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色即是空 shikisoku zekū Form is Emptiness

This is a philological study of 色即是空 (shikisoku zekū), form is emptiness, the first half of the Heart Sutra's central pair. It follows the line from its Chinese translations of the fifth century and 649 through 寶誌's verse, a fifteenth-century Noh play and a Meiji Bible that lent the same character to Ecclesiastes' vanity, and shows why the scroll's title was corrected in 2026 from a Preacher's verdict to the sutra's own words.

Japanese Scroll of Form is Emptiness (shikisoku zekū) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Form is Emptiness (shikisoku zekū)

Form is Emptiness (shikisoku zekū) on a traditional Japanese Scroll by Master Eri Takase.

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Abstract

色即是空, shikisoku zekū, form is emptiness, is the first half of the Heart Sutra's central pair — form is emptiness, emptiness is form — attested in Chinese translation from the fifth century and fixed in the text every Japanese school chants, Xuanzang's of 649. In Japan it carries Baozhi 寶誌's verse on delusion and awakening, becomes a formula on which two Buddhist schools were reconciled in 1283, and is affirmed rather than renounced in a Noh play's sermon: form is emptiness, just as it is. The scroll's title was corrected in 2026 from All is Vanity, a dictionary gloss that had promoted Ecclesiastes' verdict on a fallen world into the name of a Buddhist affirmation, to the sutra's own words, Form is Emptiness.

Overview

The sense. The line has meant one thing in Buddhist use from Xuanzang to kotobank: form has no self-nature, and, in the half the scroll leaves off, emptiness has no existence apart from form. What changes is the temperature. Baozhi's verse makes it a lesson about delusion, with the fool who calls south north. Mujū 無住 makes it a formula on which two schools can both be right. The Noh makes it an affirmation: because form is emptiness just as it is, the mountain crone exists, and the willow is green. The 1908 commentary's flat gloss, to see things as existing against to awaken to them as not existing, is where the Japanese popular sense starts to lean toward negation, and the modern dictionaries lean the same way with nothing to be attached to. None of them reaches the Preacher's verdict that everything is futile; that reading arrives from outside the tradition.

The words. Four characters, and the sutra gives them as the first half of a pair: 色即是空、空即是色. 色, shiki, is the Sanskrit rūpa, form or matter, the first of the five aggregates the sutra names in its next clause, 受想行識; it is not color, and not the erotic sense the Japanese word also carries, though Edo writers played on that one. 即, soku, and 是, ze, together are the copula of identity: is precisely, is none other than, not leads to. 空, kū, is śūnyatā, emptiness: the absence in anything of a nature that stands on its own, which the sutra spells out in its next line, 諸法空相，不生不滅，不垢不淨, all things have the mark of emptiness; they do not arise or cease, are not defiled or pure. It is not nothingness, and the second half of the pair is the proof, because 空即是色 says that emptiness is not somewhere other than form. A 1908 commentary on the Noh glosses the two words for a Japanese reader in the plainest terms the tradition allows, 色とは萬物を有りと見る事。空とは萬物を無しと悟る事, shiki is to see all things as existing; kū is to awaken to all things as not existing [1], and that gloss already tilts toward negation in a way the sutra does not. The reading is settled: the modern dictionaries agree it is shikisoku zekū [2]. The scroll writes 即 where the 1910 dictionary printed 卽, the modern form of one character and not a variant [3]. The scroll carries the first half of the pair alone, and that is the received Japanese form: the Noh brushes it alone, the puppet theater and the dictionaries head with it.

The text in English. No Japanese-English dictionary of the Meiji or Taishō period carries the line: it is absent from Hepburn's dictionary of 1872, from 井上 in 1909, ロイド in 1907, 斎藤 in 1918, 新渡戸's proverb book of 1911, 上田's romanized dictionary of 1915 and the rest of the era's bilingual dictionaries [4]. The English lineage is the sinologists' and the Buddhologists', then Hearn's for the general reader, and from 1959 the Zen teachers' and a karate master's; the first bilingual dictionary to enter the line is Kenkyūsha's of 1974.

The historical record

Fifth century, by attribution. 摩訶般若波羅蜜大明呪經, the shorter Heart Sutra in the translation attributed to Kumārajīva. 舍利弗！非色異空，非空異色。色即是空，空即是色。受、想、行、識亦如是, Śāriputra, form is not other than emptiness, emptiness is not other than form; form is emptiness, emptiness is form; and so with sensation, perception, volition and consciousness [5]. The four characters are already exactly these; the sutra's date rests on the attribution.

514, as transmitted in 1004. Baozhi, the 誌公和尚 of the proverb books, in the 景德傳燈錄. Not the sutra but the verse Japanese readers learned to say with it, from the 十四科頌: 迷時以空為色。悟即以色為空。迷悟本無差別。色空究竟還同。愚人喚南作北。智者達無西東, deluded, one takes emptiness for form; awakened, one takes form for emptiness. Delusion and awakening are at bottom no different; form and emptiness come out the same in the end. The fool calls south north; the wise man understands there is no west or east [6]. The 1910 proverb dictionary prints two clauses more, 欲覓如來妙理、常在一念之中, if you would find the Buddha's wondrous principle, it is always within one thought [3].

649. 般若波羅蜜多心經, Xuanzang's translation. 舍利子！色不異空，空不異色，色即是空，空即是色；受、想、行、識，亦復如是 [7]. The clause before differs from the older translation by a word; the four characters do not. This is the text chanted in every Japanese school, and every Japanese witness below descends from it.

984 to 985. Genshin 源信's 往生要集. The first Japanese citation the 精選版日本国語大辞典 gives, from its fourth great chapter, quoted as 色即是空故、謂之真如実相, because form is emptiness, it is called true suchness, the real aspect [2]; the quotation is the dictionary's own.

Heian attribution, Edo print. 高野大師心經, the Heart Sutra in the tradition of Kūkai 空海's own hand. 色不異空 空不異色 色即是空 空即是色 [8]. It is here as the line in the form Japanese devotion copied, not as a dated witness; the print is Edo and the attribution is the tradition's.

1283. Mujū's 沙石集. The line as a slogan on which schools were reconciled: 華厳ノ師モ色即是空ナレバ清辨ノ義立チ、空即是色ナレバ護法ノ宗成ストイヘリ, the Kegon master said that since form is emptiness, 清辨's position stands, and since emptiness is form, 護法's school is established [9]. Each half of the pair is one school's doctrine, and the master held both.

About 1430. The Noh play 山姥, the mountain crone's sermon. The line the dictionaries take as the play's, and the one that shows what it does in Japanese: 邪正一如と見る時は、色即是空其まゝに、佛法あれば世法あり、煩惱あれば菩提あり、佛あれば衆生あり、衆生あれば山姥もあり、柳は綠、花は紅の色々, when you see wrong and right as one, form is emptiness just as it is; where there is the Buddha's law there is the world's law; where there are passions there is enlightenment; where there is a Buddha there are living beings; where there are living beings there is the mountain crone too; the willow is green, the flowers are red, each in its color [1]. The play uses the sutra line to affirm the world, not to renounce it, and the whole turn rides on 其まゝに, just as it is.

1749. The puppet play 源平布引瀧. しきそくぜくう、くうそくぜしきと繪にも書く, form is emptiness, emptiness is form, as they write it even on pictures: the pair as a saying, spelled in kana, in the Edo theater [10].

Meiji translation of the Bible, read in a 1904 printing. Not a witness to the sutra, but the one place the sutra and the retired title genuinely touch, and they touch only in Japanese. Ecclesiastes 1:2 reads 傳道者言く、空の空、空の空なる哉、都て空なり, with the furigana くうのくう: the translators rendered the Hebrew hebel, the breath that the King James calls vanity, with 空, the sutra's own character [11]. The sentence appears, quoted, in over a hundred public-domain books. A Japanese reader has had kū no kū and shiki soku ze kū sharing one character ever since.

1908. Ōwada Takeki 大和田建樹's commentary in the 謡曲評釈. The gloss quoted above, 色とは萬物を有りと見る事。空とは萬物を無しと悟る事 [1].

1909. 池田蘆洲's 故事熟語辞典. The meaning given entirely through 寶誌's verse: 迷ふ時は空を以て色と爲し、悟る時は色を以て空と爲す、色空本來同一體にして差別なきをいふ。色は本と空より生じ、空は色に依りて現はる, deluded, one takes emptiness as form; awakened, one takes form as emptiness; it says that form and emptiness are originally one body without distinction; form arises from emptiness, and emptiness appears by way of form [12].

1910. 藤井乙男's 諺語大辞典. Two entries. 【色卽是空、空卽是色】〔般若心經〕色不異空、空不異色、色即是空、空即是色。誌公和尚頌、迷時以空爲色 … 常在一念之中: the sutra address, the whole of 寶誌's verse, and nothing else, no Western equivalent. 藤井 hangs an English proverb on nearly everything in his book; here he hangs none. His second entry, 【佛法アレバ世法アリ】, quotes the Noh line [3].

What is not a source. Baozhi's verse is the tradition's commentary, attached to the line by the proverb dictionaries; it is a pairing, not an origin, and the sutra is older. The Kegon master's reconciliation in the 沙石集 is a use, not a source. Ecclesiastes 1:2, Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity, in the Vulgate vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas, is not a source, a parallel or a translation: the Preacher's claim is that everything under the sun is fleeting and profitless, a verdict on the world; the sutra's is a statement about how the world exists, and its second half, that emptiness is form, is exactly what all is vanity cannot say [13]. The two lines share a character in Japanese because the Meiji translators chose 空 for hebel; they share nothing in English. The four characters in Japanese Zen use, as a 禅語 on a tea-room scroll, are the sutra's line quoted, not a separate text.

The phrase in English

1894. F. Max Müller, in Buddhist Mahāyāna Texts, Sacred Books of the East volume XLIX, part II, page 153. O Sāriputra, form here is emptiness, and emptiness indeed is form. Emptiness is not different from form, form is not different from emptiness. What is form that is emptiness, what is emptiness that is form. The larger sutra at page 148 begins the same way. Form is emptiness is the equation every later English keeps [14].

1896. Lafcadio Hearn, Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life, page 250. In the essay on the idea of pre-existence, the sutra reaches the general English reader two years after Müller: "Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. What is form, that is emptiness; what is emptiness, that is form. Perception and conception, name and knowledge, — all these are emptiness." [15]

1904. Hearn again, Kwaidan, the footnote to Ingwa-banashi. Glossing the sutra a character in the story recites: the subject of the sutra is the Doctrine of the Emptiness of Forms, — that is to say, of the unreal character of all phenomena or noumena. … "Form is emptiness; and emptiness is form. Emptiness is not different from form; form is not different from emptiness. What is form — that is emptiness. What is emptiness — that is form. … Perception, name, concept, and knowledge, are also emptiness." [16]

1935. D. T. Suzuki, Manual of Zen Buddhism, the section English Translation of the Shingyo. "O Sariputra, form is here emptiness, emptiness is form; form is no other than emptiness, emptiness is no other than form; that which is form is emptiness, that which is emptiness is form. The same can be said of sensation, thought, confection, and consciousness." Suzuki's here is Müller's [17].

1958. Edward Conze, Buddhist Wisdom Books, the Heart Sutra, pages 86–87. Sanskrit first, then: Here, O Sariputra, form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form; emptiness does not differ from form, form does not differ from emptiness; whatever is form, that is emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is form, the same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness. Under his heading The Dialectics of Emptiness. First Stage [18].

1959. D. T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, page 425. In the essay on the Noh play 山姥, whose sermon the page reads above: When seen from the point of view of absolute identity, good and evil are mere forms of relativity, and 'Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form' [19].

1970. Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. The line as a teaching motif, five times: It says, "Form is emptiness and emptiness is form." But if you attach to that statement, you are liable to be involved in dualistic ideas … So "form is emptiness, and emptiness is form" is still dualistic. But fortunately, our teaching goes on to say, "Form is form and emptiness is emptiness." Here there is no dualism. [20]

1972. Yoshito S. Hakeda, Kūkai: Major Works, pages 264 and after. 空海's 般若心経秘鍵 in English. When the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra hears the words "Form is emptiness," he relaxes his jaw in a smile, understanding them to express the meaning of perfect interpenetration; and the sutra's line in Hakeda's rendering, O Sariputra, form is emptiness, emptiness is form; form is no other than emptiness, emptiness is no other than form. Of sensation, conception, predisposition, and consciousness the same can be said [21].

1973. Funakoshi Gichin 船越義珍, Karate-Dō Kyōhan, the introduction, The Meaning of Kara. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form itself. The kara of Karate-do has this meaning [22].

1974. 研究社, Kenkyūsha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, fourth edition, page 1533. shiki-soku-ze-kū 色即是空: Matter is void. / All is vanity [23]. The two equations after form is emptiness in the modern electronic dictionary are already here.

Today. 精選版日本国語大辞典: 物質的な存在はその真相、その当体において空であり、執着される何ものもないということ, that material existence is, in its true aspect and in its very substance, empty, and there is nothing to be attached to [2]. The 四字熟語を知る辞典 quotes 坂口安吾 in 1953 [2]. Not one of the four Japanese dictionaries offers vanity. The EDRDG dictionary gives three glosses in this order: form is emptiness; matter is void; all is vanity [24]. The second and third are Kenkyūsha's of 1974 [23]. Until its 2026 correction the house title was the third of these, All is Vanity; the scroll now carries the sutra's own words, Form is Emptiness, the first and most precise of the three. What a rendering must keep: form, not matter or color; emptiness, not void or nothing; and the identity, is, which the whole line is about.

A reading

The design and the reading are sound, and the explanation under the retired title was nearly right even so. The title was the defect, and it was a real one: until September 2026 the line sold as All is Vanity, a dictionary's third gloss promoted to a product name, which sold the sutra as Ecclesiastes — a Buddhist line of affirmation under the Preacher's verdict of futility. The two are not the same claim, and the sutra's own next four characters are the proof. The pair's second half is worth keeping in view: the line as sold is half of a sentence, and the other half says emptiness is nowhere but in form. The Noh's just as it is shows what a Japanese ear does with the line, and Baozhi's fool calling south north is the tradition's own gloss on it. If vanity is kept anywhere, it is worth keeping with its true story, which is a good one: the Meiji Bible chose the sutra's character for vanity of vanities, so in Japanese the two lines have shared a word for over a century, and in English they never have.

References

  1. 大和田建樹『謡曲評釈』, 1908. National Diet Library pid 876568, scans 74–77.
  2. 「色即是空」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典 · 四字熟語を知る辞典, at kotobank.
  3. 藤井乙男『諺語大辞典』, 1910. National Diet Library pid 862766, scans 251 and 597.
  4. The era's bilingual dictionaries: Hepburn (1872), 井上 (1909), ロイド (1907), 斎藤 (1918), 新渡戸's proverb book (1911), 上田's romanized dictionary (1915) — none carrying the line.
  5. 『摩訶般若波羅蜜大明呪經』, attributed to 鳩摩羅什, at CBETA. Taishō T08n0250, p. 847c13–14. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T0250&juan=1
  6. 『景德傳燈錄』卷29, 寶誌's 十四科頌, at CBETA. Taishō T51n2076, p. 451c20–21. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T2076&juan=29
  7. 玄奘 訳『般若波羅蜜多心經』, 649. Taishō T08n0251, p. 848c07–08, at CBETA. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T0251&juan=1
  8. 『高野大師心經』, Edo printing. National Diet Library pid 2533720.
  9. 無住『沙石集』, Edo printings. National Diet Library pid 2568298 and pid 2551169.
  10. 『源平布引瀧』, 1749, as quoted in 『俚諺大辞典』, 1933. National Diet Library pid 1766149, scan 220.
  11. 『旧新約全書』, 米国聖書会社, 1904 printing of the 明治元訳. National Diet Library pid 825439, scan 462. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/825439/1/462
  12. 池田蘆洲『故事熟語辞典』, 1909. National Diet Library pid 862864, scan 249.
  13. Ecclesiastes 1:2, King James Bible, at en.wikisource.org; the Vulgate, at biblegateway.com.
  14. F. Max Müller, translator, in Buddhist Mahāyāna Texts, Sacred Books of the East, volume XLIX, part II, 1894, p. 153 (the larger sutra at p. 148). Internet Archive buddhistmahy02cowe.
  15. Lafcadio Hearn, Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life, Houghton Mifflin, 1896, p. 250.
  16. Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, Houghton Mifflin, 1904, the note to "Ingwa-banashi". Internet Archive kwaidan_202101.
  17. D. T. Suzuki, Manual of Zen Buddhism, Kyoto, 1935, § English Translation of the Shingyo (read in a modern reprint without page numbers; the record gives the position).
  18. Edward Conze, Buddhist Wisdom: The Diamond Sutra and The Heart Sutra, 1958, read in the Vintage 2001 printing, pp. 86–87.
  19. D. T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, Princeton University Press, 1959, p. 425.
  20. Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Weatherhill, 1970 (read in the Shambhala fiftieth-anniversary edition, whose text layer carries no page numbers; the record gives the position).
  21. Yoshito S. Hakeda, translator, Kūkai: Major Works, Columbia University Press, 1972, pp. 264 ff. (Part Three, the Hannya shingyō hiken).
  22. Gichin Funakoshi, Karate-Dō Kyōhan: The Master Text, translated by Tsutomu Ohshima, Kodansha International, 1973, the introduction ("The Meaning of Kara").
  23. 増田綱 ed., Kenkyūsha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, 4th ed., Kenkyūsha, Tokyo, 1974, p. 1533, s.v. shiki-soku-ze-kū.
  24. JMdict (EDRDG), 「色即是空」, at gokanji.

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1, Takase Studios LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Checked · grok-4.6 (xAI), 2026-09-05, citations · gpt-6-astra (OpenAI), 2026-09-05, citations