"When the Buddha revealed the Prajñaparamita sutras, teaches Karl Brunnhölzl, the arhats in attendance, were so shocked by what they were hearing that they died on the spot. The Heart Attack Sutra seeks to preserve this same spiritual shock for Western minds (but perhaps without the grim consequences that Buddha's earlier students had to face!) by presenting and commenting in detail on the Heart Sutra, arguably the most well-known sutra in the Mahayana tradition. Brunnhölzl begins by contextualizing his commentary with rich introduction to the concept of emptiness and dependent origination in Mahayana though, the three cycles of the Buddha's teachings, the figure of Lady Prajñaparamita and the genre of literature within which the Heart Sutra falls. Next follows the actual line-by-line commentary, a meditation on Lady Prajñaparamita and the Heart Sutra itself from the siddha Darika, and Brunnhölzl's translation of the sutra for reference."--Michael Jolliffe, Mandala Magazine, March 2012.