devanagari

evam eva vedana-sajjba-sajskara-vijbanam
    |         |           |               |                |                   |
 adv.    part.     N.f.         N.f.           N.m.             N.n.
    |         |           |               |                |              Nom.sg.
    |_____|           |________|_________|___________|
         |______________________|

evam, adv.: thus, so,

vedana-, f.: feeling,

sajjba-, f.: cognition, perception,

sajskara-, m.: mental impulse,

vijbana-, n.: consciousness,

And just so it is with feeling, perception, mental impulses and consciousness.

    After thoroughly describing the oneness of the form (one of the five skandhas) and emptiness, Avalokitewvara briefly states that the same must be said about the other four skandhas: feeling, perception, mental impulses and consciousness. I.e. instead of repeating: "The feeling is emptiness, emptiness is just the feeling. Emptiness is not different from the feeling and the feeling is not different from emptiness. What is the feeling, that is emptiness; what is emptiness, that is the feeling." etc., Avalokitewvara just sums them all up in one sentence. This is one of the best proofs of this sutra being an apocryph - older Buddhist literature always tends to repeat patiently all the sentences for all the possibilities.

Go back