般若心經 段八 通結無得

「以無所得故」 ("because nothing is attained") is five characters only, wedged between a long string of "no … no …" and the "attaining bodhi, final nirvāṇa" that follows — easy to read straight past. Yet it is the axle of the entire Heart Sūtra: the "no" of the first half is gathered up here, and the "attainment" of the second half is born from here. But "nothing attained" hardly sounds like good news: after all that practice, you end up with nothing at all attained — wasn't it for nothing? The ancient masters put their finger on it: non-attainment (無所得) is not coming back empty-handed, it is no longer grasping — it negates the standoff between "the self that attains" and "the dharma that is attained"; it does not say you have accomplished nothing. And only with nothing attained does the road open through: ordinary beings are not free precisely because, thought after thought, they are attaining something, clutching at an object, gripping a result, and this very clinging is the bondage; let the clinging of grasper-and-grasped go, and the mind without obstruction, final nirvāṇa, the buddhas of the three times attaining bodhi — all are born from here. So this is not the closing bill of practice; it is the axle — non-attainment is precisely the gate to true attainment.

The sūtra says:

以無所得故，

Plain-language rewrite:

Precisely because one has arrived at this point of "nothing at all attained"—

(This single line is the hinge that joins what comes before to what comes after: the whole preceding stretch has run "no … no … no," all the way to no cognition and no attainment; here it sums it up in one phrase—precisely because nothing is any longer grasped as truly existent, nothing at all to be attained. What follows will say that it is exactly this "nothing attained" that buys the genuine freedom and accomplishment.)

One short clause, yet the axle of the whole sūtra

「以無所得故」 ("because nothing is attained") — five characters only, wedged between a long string of "no … no …" and the "attaining bodhi, final nirvāṇa" that follows, and easy to read straight past. In fact it is the axle of the entire Heart Sūtra: the "no" of the first half is gathered up here, and the "attainment" of the second half is born from here.

But the three words "nothing attained" hardly sound like good news: after all that practice, you end up with nothing at all attained? Wasn't it for nothing, then? Heard wrongly, this one clause will leave a person disheartened; heard rightly, you see that it is the greatest turning point of all.

"Nothing attained" is not coming back empty-handed — it is no longer grasping

Woncheuk puts his finger on it in a single phrase: 「『以無所得故』者，辨空離相」 ("'because nothing is attained' distinguishes emptiness as the parting-from-marks"). This "nothing attained" is an adjudication of just what "emptiness" is: emptiness is the parting from every mark, the abiding in no single place. The preceding six gates have been negated one after another — aggregates, sense-fields, elements, dependent origination, the truths, cognition-and-attainment — emptying out everything you could grasp; and here it is summed up in one phrase: nothing is attained.

What matters is this: non-attainment negates the standoff between "the self that attains" and "the dharma that is attained" — it does not say your hands are empty and you have accomplished nothing. Kuiji says this clause is 「顯空中無法所以」 ("showing the reason there is no dharma within emptiness") — pointing out why everything before was said to be "non-existent": because there is no dharma that can be grasped, as a truly existent thing, to be attained. Put otherwise, "nothing attained" negates the clinging to "a truly existent thing to be attained"; it does not deny that there is a real realized state.

Why "nothing attained" can, on the contrary, "attain"

This is where it joins the Yogācāra transformation of the basis (轉依). Ordinary beings are not free precisely because, thought after thought, they are "attaining something" — clutching at an object, gripping a result, falling into grasper-and-grasped; this very clinging is itself the bondage. So as long as there is still "something attained," one is still in bondage and cannot reach true freedom.

Turn it around, and only with "nothing attained" — the clinging of grasper-and-grasped let go — does the road open through: the mind without obstruction, without fear, final nirvāṇa; the buddhas of the three times attaining supreme awakening — all of it is born from this "nothing attained." So this clause is not the closing bill of practice (ending up with nothing); it is the axle of practice: only by casting off the clinging to "a truly existent thing to be attained" does one turn over to the fruit of purity and freedom. Non-attainment is precisely the gate to true attainment.

The mirror of Yogācāra: one axle, in the sūtra's words and the treatise's words

It is not that the Heart Sūtra's "nothing attained" needs Yogācāra's "transformation of the basis" before it makes sense, nor that Yogācāra copied it from the Heart Sūtra. It is one and the same matter — "not abiding in grasper-and-grasped, casting off clinging and gaining the fruit" — where the Heart Sūtra takes 「以無所得故」 as the axle in one clause, and Yogācāra uses "non-attainment, non-abiding, transformation of the basis" to spell out the very catch between that casting-off and that gaining.

Read these five characters through, and the next passage follows of itself: the bodhisattva, relying on this "nothing attained" prajñā, finds the mind truly loosened, without obstruction — great freedom begins here.