Toh 861 intro: 84000's introduction
The Dhāraṇī “The Essence of Vairocana” intro
- Language
- English
84000's introduction
intro.1
The Dhāraṇī “The Essence of Vairocana”, which pays homage to the Three Jewels, the Buddha Vairocana, and the bodhisattva mahāsattva Ākāśagarbha, contains the dhāraṇī of Vairocana or Ākāśagarbha. It lists the following benefits for one who recites it: protection from weapons, fire, water, poison, poisoned food and drink, hostile magic, kings, thieves, epidemics, pain, contagions, and so forth, and the attainment of the samādhi called stainless light.
intro.2
The Dhāraṇī “The Essence of Vairocana” is a short text contained in the Degé Kangyur in both the Tantra section (Toh 534) and in the Dhāraṇī section (Toh 861). It is further subcategorized as an Action tantra (bya rgyud, kriyātantra).
intro.3
The Dhāraṇī “The Essence of Vairocana” lacks a narrative frame, as well as a location and interlocutors. It starts with formulaic homages to the Three Jewels, the Buddha Vairocana, and the bodhisattva mahāsattva Ākāsagarbha. These canonical expressions of reverence are followed by the dhāraṇī itself, which invokes the Buddha Vairocana. The text concludes with an enumeration of the benefits that accrue from reciting the dhāraṇī: the reciter will be protected from weapons, fire, water, poison, poisoned food and drink, kākhordas, kings, thieves, epidemics, pain, contagions, and so forth, and will attain a particular samādhi called stainless light.
intro.4
The dhāraṇī proper contains, besides many non-lexical phonemes, the perfectly intelligible Sanskrit phrase vairocanaraśmi sañcodite āgaccha| āryākāśagarbha, “Come, ordered by Vairocana’s light rays, noble Ākāśagarbha (‘Essence of the Sky’)!” This exhortation to the bodhisattva Ākāśagarbha suggests that this may be his dhāraṇī and not Vairocana’s. The bodhisattva Ākāśagarbha is closely associated with the Buddha Vairocana, and one of his most important roles is the purification of negative actions. This pair are especially prominent in East Asian esoteric traditions.¹
intro.5
The Dhāraṇī “The Essence of Vairocana” lacks a Tibetan and Sanskrit title at the beginning and a final translators’ colophon. We have no knowledge regarding who translated it and when. To our knowledge, no Sanskrit text of this dhāṛaṇī is extant and it does not appear to have been translated into Chinese. The catalog of the early imperial translations, the Denkarma (lhan kar ma, Herrmann-Pfandt 2008), does not list it. However, it is listed under its short title in the catalog of translated works in the Kangyur that is included in Butön’s monumental fourteenth-century History of Buddhism.² This gives us only a very wide time frame for its translation, namely, sometime between the ninth century and the first quarter of the fourteenth century.³
intro.6
The present English translation was prepared based on the two Degé witnesses (Toh 534⁴ and Toh 861⁵). We also consulted the versions contained in the Phukdrak Kangyur and Stok Palace Kangyur.