The Dhāraṇī “The Essence of Vairocana”

Translation of Toh 534

Language: English
Translator: Bruno Galasek-Hul
Extent: 16 passages, 1,059 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 — 9 parts

Text

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.

1

“Homage to the Three Jewels!

Homage to the thus-gone, worthy, perfect buddha, noble Vairocana, the king of light!

Homage to the bodhisattva mahāsattva⁶ Ākāśagarbha!

tadyathā| kala kala| kili kili| viri viri| huru huru| vairocanaraśmisañcodite āgaccha| āryākāśagarbha mahākāruṇikā pūraya haśāna| dhāraya buddhe viścayana| cara cara| ciri ciri svāhā ⁷

By reciting it, this will be accomplished: weapons, fire, water, poison, poisoned food and drink, or kākhordas will not hurt one. One will not be harmed by a king, thieves, and so forth. Wherever this is written down and stored, epidemics,⁸ harm, and contagions will not arise.⁹ What is more, one will attain the samādhi called stainless light.”

Notes

notes.1

1. For details, see The Ākāśagarbha Sūtra (Ākāśagarbhasūtra, Toh 260), .

notes.2

2. Butön Rinchen Drup, folio 174.b/979: shAkya thub pa’i snying po.

notes.3

3. Most scholars consider the Denkarma to have been completed sometime in the first half of the ninth century (for a discussion of the different possible dates, see Herrmann-Pfandt 2008, xvii–xxii). Bu ston completed his History of Buddhism sometime before the year 1326 (for a detailed discussion, see van der Kuijp 2016, pp. 227–35).

notes.4

4. 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 534 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 534 version of this text.

notes.5

5. This text, Toh 861, 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 861 version of this text within vol. 100 or 101 of the Degé Kangyur. See Toh 861, , for details.