Across the Mahāyāna world, certain commentaries on the Heart Sutra have become touchstones for understanding emptiness. In the Chinese tradition, figures such as Fazang and Kuiji offered influential explanations, drawing on Huayan and Yogācāra perspectives and shaping how the text was received throughout East Asia. Jizang, working from a Madhyamaka standpoint, emphasized the Middle Way analysis of emptiness, clarifying how the sutra avoids both nihilism and eternalism. These early scholastic readings helped to anchor the brief and enigmatic verses of the Heart Sutra within broader systems of doctrine and practice.

In the Japanese and Tibetan traditions, the sutra has likewise inspired rich streams of interpretation. Kūkai, founder of Shingon, read it through the lens of esoteric Buddhism, highlighting its hidden depths and the non-dual nature of mantra and wisdom. Zen masters such as Hakuin Ekaku and Shunryu Suzuki treated the text as a direct pointer to the lived experience of emptiness, using it to illuminate kenshō and the immediacy of awakening. The present Dalai Lama’s teachings, gathered for instance in works like *Essence of the Heart Sutra*, present a Gelug Madhyamaka reading that unites rigorous analysis with the cultivation of compassion.

Modern teachers and scholars have continued this lineage of interpretation, often seeking to bridge traditional insight and contemporary understanding. Thich Nhat Hanh’s *The Heart of Understanding* presents the sutra in a practice-oriented way, emphasizing mindfulness and the experiential realization of interdependence. Academic scholars such as Edward Conze, Donald Lopez Jr., Red Pine (Bill Porter), and Kazuaki Tanahashi have offered detailed studies and translations, situating the Heart Sutra within the larger Prajñāpāramitā corpus and exploring its historical and philosophical layers. Through these many voices, the same brief text becomes a prism, refracting the single insight of śūnyatā into diverse yet converging paths of study, contemplation, and realization.