འཕགས་པ་ལས་ཀྱ་སྒྲབ་པ་ཐམས་ཅད་རྣམ་པར་སྦྱང་བ་ཞས་བྱ་བའ་གཟངས intro: 84000's introduction
The Dhāraṇī “Purifying All Karmic Obscurations” intro
- Language
- English
84000's introduction
intro.1
The Dhāraṇī “Purifying All Karmic Obscurations” is a relatively brief text consisting of a short dhāraṇī and a passage about its applications and benefits. Most applications have to do with death and funerary rituals, as the text provides many methods to aid the departed toward a favorable rebirth.
intro.2
The Dhāraṇī “Purifying All Karmic Obscurations” is a short but important text providing many teachings to aid the dead toward a favorable rebirth. The text provides glimpses into the types of practices Buddhist communities in India and Tibet undertook for a situation that affects us all: the death of a loved one. The most important canonical text in this regard is The Tantra Purifying All Evil Destinies (Toh 483), and indeed, if the form of the dhāraṇī is anything to go by, our text does seem to have some kind of connection with that major scripture.
intro.3
The evidence for the original Sanskrit is somewhat thin: a mere fragment of two and a half lines in an Indian Compilation of Dhāraṇīs.¹ However, even from this small fragment, which contains the full dhāraṇī and a passage from the applications, we can surmise that the version transmitted in India was somewhat different. We also know of an eponymous goddess who is clearly a personified dhāraṇī from the Indian tradition. The distinguished and influential scholar Abhayākaragupta in his Niṣpannayogāvalī describes her as an inhabitant of the Dharmadhātuvāgīśvara maṇḍala, green in color and holding a white lotus with a red tint marked by a vajra scepter with three prongs. ²
intro.4
The Tibetan translation is recorded in the imperial catalogs³ and there is at least one Dunhuang witness available to us.⁴ Unfortunately, the identity of the translators was not recorded, or if there was once a record, this has not survived. This witness from the famous Dunhuang collection is, despite its age, not a perfect copy. However, it provides some interesting variant readings, which we discuss in the notes to the translation. This text is included in both the Action Tantra section (Toh 743) and the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section (Toh 1009) of the Degé Kangyur and other Tshalpa-lineage Kangyurs that include such a separate section. As far as we are aware, there is no extant Chinese translation.
intro.5
This English translation was made principally on the basis of the Tibetan translations of the text found in the Tantra Collection (rgyud ’bum) and the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs (gzungs ’dus) of the Degé Kangyur in consultation with the Stok Palace Kangyur. We also compared these texts carefully against the Dunhuang witness, as will be evident from the notes that mark all major discrepancies. Additionally, we consulted the Sanskrit manuscript fragment, a transcript of which we include here in an appendix.