Monday, June 17, 2013

Schopenhauer and the Heart Sutra


Schopenhauer, in the final words of his main work, compared his doctrine to the Sunyata (Emptiness) of the Heart Sutra. In Volume 1, § 71 of The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer wrote: "…to those in whom the will [to continue living] has turned and has denied itself, this very real world of ours, with all its suns and Milky Ways, is — nothing." To this, he appended the following note: "This is also the Prajna–Paramita of the Buddhists, the 'beyond all knowledge,' in other words, the point where subject and object no longer exist.”

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