English

The Heart of Transcendent Wisdom: A Dzogchen Commentary

This essay is a revision of a work originally published in Italian. The main topic is the famous "Heart Sutra," a mahāyāna synthesis of the Buddha's teaching on "emptiness" ( śūnyatā ). The text is known in two main versions, short and long. The version translated here from Sanskrit is the short one. In the commentary, I have tried to highlight both the actual meaning of the words and their practical, existential significance. Moreover, I at­tempted to draw the connection between the text and older sources in the Pāli language to help recognize the continuity as well as the discontinu­ity of the mahāyāna with respect to the Buddha's original teaching. My interpretive key is that offered by the dzogchen ( atiyoga ) tradition, whose roots run through the mahāyāna and sink into Śākyamuni's Dhar­ma.

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