Form is Emptiness

色即是空 (shikisoku zekū): form is emptiness. The line is from the Heart Sutra, in the Chinese of 649, and it is half of a sentence: the next four characters, 空即是色, say emptiness is form. Everything that has form has no fixed nature of its own, and emptiness is nowhere but in form. A Noh play makes it an affirmation: because form is emptiness just as it is, the willow is green. All is vanity is a dictionary's third gloss for the line; the two share a word only in Japanese, where the Meiji Bible chose the sutra's 空 for the Preacher's vanity.