How to make sense of the Heart Sutra I am very interested in the concept of emptiness and freeing myself of all attachments. Naturally I gravitated towards the heart sutra, the chant in particular is very moving. However I am completely baffled by the text itself. Could someone help me understand the meaning, or purpose behind the story?
I've been practicing in a zen dôjô for the last year, and have been singing the haramita shingyo a lot of times without really understanding it. Your question made me look for a translation online, and I found this (for french readers only) whose introduction says,:


  Ce texte, très court, qui se présente comme le "cœur" des sûtra bouddhistes indiens de la Perfection de Sagesse (prajñâ pâramitâ) est devenu en Chine, puis au Japon, une sorte de credo aux vertus magiques. Au nom de la vacuité, il met à mal les anciennes doctrines des quatre nobles vérités et de coproduction conditionnée.


(my translation):


  This text, very short, which presents itself as the "heart" of the Indian Buddhist sutras of the perfection of wisom, has become in China and then in Japan a sort of credo (creed) with magical properties. In the name of voidness it breaks from the ancient doctrines of the four noble truths and of conditioned 
  co-arising.


From what I've understood, this sutra is about putting the 4 noble truths in a vacuity perspective. Considering this, there is no Dukkha, Samudaya, Nirodha nor Magga as they are mental constructions themselves and, thus, you should free yourself from the 5 aggregates.

Here is a humble translation from French to English of the 5th paragraph that seems meaningful to me :


  There is no ignorance and no cessation of ignorance and so forth there
  is no aging nor death and no cessation of aging and death.There
  is no suffering, origin, extinction nor path.There is no
  knowledge and no obtaining for there is nothing to obtain.