The Heart Sūtra · प्रज्ञापारमिताहृदय

The shortest and most chanted of the Perfection of Wisdom texts — a page long, and it dismantles the entire Buddhist curriculum in that page. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form; no eye, no ear, no nose; no ignorance and no end of ignorance; no suffering, no origin, no cessation, no path; no attainment, because there is nothing to attain. It even empties the Four Noble Truths. Then it ends not in argument but in a mantra: gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā — gone, gone, gone beyond, gone utterly beyond. The Kabbalah's equivalent move is the ascent that ends in Ayin, the divine Nothing above Keter, where the ladder of names runs out. But the Tree keeps its rungs after you have climbed past them; the Heart Sūtra takes the ladder with it.