Prajnaparamitahridaya, “The Heart of the Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom,” is often considered the best-known and most popular scripture in the tradition of Mahayana Buddhism. Although its author is unknown, the individual clearly had a deep understanding of Buddhist teachings:
Thus, O Sariputa, all things, having the nature of emptiness, have no beginning and no ending. They are neither faultless nor not faultless; they are neither perfect nor imperfect. In emptiness there is no form, no sensation, no perception, no discrimination, no consciousness. There is no eye, no ear, no nose, no smell, no tastes, no touch, no mental process, no object, no knowledge, no ignorance. There are no Noble Fourfold Truths; no pain, no cause of pain, no cessation of pain, no Noble Path leading to the cessation of pain. There is no decay, and no death, and no destruction of the motion of decay and of death. There is no knowledge of Nirvana, there is no obtaining of Nirvana, there is no not obtaining of Nirvana.
