Connections between Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra and Aṣṭasāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra suggest a new interpretation of an important passage in the Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya or Heart Sutra. I am able to show that the four phrases exemplified by “form is emptiness” were once a reference to the well-known simile, “Form is like an illusion” (rūpam māyopamam). As the Prajñāpāramitā corpus expanded, the simile became a metaphor, “form is illusion”. It was then deliberately altered by exchanging “illusion” for “emptiness”, leading to the familiar phrases. This connection opens the door (...) to reading the Heart Sutra, and the early Prajñāpāramitā sutras more generally, along the lines of Sue Hamilton’s (2000) epistemological approach to the Pāḷi suttas; i.e. as focussed on experience and particularly the meditative experience known in the Pāḷi suttas as dwelling in emptiness (suññatā-vihāra). In this view, the Heart Sutra makes sense on its own terms without having to invoke paradox or mysticism. (shrink)

In the development of Indian Buddhism we begin to see a shift away from the early Buddhist epistemology based in phenomenology and process metaphysics toward a type of event-based metaphysics. This shift began in the reductionist methodology of the Abhidhamma and culminated in a theory of momentariness based in rationalism and abstraction, rather than early Buddhist empiricism. While early Buddhism followed an extensional model of temporal consciousness, when methodological reductionism was applied to the concept of time, it necessarily resulted in (...) a cinematic model of temporal consciousness like that of the Sautrāntikas or in an idea of the tri-temporal existence of dhammas, like that of the Sarvāstivādins. It is in the accounting of the process of karmic rebirth that we can most clearly see the effects of this shift. -/- The development of a theory of momentariness was incorporated into the Visuddhimagga by Buddhaghosa. In Buddhaghosa’s treatment of karmic rebirth, karma, particularly death-threshold karma, receives more emphasis in the process of rebirth than was previously found in the Suttas. The incorporation of “duration-less duration” via tritemporal existence by Buddhaghosa became necessary in order to explain karmic continuity in the rebirth process while retaining the concept of momentariness. (shrink)