Debates around this short but dense text tend to gather in several interrelated areas: where it came from, what it is actually saying, and how it should shape practice. Scholars and practitioners alike question its authorship and historical authenticity, asking whether it arose in India or China, whether it is an independent discourse or a distilled compilation from the larger Prajñāpāramitā corpus, and how this affects its status as buddhavacana, “word of the Buddha.” These historical questions are not merely academic; they influence how different traditions receive the text, how much doctrinal weight they give it, and how they understand its relationship to earlier teachings on emptiness. Even when its authority is accepted, there remains discussion about whether it represents the earliest articulation of emptiness or a more developed Mahāyāna reflection.

The most intense doctrinal debates circle around the meaning of emptiness itself and the famous line “form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” Some read this as a strong non-dual claim that form and emptiness are identical, while others emphasize that form is “not different from” emptiness, highlighting interdependence rather than simple identity. There is also ongoing discussion about whether emptiness refers only to the absence of inherent existence or extends in some way to conventional reality as such, and whether it applies to all phenomena without exception. Misreadings that equate emptiness with nihilism or sheer nothingness are explicitly challenged, especially in traditions drawing on Madhyamaka, which insist that emptiness is the lack of inherent nature, not the denial of functional appearance.

A related set of debates concerns how the sutra negotiates the relationship between conventional and ultimate truth. Some interpreters see the text as erasing the distinction altogether in a radical non-dualism, while others hold that it presupposes the two truths framework and clarifies it rather than collapsing it. This is closely tied to differing philosophical lineages: Madhyamaka readings emphasize the absence of svabhāva, Yogācāra-influenced approaches may soften the negations by relating them to transformations of consciousness, and Buddha-nature oriented interpretations sometimes treat emptiness as pointing toward a positive, though easily reified, dimension of awakening. These divergent lenses shape how phrases such as “no eye, no ear, no mind” and “no suffering, no origin, no cessation, no path” are taken—either as ultimate-level denials of inherently existent dharmas or as pedagogical negations of misconceived realities.

The mantra “gate gate pāragate…” is another focal point of discussion, because its role and meaning are far from unanimously agreed upon. Some regard it as a ritual dhāraṇī whose efficacy lies beyond conceptual analysis, others as a compressed map of the stages of the path, and still others as a later liturgical or esoteric addition loosely connected to the philosophical core. Translation choices here, as with key terms like śūnyatā and rūpa, can subtly tilt interpretation toward either a more experiential, practice-oriented reading or a more abstract, doctrinal one. Across languages—Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, Japanese—textual variants and differing renderings of negations and technical terms continue to fuel debate about which version best preserves the intended teaching and how to express emptiness without sliding into either nihilism or substantialism.

These controversies extend into the sphere of practice and ethics, where interpreters ask what it means to live in light of such radical negation. Some traditions emphasize analytical meditation and careful philosophical reflection, while others lean toward direct, experiential realization, sometimes framed as sudden insight. There is discussion about whether the text is primarily a philosophical précis or a meditative guide, and about what sort of grounding in earlier teachings is needed before engaging deeply with it. Ethical questions arise as well: if all phenomena are empty, how do moral distinctions retain their force, and how does one uphold compassionate conduct without reifying the very categories that emptiness is said to undercut? Different lineages answer these questions in distinct ways, but all treat them as central to understanding what this brief scripture is ultimately pointing toward.