The Heart Sutra of the Perfection of Wisdom

觀自在菩薩，行深般若波羅蜜多時，照見五蘊皆空，度一切苦厄。

When the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara (Guanyin; Xuanzang rendered the name as Guanzizai, "the one who contemplates freely and is unobstructed") was practicing the profound Prajnaparamita (prajna means the wisdom that sees reality directly, which is not the same as worldly cleverness; paramita means "gone to the other shore," that is, crossing from the shore of birth and death to the shore of liberation), he saw that the five aggregates (form, feeling, perception, volition and consciousness, the five components that make up body and mind) are all empty, with no independent and unchanging self, and so he was freed from all suffering and distress.

「舍利子！色不異空，空不異色，色即是空，空即是色；受、想、行、識，亦復如是。

Shariputra! Form (all material phenomena, including your own body) is not different from emptiness, and emptiness is not different from form. Form is itself emptiness, and emptiness is itself form. Feeling (sensation), perception (grasping the characteristics of things), volition (intentional action) and consciousness (discernment), these four mental activities, are likewise so.

「舍利子！是諸法空相，不生不滅，不垢不淨，不增不減。是故，空中無色，無受、想、行、識；無眼、耳、鼻、舌、身、意；無色、聲、香、味、觸、法；無眼界，乃至無意識界；無無明，亦無無明盡，乃至無老死，亦無老死盡；無苦、集、滅、道；無智，亦無得，以無所得故。

Shariputra! All phenomena, in their nature of emptiness, are neither born nor destroyed, neither defiled nor pure, neither increasing nor decreasing. Therefore, in emptiness there is no form, and no feeling, perception, volition or consciousness; no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body or mind, the six sense faculties; no form, sound, smell, taste, touch or mental object, the six objects they face; from the "realm of the eye" (the field of cognition belonging to the eye) all the way to the "realm of mind-consciousness," none of the eighteen realms can be held to be real; there is no ignorance and no ending of ignorance, and so on in sequence, down to no old age and death and no ending of old age and death, so that neither the forward nor the reverse order of the twelve links of dependent origination can be grasped; there are no Four Noble Truths of suffering, its origin, its cessation and the path; there is no wisdom that attains and nothing attained. This is because there was originally nothing to attain.

「菩提薩埵，依般若波羅蜜多故，心無罣礙；無罣礙故，無有恐怖，遠離顛倒夢想，究竟涅槃。三世諸佛，依般若波羅蜜多故，得阿耨多羅三藐三菩提。

Because the Bodhisattva (one who seeks awakening and also liberates beings) relies on the Prajnaparamita, his mind has no obstruction; because there is no obstruction, he has no fear, stays far from all inverted views and deluded longings, and finally reaches nirvana (the state where afflictions cease and one no longer circulates through birth and death). All the Buddhas of the three times, past, present and future, likewise rely on the Prajnaparamita and so attain Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi (meaning "unsurpassed, perfect and complete awakening," the full enlightenment realized by a Buddha).

「故知般若波羅蜜多，是大神咒，是大明咒，是無上咒，是無等等咒，能除一切苦，真實不虛。」

Therefore you should know that the Prajnaparamita is a mantra of great power, a mantra that breaks through the darkness of ignorance, a mantra that nothing surpasses, a mantra without equal; it can remove all suffering, and it is true and not false.

故說般若波羅蜜多咒，即說咒曰：

Therefore the mantra of the Prajnaparamita is proclaimed, and the mantra goes as follows:

「揭諦揭諦波羅揭諦波羅僧揭諦菩提薩婆訶」

This is the mantra of the Heart Sutra. Following Xuanzang's "five kinds of things left untranslated," under the heading "because of its secrecy," mantras have always been recited and not translated, and following that custom it is left untranslated here. If one must know the literal sense, the Sanskrit means roughly: gone, gone, gone to the other shore, gone completely to the other shore, awakening, svaha.