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Color is emptiness, emptiness is form. What does it mean?

"Color is emptiness, and emptiness is color." The general meaning of this sentence is: "The colorful three-dimensional material world that our senses can perceive is actually unreal, just an illusion, and our senses cannot perceive it. The place that appears to be empty on the surface is not empty, but has substantial content. "

"Prajna Heart Sutra" says: "The color of the relic is not empty, it is empty. It is not different from color, color is empty, empty is color, and the same is true for feelings, thoughts, and consciousness. ""Color is empty, empty is color" means: "Color" is not something completely different from empty, and "empty" is not completely different from color. A different situation. "Color" and "emptiness" are two aspects of the same thing. "Color" refers to the thing itself, and "empty" refers to the nature of the thing, that is, the truth.

Extended information

This sutra promotes emptiness and prajna, and is also considered the first classic and core text of Mahayana Buddhism. Qian Wenzhong hand-copied the Sanskrit "Heart Sutra" in order to accumulate wealth. The Heart of Merit is the most widely known and popular Buddhist scripture in the world (American Chinese-Sanskrit Buddhist Translator PINE 2004). British Buddhist translator Edward Conze (2000) believes that this sutra belongs to the third stage of the four stages of the development of Prajnaparamita sect. On the other hand, the short works "Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra" and "Vajra Prajnaparamita Sutra", both of which are the essence of the sect, have a profound influence on the development of Mahayana Buddhism. At the same time, the Heart Sutra has similarities with Zen classics, and the Diamond Sutra is regarded as the supreme classic by Zen Buddhism.

The Heart Sutra is generally believed to have been written in the Kushan Empire in the 1st century BC. Pine (2004) believes that the author is a monk who speaks Sarvastivada, one of the twenty sects of Theravada Buddhism, because the earliest record of the Heart Sutra being translated into Chinese was translated by Yuezhi monk Zhiqian in 200-250 AD. .

Reference materials? Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra - Baidu Encyclopedia