple of Sensoji (a.k.a. Asakusa Temple) in Tokyo, Japan, a place that I have visited many times over the years.

It is still one of my favorite temples, even if a bit touristy, and of the Buddhist sutra books I own this is still one of my favorite to use.¹ This sutra book uses the traditional Classical Chinese with Japanese pronunciation guides (furigana), which is pretty typical of Japanese-Buddhist sutra books. As you can see, it’s not a long sutra to recite. It is probably the shortest sutra in the entire Buddhist canon.

Chanting the Heart Sutra is something many Buddhists in the Mahayana tradition (everything you see from Tibet to Japan, and overseas) do both in group services and in home services. People chant it in many languages and styles. Its simplicity, and general message about the nature of reality means that it tends to cut across sectarian lines and is popular in many sects and communities. Its cryptic and profound nature also means that for a one-page sutra it is the subject of intense study and research.

The sutra, for reference, is shown below. I used the standard Japanese liturgical form, recited in Zen temples, Tendai temples, Shingon temples, and so on, with only very minor differences per tradition. However, there are many ways and languages to recite the Heart Sutra.

Original Chinese	Romanization	Translation by Lapis Lazuli Texts
摩訶般若波羅蜜多心経	Ma ka han-nya ha ra mi ta shin gyo	The Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra
観自在菩薩行深般若波羅蜜多時。	kan ji zai bo satsu gyo jin han nya ha ra mi ta ji	When Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva was practicing the profound Prajñāpāramitā,
照見五蘊皆空。	sho ken go un kai ku	he illuminated the Five Skandhas and saw that they were all empty,
度一切苦厄。	do is-sai ku yaku	and crossed over all suffering and affliction.
舎利子。色不異空。	sha ri shi shiki fu i ku	Śāriputra, form is not different from emptiness, and
空不異色。	ku fu i shiki	emptiness is not different from form.
色即是空。	shiki zoku ze ku	Form itself is emptiness, and
空即是色。	ku zoku ze shiki	emptiness itself is form.
受想行識亦復如是。	ju so gyo shiki yaku bu nyo ze	Sensation, conception, synthesis, and discrimination are also such as this.
舎利子。是諸法空相。	sha ri shi ze sho ho ku so	Śāriputra, all dharmas are empty:
不生不滅。	fu sho fu metsu	they are neither created nor destroyed,
不垢不浄。	fu ku fu jo	neither defiled nor pure,
不増不減。	fu zo fu gen	and they neither increase nor diminish.
是故空中。	ze ko ku chu	This is because in emptiness
無色無受想行識。	mu shiki mu ju so gyo shiki	there is no form, sensation, conception, synthesis, or discrimination.
無眼耳鼻舌身意。	mu gen-ni bi zes-shin i	There are no eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, or thoughts.
無色声香味触法。	mu shiki sho ko mi soku ho	There are no forms, sounds, scents, tastes, sensations, or dharmas.
無眼界。	mu gen kai	There is no field of vision and
乃至無意識界。	nai shi mu i shiki kai	there is no realm of thoughts.
無無明。	mu mu myo	There is no ignorance
亦無無明尽。	yaku mu mu myo jin	nor elimination of ignorance,
乃至無老死。	nai shi mu ro shi	even up to and including no old age and death,
亦無老死尽。	yaku mu ro shi jin	nor elimination of old age and death.
無苦集滅道。	mu ku shu metsu do	There is no suffering, its accumulation, its elimination, or a path.
無智亦無得。	mu chi yaku mu toku	There is no understanding and no attaining.
以無所得故。	i mu sho tok-ko	Because there is no attainment,
菩提薩埵。依般若波羅蜜多故。	bo dai sat-ta e han nya ha ra mi ta ko	bodhisattvas rely on Prajñāpāramitā,
心無罜礙。	shin mu kei ge	and their minds have no obstructions.
無罜礙故。	mu kei ge ko	Since there are no obstructions,
無有恐怖。	mu u ku fu	they have no fears.
遠離一切顛倒夢想。	on ri is-sai ten do mu so	Because they are detached from backwards dream-thinking,
究竟涅槃。	ku gyo ne han	their final result is Nirvāṇa.
三世諸仏。	san ze sho butsu	Because all buddhas of the past, present, and future
依般若波羅蜜多故。	e han nya ha ra mi ta ko	rely on Prajñāpāramitā,
得阿耨多羅三藐三菩提。	toku a noku ta ra sam myaku san bo dai	they attain Anuttarā Samyaksaṃbodhi.
故知。般若波羅蜜多。	ko chi han nya ha ra mi ta	Therefore, know that Prajñāpāramitā
是大神呪。是大明呪。	ze dai jin shu ze dai myo shu	is a great spiritual mantra, a great brilliant mantra,
是無上呪。是無等等呪。	ze mu jo shu ze mu to do shu	an unsurpassed mantra, and an unequalled mantra.
能除一切苦。真実不虚故。説般若波羅蜜多呪。	no jo is-sai ku shin jitsu fu ko ko setsu han nya ha ra mi ta shu	The Prajñāpāramitā Mantra is spoken because it can truly remove all afflictions.
即説呪曰。	soku setsu shu watsu:	The mantra is spoken thusly:
羯諦羯諦波羅羯諦波羅僧羯諦菩提薩婆訶。	gya tei gya tei ha ra gya tei hara so gya tei bo ji so wa ka	gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā3
般若心経	han nya shin gyo	The Heart Sutra

You can see a really nice example of this chanted here, courtesy of Koyasan Temple in Japan:

I have been reading Tanahashi’s book about the Heart Sutra and learning a lot about its various interpretations, how it’s conveyed in various languages, and various theories about its origin. I was fascinated to learn that there is a Mongolian version sometimes transcribed in Cyrillic. None of this is strictly necessary for the purposes of Buddhist practice, but it is fascinating. The example I showed above uses what’s called “Sino-Japanese”: Japanese pronunciation of the original Chinese characters it was composed with.²

As for chanting the sutra, I’ve been doing it for years, so I can more or less recite the Sino-Japanese version from memory, and am pretty comfortable doing it that way. I study the meaning of the sutra in English of course. I also have a PDF file for chanting in Sino-Japanese available for those interested.

I have also attended Zen centers on rare occasions (I tend to lean toward Pure Land Buddhism, to be honest) and seen the Heart Sutra recited using English. Learning the English meaning is very useful, but English chanting sounds a bit awkward to me. So, I prefer chanting in the original, and study the meaning separately.

But regardless of what language you use, the Heart Sutra, like all Buddhist sutras, has a funny tendency to gradually “sink in” over time. The meaning may not make much sense at first, but over the course of months and years, it takes on new meaning as you go through life, and see the sutra in a new light. I believe that’s the real value of Buddhist chanting: to internalize key Buddhist teachings in a way that you can carry with you throughout life.

As for me, these days, I tend to recite a Tendai-style home service,⁴ and as part of that I rotate between chanting this and a certain, small excerpt of the Immeasurable Life Sutra called the shiseige (四誓偈) or juseige (重誓偈) in Japanese Buddhism. When I finish one, I put it under the other sutra book, so I don’t forget which sutra to recite next time as I might go a week or two before reciting again. As a short, traditional liturgy, I am pretty content.

As with any Buddhist practice done over a long period of time, I believe that it gradually polishes the mind, and dispels one self-centered viewpoint. It’s super simple to do, but its benefits last a lifetime. To paraphrase Nichiren, when dying cloth in indigo, the more you do it, the deeper the color becomes.

Namu Amida Butsu
Namu Kanzeon Bosatsu

Edit: I discovered in May 2025 some egregious mistakes in the formatting of the sutra above. This was not a problem with the translation, but with mistakes in how I copy-pasted into the blog post. I have since corrected these mistakes. Apologies to anyone who used the flawed copy of the sutra.

P.S. It’s tempting for some to look for an original “Sanskrit” version of the sutra, but alas, the best we know today is that the sutra was compiled originally in China, using excerpts from the much, much larger Prajña-paramita sutras. The story of how exactly that came to be is a much-discussed subject in Tanahashi’s book.

P.P.S. Fun fact: the version of the Heart Sutra used in Japan differs very slightly from the popular version attributed to Xuanzang. The Japanese version, popularized by the Shingon esoteric tradition, is called the rufubon (流布本) version. It has two extra Chinese characters (262 total) from Xuanzang’s 260, and uses slightly different characters for pronouncing the mantra at the end: 揭諦 instead of original 揭帝 for Sanskrit gaté.

¹ Because it is devoted to Kannon Bodhisattva, this sutra book also includes (left in photo) a certain Japanese-Buddhist verse called the Jikku Kannon-gyō (十句観音経, “ten verse Kannon sutra”) popularized in the middle ages. I made a post here about it.

A nice explanation of the meaning and history of the ten-verse sutra can be found here.

² It’s sometimes assumed that the sutra’s earliest composition was in a language like Sanskrit or something else from India, but research has long since proven that the Heart Sutra was a Chinese innovation, a summary of the much longer Perfection Wisdom Sutras, distilled into a very compact, chantable essence. The monk Xuan-zang later brought it back to India, where it later came to Tibet. Pretty clever actually.

³ I decided to leave the Sanskrit mantra untranslated, per esoteric-Buddhist tradition.

⁴ I like the Tendai approach to Buddhism because it encompasses all the things that are important to me, but avoiding a narrow, dogmatic approach that I found in the past and ultimately rejected.