The Heart of the Prajnaparamita Sutra is regarded as the essence of Buddhist teaching. It is recited daily in Mahayana temples and practice centers throughout the world. This translation and commentary are the fruit of the author's more than 40 years of monastic study and practice. Thich Nhat Hanh describes the Heart Sutra as "Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva's precious gift to us, the gift of fearlessness." If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. If we look even more deeply, we can see the sunshine, the logger who cut the tree, the wheat that became his bread, and the logger's father and mother. Without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist. In fact, we cannot point to one thing that is not here -- time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat, the mind. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper. So we can say that the cloud and the paper 'inter-are.' We cannot just be by ourselves alone; we have to inter-be with every other thing." -- from the Commentary