The Dhāraṇī “The Mother of Avalokiteśvara”
Translation of འཕགས་པ་སྤྱན་རས་གཟགས་དབང་ཕྱག་ག་ཡམ་ཞས་བྱ་བའ་གཟངས (འཕགས་པ་སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས་དབང་ཕྱུག་གི་ཡུམ་ཞེས་བྱ་བའི་གཟུངས)
- Language
- English
- Translators
- Stefan Mang, Lowell Cook
- Extent
- 14 passages, 1,483 words
- Text
- complete digital text
- Source
- 84000 · Translated by Samye Translationsunder the patronage and supervision of 84000: Translating the Words of the… · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha). Shown whole and unaltered, with its notes, on a…
Contents
- intro 84000's introduction — 5 parts
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- notes Notes — 5 parts
Text
84000's introduction
intro.1
In this short sūtra, the bodhisattva Samantabhadra asks the Buddha to reveal The Mother of Avalokiteśvara, a powerful dhāraṇī that helps practitioners progress on the path to awakening. The Buddha grants his request and relates how he had himself received the dhāraṇī. Samantabhadra then speaks the dhāraṇī, after which the Buddha states its benefits.
intro.2
The Noble Dhāraṇī “The Mother of Avalokiteśvara” ¹ begins in the city of Vaiśālī, where the Buddha is residing amidst an assembly of monks and bodhisattvas. The bodhisattva Samantabhadra requests that he reveal the powerful dhāraṇī known as The Mother of Avalokiteśvara, and the Buddha agrees. The Buddha first relates how he had himself received this dhāraṇī in a past life from the brahmin Prabheśvara, who benefited millions of beings by teaching it in Sukhāvatī, the pure land of the Buddha Amitābha. Following this account, Samantabhadra magically speaks the dhāraṇī to the assembly, after which the Buddha encourages the audience to recite it and praises its efficacy. Thus, the dhāraṇī can be divided into four sections: the request to teach the dhāraṇī, the dhāraṇī’s origin story, the dhāraṇī itself, and a praise of the dhāraṇī’s benefits.
intro.3
As indicated by the text’s title, the dhāraṇī concerns a goddess named or bearing the title Avalokiteśvaramātā, “the mother of Avalokiteśvara.” In the Degé Kangyur,² the dhāraṇī belongs to a cycle of eight Kriyātantra (bya rgyud) texts (Toh 724–31) dedicated to the goddess Tārā. Based on this categorization, we may infer that the Tibetan scholars understood Avalokiteśvaramātā to be the goddess Tārā, but there is no further evidence to confirm this identification.
intro.4
According to the Tibetan colophon, The Dhāraṇī “The Mother of Avalokiteśvara” was originally translated by the monk and translator Yeshé Dé and the Indian preceptors Jinamitra and Dānaśīla, who were regular collaborators in the late eighth- and early ninth-centuries. The dhāraṇī is accordingly found in the Denkarma (ldan dkar ma) and Phangthangma (’phang thang ma) catalogs of translations made during Tibet’s imperial period.³ The dhāraṇī was translated into Chinese by Fǎxián ( 法 賢, 973-1001) under the title Fo shuo guanzizai pusa mu tuoluoni jing (观自在菩萨母陀罗尼经, Taishō 1117). There is to our knowledge no extant Sanskrit version of this work.
intro.5
This English translation is based on the Tibetan version in the Degé Kangyur collection, in consultation with the Stok Palace and Phukdrak Kangyurs, as well as the variant readings recorded in the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) Kangyur. The English translation was compared with the Chinese translation before being finalized.
1
Homage to all buddhas and bodhisattvas!
Thus did I hear at one time. In the city of Vaiśālī, the Blessed One was surrounded and honored by a great assembly as he sat upon a seat arranged for him. He was surrounded and honored by five hundred fully ordained monks headed by the great śrāvaka Śāriputra, and many bodhisattva great beings headed by Maitreya. Present among this assembly was the bodhisattva great being known as Samantabhadra. Rising from his seat, Samantabhadra draped his upper robe over one shoulder, knelt on his right knee, bowed his head at the feet of the Blessed One, and said:
“Blessed One, the great dhāraṇī of the vidyāmantra, the mantra formula, known as The Mother of Avalokiteśvara, has been taught and is being taught by the blessed buddhas of the past, present, and future. It had previously been taught when the Blessed One was a bodhisattva seeking awakening, and it was taught in order to benefit and care for all beings, up to and including the bodhisattvas. The dhāraṇī is a refuge for all beings who lack refuge, beings who have been the fathers and mothers of the noble sons and daughters who follow the bodhisattva vehicle. It is an ally to those without allies and a protector to those without protection. It brings all misdeeds to an end. All wishes are fulfilled as soon as this dhāraṇī is heard,
2
and through it all vidyāmantras are successful.”⁴
The Blessed One replied, “Bodhisattva great being, in the past when I was a bodhisattva seeking awakening, the Thus-Gone worthy, complete, and perfect Buddha Amitābha lived, prospered, and taught the Dharma in Sukhāvatī, a world system far beyond as many world systems as there are grains of sand in the river Ganges. He lives there even now. Among his retinue was a brahmin known as Prabheśvara who had attained the third bodhisattva level. It was he who proclaimed, expounded, and taught this great queen of vidyāmantras, the dhāraṇī known as The Mother of Avalokiteśvara, to many hundreds of thousands of brahmins and numerous billions of sentient beings. As soon as they heard this dhāraṇī, they were freed from all misdeeds and transgressions and remembered their rebirths. This I recall.
“Great bodhisattva, recite the dhāraṇī! At a later time, the numerous trillions of misdeeds of sentient beings, throughout defiled worlds, who have performed misdeeds and the actions with immediate retribution will be exhausted. They will be well and be happy. It will serve as a protector to those without protection. I also approve and rejoice.”
The bodhisattva great being Samantabhadra then spoke the great dhāraṇī of the vidyāmantra, the mantra formula, known as The Mother of Avalokiteśvara.
“Homage to the Three Jewels. Homage to the Blessed, thus-gone Amitābha. Homage to the bodhisattva great being endowed with great compassion, Noble Avalokiteśvara.
3
Having paid homage to them, I shall recite the great vidyāmantra, the mantra formula, the noble dhāraṇī known as The Mother of Avalokiteśvara. May I accomplish this vidyā!
tadyathā | ili mili | cili mili | kuntule kuntule kuntule | śire śiśire viśire | vīrāyai gauri gāndhāri drāmiṭe mātaṅgi pukkasi kaṣṭaya māṃ | caṇḍāli huttu mālini hūṁ | dhu dhu mālini | cile mile | gṛhṇa saumyadarśani | kuru candramukhi | laghumānayante āryadakṣiṇabhuje | sarvavidyānām prasādhane | sarvavidyānām īśvari svāhā ||
The Blessed One then said,⁵ “This is the rite for this dhāraṇī that is mastered through recitation. As soon as it is heard, all karmic obscurations will be purified, and one will be protected from all fears. If one recites it during the three periods of the day, one will see the bodhisattva great being Samantabhadra within seven days. If one mentally recites it without thinking of anything else, the great vidyā herself, the mother of Noble Avalokiteśvara, will be revealed within one month, and noble Amitābha will also be seen. One’s progress to unsurpassed awakening will be irreversible. One will also remember one’s rebirths and retain whatever has been learned. No matter where one is born, one will not be separated from the sacred Dharma, and one will be affluent.”
After the Blessed One spoke these words, the entire assembly, including the bodhisattva great being Samantabhadra, the bodhisattvas, and the fully ordained monks, rejoiced and praised what the Blessed One had taught.
Colophon
Translated and edited by the Indian preceptors Jinamitra and
4
Dānaśīla and the translator-editor Bandé Yeshé Dé, revised according to the new lexicon, and finalized.
Notes
notes.1
1. Following the general application of the honorific “noble” (Skt. ārya; Tib. ’phags pa) in Buddhist literature, the term seems likely to apply to the text itself, not the deity. However, this honorific is so frequently prefixed to Avalokiteśvara’s name that many readers of the Tibetan text may naturally and optionally interpret it in that way instead.
notes.2
2. Note that there is a discrepancy among various databases for cataloging the Toh 909 version of this text within vol. 100 or 101 of the Degé Kangyur. See Toh 909 note 2 for details. This text, Toh 909, and all those contained in this same volume (gzungs, e), are listed as being located in volume 100 of the Degé Kangyur by the Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC). However, several other Kangyur databases—including the eKangyur that supplies the digital input version displayed by the 84000 Reading Room—list this work as being located in volume 101. This discrepancy is partly due to the fact that the two volumes of the gzungs ’dus section are an added supplement not mentioned in the original catalog, and also hinges on the fact that the compilers of the Tōhoku catalog placed another text—which forms a whole, very large volume—the Vimalaprabhānāmakālacakratantraṭīkā (dus ’khor ’grel bshad dri med ’od, Toh 845), before the volume 100 of the Degé Kangyur, numbering it as vol. 100, although it is almost certainly intended to come right at the end of the Degé Kangyur texts as volume 102; indeed its final fifth chapter is often carried over and wrapped in the same volume as the Kangyur dkar chags (catalog). Please note this discrepancy when using the eKangyur viewer in this translation.
notes.3
3. Herrmann-Pfandt 2008, pp. 221–22. See also Denkarma, 302.b.6.
notes.4
4. The implication is that Buddhist dhāraṇīs such as this have the capacity to accomplish all other Buddhist and non-Buddhist spells, whatever their purpose.
notes.5
5. There is no indication at this point in the text that Samantabhadra has finished speaking and that the Buddha begins, but considering that the following quote concludes with the statement, “After the Blessed One spoke these words,” inserting this line for clarity seems warranted.