Chapter 5 · Emptiness and Non-Attainment
第五章 · 空與無所得
Part Two · Doctrine
「Emptiness」 sounds as though nothing exists—is that what it means? And does 「non-attainment」 mean that practice is all for nothing?
Part Two begins here because every misunderstanding of prajñā begins here too. This chapter takes two steps: first, it clears away—what emptiness is not; then it establishes—what emptiness is, and how non-attainment is precisely attainment. At every step, the sūtras speak for themselves.
1 · What Emptiness Is Not
The most famous sentence in the Heart Sūtra is precisely what blocks the reading 『emptiness = nothing at all』:
「Śāriputra! Form is not different from emptiness; emptiness is not different from form. Form is itself emptiness; emptiness is itself form. Feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness are likewise so.」 〔玄奘譯《般若波羅蜜多心經》·T08n0251 0848c07–c08〕
The four clauses repeat one point: emptiness is not somewhere outside form. Form is not different from emptiness—form in its very being is empty; one need not destroy form before seeing emptiness. Emptiness is not different from form—emptiness is not a separate realm of emptiness apart from form. If emptiness meant 『nothing at all』, not one of these four clauses would make sense. The sūtra continues at once:
「Śāriputra! These dharmas are marked by emptiness—neither arising nor ceasing, neither defiled nor pure, neither increasing nor decreasing.」 〔同經·0848c09〕
These six 「negations」 free emptiness from the image of 『a thing』. Every thing undergoes arising and ceasing, defilement and purity, increase and decrease. The six negations of the empty mark say precisely that emptiness is not any kind of thing—not even a thing called 『nothing』.
2 · What Emptiness Is
Once the misunderstanding has been cleared away, the sūtra speaks positively. In the Smaller Prajñāpāramitā, the devas ask: this Dharma is extremely profound; within it, how are marks to be established? The Buddha answers:
「All dharmas have emptiness as their characteristic; they have signlessness, wishlessness, non-arising, non-production, non-ceasing, and non-dependence as their characteristics.」 〔《小品般若》相無相品·T08n0227 0558b29（品起 0558b25）〕
「All dharmas have emptiness as their characteristic」—emptiness is not something outside dharmas, but their original appearance, the way they truly are. To say 「form itself is emptiness」 is not to sentence form to death. It states the truth form has always borne: it appears through the coming-together of conditions, and when its own substance is sought, it cannot be attained. Emptiness is a name for true reality, not a name for nothingness.
3 · There Is Only a Name — Emptiness Clears Away to the End
How thoroughly does emptiness clear away? At the opening of the Smaller Prajñāpāramitā, the Buddha directs Subhūti to teach prajñā to the bodhisattvas. Subhūti's first sentence empties out 「bodhisattva」 itself:
「World-Honored One! When one says ‘bodhisattva, bodhisattva,’ what dharma is meant by ‘bodhisattva’? I do not see any dharma called a bodhisattva. World-Honored One! I neither see nor attain a bodhisattva, and I neither see nor attain prajñā-pāramitā. What prajñā-pāramitā, then, should I teach to which bodhisattva?」 〔《小品般若》初品·T08n0227 0537b07（品起 0537a24）〕
The bodhisattva who practices cannot be attained, and the prajñā that is practiced cannot be attained—what, then, is there to teach? Yet the sūtra goes on to say that one who hears this without fright or fear truly practices prajñā. A little later it says:
「World-Honored One! When one says ‘bodhisattva, bodhisattva,’ there is only a name. It is like the so-called self: the dharma of self ultimately does not arise.」 「Form as the bodhisattva cannot be attained; feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness as the bodhisattva cannot be attained. Even this ‘cannot be attained’ cannot be attained.」 〔同品·T08 0539b11·b14〕
「There is only a name」—bodhisattva is a provisional name. 「Even this ‘cannot be attained’ cannot be attained」—one is not permitted to grasp even 「cannot be attained」 as a thing. Only when emptiness has cleared away this far has it gone to the end: it leaves behind no 「emptiness」 for anyone to seize. The same chapter calls practice in this way the 「samādhi in which dharmas undergo no reception」 and says that this samādhi 「cannot be attained through marks.」 The practical face of emptiness is non-appropriation and non-clinging toward every mark.
4 · How Non-Attainment Is Attainment
What, then, is gained through practice? After the Heart Sūtra has carried its clearing-away to the utmost—「No wisdom, and no attainment」〔0848c10–c13〕—a turn immediately follows, the pivot of the whole sūtra: 「Because there is no attainment」〔0848c13〕. Precisely because there is no attainment, the bodhisattva relies on prajñā and the mind is without obstruction, reaches ultimate nirvāṇa, and attains unsurpassed awakening. Attainment is established precisely from non-attainment.
This is not a rhetorical trick but a right meaning struck again and again in the Smaller Prajñāpāramitā. Śāriputra once presses the point through logic: since everything is non-arising, 「if non-arising is now attained through non-arising, the bodhisattva should attain all-knowledge」—surely you must admit that 「non-arising」 has been attained? Subhūti replies:
「I do not wish to make the dharma of non-arising into something attained. Why? Because the dharma of non-arising cannot be attained.」 〔《小品般若》初品·T08 0539c16〕
Even 「non-arising」 is not established as an attainment. Attaining without attainment, and attaining through non-attainment—this apparently contradictory phrasing is how prajñā redefines 「attain」. Whatever can be seized as an attainment can be lost; only an attainment of non-attainment has nothing that can be lost. In explaining the substance and meaning of prajñā, the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra itself connects this passage to the gate of 「non-attainment」〔T25n1509 卷十八 0190a09·0191a02·待譯〕.
Return to the opening questions. Is emptiness nihilism? No—emptiness is the true reality of dharmas. Does non-attainment make practice futile? No—non-attainment is the only ground for practice that will not give way. How this ground unfolds as speech (the two truths), as wisdom (knowing without knowing), as action (the six perfections), and as fruit (attainment without attainment) is the road of the chapters ahead.
Author · Shi Huijing CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · 二〇二六 · 夏