Sanzang bowed again. "Might I ask how far it is to the Great Thunderclap Monastery in the Western Heaven?"

大雷音寺, the Monastery of the Great Thunderclap, on Vulture Peak — the destination of the whole book, asked after for the first time on the road. 那裡 is interrogative, nǎ.

The Chan Master said: "Far, far. Only the road is thick with tigers and leopards, and hard to travel."

遠哩，遠哩. The doubling is dismissive: he will not name a distance, and never does.

Sanzang pressed him courteously and asked again: "And how far is the road in truth?"

慇懃致意, to press one's respects with earnestness. Sanzang asks twice, because he wants a number.

The Chan Master said: "The road is long, yet a day must come when you arrive. It is the demon-miasmas that cannot be dispelled.

終須有到之日 — "a day of arriving must come at last." It is the only assurance the novel ever gives. 魔瘴, demon-miasmas: the mountain vapours that breed both fever and fiends.

I have a Heart Sutra, one scroll, fifty-four lines in all, two hundred and seventy graphs.

The scripture is described by its bibliography before its content: one scroll, fifty-four lines, two hundred and seventy graphs. The count is exact for the received Chinese text, and this passage is why the reader is told it.

Where you meet with demon-miasmas, only recite this scripture, and of itself no harm will come to you."

但念此經 — only recite it. The sutra is offered as a prophylactic, not as a doctrine, and Sanzang receives it as one.

Sanzang prostrated himself on the ground and begged for it, and the Chan Master recited it aloud and transmitted it to him. The scripture says:

口誦傳之, transmitted it by recitation from the mouth. 經云： is the lead-in, and closes the prose segment.

The Heart Sutra of the Perfection of Great Wisdom:

The title, 《摩訶般若波羅蜜多心經》, transcribes Mahā-prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya. 般若 is read bō rě, a Buddhist transcription-reading that overrides both bān and ruò. The title becomes its own lead-in segment.

The Bodhisattva Who Regards the World Freely, coursing deep in the perfection of wisdom, saw then that the five aggregates are all empty, and passed beyond every suffering and affliction.

觀自在菩薩, Avalokiteśvara "who regards freely" — the same Bodhisattva the pilgrims call 觀世音. 五蘊, the five skandhas; 苦厄, suffering and calamity.

Śāriputra: form is not other than emptiness, nor emptiness other than form; form is itself emptiness, and emptiness is itself form. So it is also with sensation, perception, volition and consciousness.

舍利子 is Śāriputra, a name, so 子 is zǐ, not the neutral suffix zi that pypinyin supplies. 受想行識: sensation, perception, volition, consciousness — 行 is xíng, saṃskāra.

Śāriputra: all things bear the mark of emptiness. They neither arise nor perish, are neither defiled nor pure, neither increase nor diminish.

空相: the mark or characteristic of emptiness — 相 is xiāng here, lakṣaṇa, not the xiàng of physical appearance. The six negations are three matched pairs.

Therefore in emptiness there is no form; no sensation, perception, volition or consciousness; no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body or mind; no form, sound, scent, savour, touch or thing thought of;

The negation of the five aggregates, the six sense-faculties, and the six sense-objects, in that order. 空中 takes 中 as zhōng.

no realm of the eye, and so on to no realm of mind-consciousness; no ignorance, and no ending of ignorance.

The eighteen dhātus are dismissed by naming their first and last, then the twelve links of dependent origination by the same device. 無明 is avidyā. 盡 is jìn, and takes no 不 before it — the sandhi override of chapter seventeen does not apply.

So too there is no old age and death, and no ending of old age and death. No suffering, no stilling, no cessation, no path; no wisdom, and nothing to attain.

無苦寂滅道: the received text of the sutra reads 無苦集滅道, the Four Noble Truths — suffering, arising, cessation, path. The 世德堂本 writes 寂 for 集. We encode the edition and note the variant. 無智亦無得 takes 得 as dé.

Because there is nothing to attain, the bodhisattva, resting upon the perfection of wisdom, has a mind free of hindrance; and having no hindrance, he has nothing to fear.

罣礙 (guà ài), obstruction — the word Bajie used of his burnt cave twelve pages ago, and did not know he was quoting.

Far removed from all inversion and dreaming fancy, he comes at the last to nirvāṇa.

顛倒 takes 倒 as dǎo: viparyāsa, the inversions of a deluded mind. 究竟涅槃, final nirvāṇa.

The buddhas of the three times, resting upon the perfection of wisdom, attain the unexcelled, right and universal enlightenment.

阿耨多羅三藐三菩提 transcribes anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi, and is read ā nòu duō luó sān miǎo sān pú tí.

Know therefore that the perfection of wisdom is the great spirit-spell, the great spell of light, the unsurpassed spell, the spell that has no equal;

Four epithets of the 咒 (zhòu, mantra): great spirit, great light, unsurpassed, and 無等等 — "equal to the unequalled."

it can cut away every suffering, in truth and not in vain.

真實不虛, true and not empty — where 虛 is falsity, not the emptiness the sutra has been expounding. The two words are not the same, and the sentence depends on their not being the same.

Therefore is spoken the spell of the perfection of wisdom. The spell runs thus:

即說咒曰: the doctrine ends and the sound begins.

"Gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā!"

The mantra is transliteration, not language: 揭諦 = gate, 波羅 = pāra, 薩婆訶 = svāhā. It is given here in its Sanskrit form because in Chinese it is already a foreign body, and its meaning was never the point. Being scripture quoted verbatim, the whole sutra is a quoted artifact and is set as prose.