The place held by the Heart Sutra in Mahayana Buddhism parallels that of the Gospel of John in Christianity. Each is central to its tradition. Each demands the practitioner's transformation through prayer and meditation. And, although the approach to deep and abiding human experience in the Heart Sutra is quite different from that expressed in John's Gospel, there is a resonance between the Sutra's emptying of every vestige of self-identity and John's call for a radical reconfiguration of consciousness.

This book presents a Christian reading of the Heart Sutra, allowing its teaching on emptiness of self to percolate through the central teachings of the Christian tradition ― Incarnation and Trinity ― as these are disclosed in the Gospel of John.