The Paradiso

- Translated from the Sanskrit by Edward Conze

Om Homage to the Perfection of Wisdom the Lovely, the Holy !

Avalokita, the Holy Lord and Bodhisattva, was moving in the deep
course of the Wisdom which has gone beyond.

He looked down from on high, He beheld but five heaps, and He saw that
in their own-being they were empty.

Here, O Sariputra,

form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form ;

emptiness does not differ from form, form does not differ from
emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is form,

the same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness.

Here, O Sariputra,

all dharmas are marked with emptiness ;

they are not produced or stopped, not defiled or immaculate, not
deficient or complete.

Therefore, O Sariputra,

in emptiness there is no form nor feeling, nor perception, nor
impulse, nor consciousness ;

No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind ; No forms, sounds, smells,
tastes, touchables or objects of mind ; No sight-organ element, and so
forth, until we come to :

No mind-consciousness element ; There is no ignorance, no extinction
of ignorance, and so forth, until we come to : There is no decay and
death, no extinction of decay and death. There is no suffering, no
origination, no stopping, no path.

There is no cognition, no attainment and no non-attainment.

Therefore, O Sariputra,

it is because of his non-attainmentness that a Bodhisattva, through
having relied on the Perfection of Wisdom, dwells without
thought-coverings. In the absence of thought-coverings he has not been
made to tremble,

he has overcome what can upset, and in the end he attains to Nirvana.

All those who appear as Buddhas in the three periods of time fully
awake to the utmost, right and perfect Enlightenment because they have
relied on the Perfection of Wisdom.

Therefore one should know the prajnaparamita as the great spell, the
spell of great knowledge, the utmost spell, the unequalled spell,
allayer of all suffering, in truth — for what could go wrong ? By the
prajnaparamita has this spell been delivered. It runs like this :

gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.

( Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, O what an
awakening, all-hail ! — )