The Heart Sutra

It is said there are eighty-four thousand collections of discourses, which the Buddha taught to accord with the diverse mental dispositions and spiritual inclinations of sentient beings. The Perfection of Wisdom literature, the Prajnaparamita, is the principle genre among them. It is part of the Sanskrit Buddhist tradition and includes the Heart Sutra, also called the Heart of Wisdom Sutra . . . . Emphasizing the Mahayana ideal of the bodhisattva who aspires to liberate all beings, these Perfection of Wisdom sutras flourished in many countries, including China—from where they were brought to Japan, Korea, and Vietnam—and Tibet, from where they were transmitted to Mongolia, to the vast expanse of the trans-Himalayan region, and to areas within the Russian federation. In the forms of Buddhism that developed in all of these countries, the Heart Sutra plays an important role—in fact, in many cases, a practitioner may recite it daily.

---His Holiness the Dalai Lama---