般若Prajñā
般若是諸度之眼。布施、持戒、忍辱、精進、禪定，五度如足，能行而不能見；有了般若，方知所行者何、所到者何處。龍樹在《大智度論》釋這個名字說得最平實：「般若」翻作慧，「波羅蜜」翻作到彼岸（《大智度論》卷十八，T25, 0191a）。到彼岸，不是離開此岸另有一處可去，而是於當下的五蘊身心，看清它本來的樣子。
看清什麼？看清「空」。這個字最容易讀錯。空不是說什麼都沒有——若什麼都沒有，佛何必說法四十九年。龍樹立了一個分寸：「佛法中有二諦：一者、世諦，二者、第一義諦」（卷三十八，T25, 0336b）。就世諦說，因果宛然、善惡歷然，一絲不亂；就第一義諦說，推求這一切的自性，了不可得。二諦不是兩重世界，是一法的兩面看法。心經說「色不異空，空不異色」，說的正是這件事：不必滅色才見空，色的當體就是空，所以空得起妙用，不落斷滅。
本宗系所收，是七部書，恰成一條讀路。
入門是《心經》。二百餘字，玄奘所譯，漢地無人不誦。它是般若法門的臨街之門——把六百卷大般若的骨髓，收在「照見五蘊皆空，度一切苦厄」一句之內。初學者由此入，得一個總相。
功夫在《金剛經》。羅什所譯，本宗系第一部完整的般若經讀本。經中反覆的「是X，即非X，是名X」，是般若遣執的活句：立、遣、再立，三轉而執盡。心經給總相，金剛經給功夫。
觀行在《文殊般若》。梁曼陀羅仙所譯，兩卷之微，卻是一行三昧的出處——把般若從解門收歸行門的法。後來禪門四祖道信立一行三昧為宗骨，所依正是此經；此事《楞伽師資記》錄之甚明。讀般若而不知如何坐下來行般若的人，門在這裡。
經體在《小品般若》。羅什所譯十卷，是般若經家族中行門最濃的一部：常啼菩薩東行求法一段，是全般若最動人的敘事——為法忘身，是般若的人格。此經又是漢地譯經最古的血脈：後漢支婁迦讖的《道行般若》即其最初漢譯，讀小品即讀漢傳般若六百年譯史。
證境在《維摩經》。羅什所譯，不二法門是般若行到人間煙火處的樣子：居士身、病室中、默然一問一答之間，空義全體現前。什門僧肇親為此經作注，玄奘晚年重譯為《說無垢稱經》，窺基復依唯識疏之——本宗系以唯識為鏡的讀法，在此經上有古德現成的路。
漢響在《肇論》。僧肇是羅什門下第一義學，漢人以漢語直造般若之論，自此始：般若無知、不真空、物不遷——空宗義理入漢語血脈的第一聲。唐元康為之作疏，逐文可稽。
寶庫是《大智度論》，龍樹釋《大品般若》的百科之作，一百卷，唯存羅什漢譯。十八空（卷三十一）、三三昧（卷五）、諸法實相（卷十八）、三智差別（卷二十七），凡般若門中一名一相，論中皆有定義可稽。本譯注凡引般若法數，皆自此論取典據，不憑臆說。寶庫全帙之選譯，是遠程之事；其定義段的座標，今已逐字核於藏經，先供諸經考據取用。
還有一重分際，須向讀者交代。本譯注讀般若，於義疏一層取唯識為鏡——依無著、世親親造的金剛論本，依窺基《幽贊》、圓測《贊》的心經古疏，於維摩則有窺基唯識疏現成。鏡非經：唯識只是照讀般若的一面鏡，不是說般若經在講唯識。古德於一經之下，各宗立疏，異讀並存而互不相廢；本書擇一鏡而照，不判一是而廢餘。空宗與有宗，在祖師手中本是相即互成，不是對壘——般若明其所遣，唯識明其所轉，遣與轉，是一件事的兩面。
願讀者由心經之門入，於金剛經得功夫，依文殊般若坐得下來，隨常啼東行見經體，於維摩默處會不二，聽僧肇漢響，向寶庫取根據；於這一味無所得的般若，各得一分真實受用。
釋慧鏡 · 指月 · 般若 · 宗系總序 · 前言 · 2026 夏
Prajñā is the eye of the perfections. Giving, discipline, patience, effort, and meditation are like feet: they can walk, but they cannot see. Only with prajñā does one know what is being practiced, and where the path leads. Nāgārjuna, in the Great Treatise on the Perfection of Wisdom, explains the name in the plainest terms: prajñā means wisdom, and pāramitā means reaching the other shore (Dazhidulun, fascicle 18; T25, 0191a). Reaching the other shore does not mean departing this one for somewhere else. It means seeing these five aggregates — this very body and mind — as they actually are.
Seeing what, exactly? Seeing emptiness. No word is easier to misread. Emptiness does not mean that nothing exists — if nothing existed, the Buddha would not have taught for forty-nine years. Nāgārjuna set the measure: "In the Buddha's teaching there are two truths: the conventional truth and the ultimate truth" (fascicle 38; T25, 0336b). Conventionally, cause and effect are exact, good and evil are distinct, and not a thread is out of place. Ultimately, when one searches for the intrinsic nature of any of it, nothing can be found. The two truths are not two worlds; they are two ways of seeing one reality. When the Heart Sutra says "form is not other than emptiness, emptiness is not other than form," this is precisely the point: form need not be destroyed for emptiness to appear — form, just as it is, is empty. And because it is empty, it functions. Nothing is annihilated.
This school gathers seven works, and they form a single reading path.
The door is the Heart Sutra. A little over two hundred characters in Xuanzang's translation, recited everywhere Chinese Buddhism has reached. It is the street-front door of the prajñā teaching: the marrow of six hundred fascicles of Perfection of Wisdom literature, gathered into one line — "seeing that the five aggregates are all empty, he crossed beyond all suffering." The newcomer enters here and receives the whole in outline.
The practice is the Diamond Sutra, in Kumārajīva's translation — the first complete prajñā sutra edition in this school. Its recurring formula, "X — is not X — is therefore called X," is the living instrument of prajñā: affirm, dissolve, affirm again; three turns, and grasping is exhausted. The Heart Sutra gives the overview; the Diamond Sutra gives the practice.
The contemplation is the Mañjuśrī Prajñāpāramitā Sutra, translated by Mandrasena in the Liang. Two slim fascicles, yet it is the source of the single-practice samādhi (yixing sanmei) — the teaching that gathers prajñā from the gate of understanding back into the gate of practice. When Daoxin, fourth patriarch of the Chan school, established his teaching, this is the sutra he relied on; the Record of the Laṅkā Masters states it plainly. For the reader who studies emptiness but does not know how to sit down and practice it, the door is here.
The sutra body is the Smaller Prajñāpāramitā (Xiaopin), Kumārajīva's ten-fascicle translation — the most practice-saturated member of the prajñā sutra family. The story of Sadāprarudita, the "Ever-Weeping" bodhisattva who journeys east seeking the perfection of wisdom, is the most moving narrative in all prajñā literature: to forget the body for the sake of the Dharma is what prajñā looks like as a person. This sutra is also the oldest bloodline of Chinese translation itself — Lokakṣema's Daoxing Prajñā of the Later Han is its first Chinese rendering, so to read the Xiaopin is to read six hundred years of prajñā transmission into Chinese.
The realization is the Vimalakīrti Sutra, in Kumārajīva's translation. The teaching of non-duality is what prajñā looks like carried into the middle of ordinary life: a layman's body, a sickroom, and in the space of one silent reply, the meaning of emptiness fully present. Sengzhao of Kumārajīva's own school annotated this sutra line by line; Xuanzang retranslated it late in life as the Sutra Spoken by Vimalakīrti (Shuo Wugoucheng Jing), and Kuiji then wrote a Yogācāra commentary on it — so the mirror this school reads by has an old master's road already laid on this text.
The Chinese voice is the Zhaolun. Sengzhao was the foremost doctrinal mind among Kumārajīva's disciples, and with him begins the composition of prajñā treatises directly in Chinese: Prajñā Has No Knowing, The Emptiness of the Unreal, Things Do Not Shift — the first sounding of the school of emptiness in the Chinese language itself. Yuankang of the Tang wrote a line-by-line commentary, so every claim can be checked.
The treasury is the Great Treatise on the Perfection of Wisdom (Dazhidulun), Nāgārjuna's encyclopedic commentary on the Larger Prajñāpāramitā, one hundred fascicles, preserved only in Kumārajīva's Chinese. The eighteen emptinesses (fascicle 31), the three samādhis (fascicle 5), the true character of all dharmas (fascicle 18), the three kinds of knowing (fascicle 27) — every prajñā term used in this corpus has its definition on record there. Whenever these translations cite a prajñā category, the citation is drawn from that treatise, verified character by character against the canon — never from surmise. A full translation of the treasury is a distant undertaking; its definitional loci have already been verified and placed in service of the apparatus now.
One more boundary must be stated plainly. In the exposition layer, these translations read prajñā through the mirror of Yogācāra — following the Diamond Sutra treatises composed by Asaṅga and Vasubandhu themselves, the old Heart Sutra commentaries of Kuiji and Woncheuk, and, for the Vimalakīrti, Kuiji's own commentary ready at hand. The mirror is not the sutra: Yogācāra is a lens for reading prajñā, not a claim that the prajñā sutras teach Yogācāra doctrine. The old masters of every school wrote commentaries on these same sutras, and their differing readings stand side by side without canceling one another. To choose one mirror is not to judge the rest. In the hands of the founding masters, the school of emptiness and the school of consciousness were never opposed camps: prajñā shows what is to be relinquished, Yogācāra shows what is thereby transformed — relinquishing and transforming are two faces of one work.
May the reader enter by the door of the Heart Sutra, take up the practice in the Diamond Sutra, learn to sit with the Mañjuśrī's single-practice samādhi, walk east with Sadāprarudita into the sutra body, meet non-duality in Vimalakīrti's silence, hear the Chinese voice of Sengzhao, and draw on the treasury for grounding — and from this one taste of prajñā, in which nothing is attained, receive some true benefit.
Shi Huijing · Zhiyue · Prajñā · School Preface · Foreword · Summer 2026
應無所住而生其心——三十二分問答相生，空慧之堂奧。
《般若波羅蜜多心經》譯注 — 般若部撮要之短經，漢傳誦持最廣者（唐·玄奘奉詔譯，T08n0251，一卷·略本 268 字）；本書以唯識為鏡讀之。一部分層讀本：同一部經，依讀者所需的深度，以五種方式呈現，每層各具漢、英姊妹本。
《文殊般若》—— 般若部短經《文殊師利所說摩訶般若波羅蜜經》譯注（梁·扶南國三藏曼陀羅仙譯，T08n0232，二卷，無品分）。一部分層讀本：同一部經，依讀者所需的深度，以五種方式呈現，每層各具漢、英姊妹本。
姚秦三藏鳩摩羅什譯《維摩詰所說經》T14n0475，三卷十四品。本編每品保存一份漢文原典，並具白話、考據、義疏、心要四層漢文與四層英文姊妹本。
《肇論》譯注——後秦長安釋僧肇所作的一卷漢造般若論典（T45n1858），本編定位為漢語般若第一造論。