The Dhāraṇī of the Essence of Śākyamuni

Translation of Toh 533

Language: English
Translator: Bruno Galasek-Hul
Extent: 14 passages, 1,019 words
Text: complete digital text
Source: 84000 · Published by 84000 (v 1.0.1 2025). 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha,… · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha). Shown whole and unaltered, with its notes, on a…

intro 84000's introduction — 6 parts
1
notes Notes — 7 parts

Text

84000's introduction

intro.1

This short dhāraṇī contains the essence mantra of Śākyamuni. After a formulaic homage to the Buddha Śākyamuni, his essence mantra is presented followed by a description of the benefits of its recitation.

intro.2

The Dhāraṇī of the Essence of Śākyamuni is a very brief dhāraṇī contained in the Degé Kangyur in both the Tantra section and in the Dhāraṇī section. Within the Tantra section, it is classed as an Action tantra (bya rgyud, kriyātantra).

intro.3

The dhāraṇī has no narrative frame or interlocutors and starts with a formulaic homage to the Buddha Śākyamuni. Immediately after that, the dhāraṇī mantra that invokes the Buddha is presented. The dhāraṇī concludes with the marvelous benefit that can be expected when one recites Śākyamuni’s dhāraṇī mantra only once: all the negative actions that one has accrued during eighty million kalpas will be completely purified.

intro.4

The Dhāraṇī of the Essence of Śākyamuni has no Sanskrit title, no translators’ colophon, and we do not know who translated it or when. To our knowledge, no Sanskrit text of this dhāṛaṇī is extant and it does not appear to have been translated into Chinese. The catalogs of the early imperial translations, the Denkarma and the Phangthangma, do not list it. The short title is mentioned in the catalog of translated works in the Kangyur that is included in Butön’s monumental fourteenth-century History of Buddhism.¹ Richard O. Meisezahl records an interesting variant of the dhāraṇī in a catalog of Tibetan manuscripts and prints kept in the Linden Museum in Stuttgart. Here, the dhāraṇī of Śākyamuni is clearly comprised of the homage (in transcribed Sanskrit) and the essence mantra, while in the Degé version of The Dhāraṇī of the Essence of Śākyamuni, the homage is translated into Tibetan and appears separate from the essence mantra. The version in the Linden Museum reads as follows: na maḥ śākya mu na ye ta thā ga tā ya| arha te samyaksaṃ buddhā ya| tadya thā| mu ni mu ni ma hā mu ni ye sbā hā.²

intro.5

The mantra of the Buddha Śākyamuni occurs in a few other places in the Kangyur, most notably in The Perfection of Wisdom in a Few Syllables (Toh 22) and in The Perfection of Wisdom for Vajrapāṇi (Toh 29), as well as several times in A Portion of the Practice of the Sovereign Tantra Purifying Evil Destinies (Toh 485).

intro.6

This English translation was prepared based on the two versions in the Degé Kangyur (Toh 533³ and Toh 860⁴) in consultation with the variant readings of the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) of the Kangyur and the version in the Stok Palace Kangyur (S 492). Śākyamuni’s mantra was edited based on the Degé edition and an English translation is provided in a note.

1

Homage to the thus-gone, worthy, fully and perfectly awakened Śākyamuni!

tadyathā| muni muni mahāmunaye⁵ svāhā ⁶

When one has recited this once, whatever negative actions one has committed during eighty trillion⁷ kalpas, will all be purified.

Notes

notes.1

1. Butön Rinchen Drup, folio 174.a / 979: shākya thub pa’i snying po.

notes.2

2. Meisezahl 1957, p. 100. The Śākyamuni dhāraṇī is found in a small tightly rolled cylinder (inventory number 71 554) of five white, printed paper strips that was wrapped with colored thread and possibly used to put in an amulet or a statue. On the first leaf is written bya rgyud kyi sde las (“From the Kriyātantrapiṭaka”) and “the general heart mantra” (spyi’i snying po) of Śākyamuni. Leaf number two contains the bcom ldan ’das śākya thub pa’i snying po “the heart mantra of the Bhagavat Śākyamuni.” The remaining leaves bear two more dhāraṇīs associated with Śākyamuni and the dhāraṇīs of Amitābha, Akṣobhya, and Bhaiṣajyaguru.

notes.3

3. Two sets of folio references have been included in this translation due to a discrepancy in volume 88 (rgyud, na) of the Degé Kangyur between the 1737 par phud printings and the late (post par phud) printings. In the latter case, an extra work, Bodhimaṇḍasyālaṃkāralakṣadhāraṇī (Toh 508, byang chub snying po’i rgyan ’bum gyi gzungs), was added as the second text in the volume, thereby displacing the pagination of all the following texts in the same volume by 17 folios. Since the eKangyur follows the later printing, both references have been provided, with the highlighted one linking to the eKangyur viewer. In the Toh 533 version of the text there is a slight discrepancy in the folio numbering between the 1737 par phud printings and the late (post par phud) printings of the Degé Kangyur. Although the discrepancy is irrelevant here, further details concerning this may be found in of the Toh 533 version of this text.

notes.4

4. This text, Toh 860, 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. Note that there is a discrepancy among various databases for cataloging the Toh 860 version of this text within vol. 100 or 101 of the Degé Kangyur. See Toh 860, , for details.