འཕགས་པ་བཅམ་ལྡན་འདས་སྨན་གྱ་བླ་བ་ཌརྱའ་འད་ཀྱ་སྔན་གྱ་སྨན་ལམ་གྱ་ཁྱད་པར་རྒྱས་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད intro.10

intro.10

Bhaiṣajya­guru­vaiḍūrya­prabha is a widely known figure of the Buddhist pantheon in all countries where the Mahāyāna is practiced, and he is familiarly known as the Medicine Buddha or the Buddha of Healing, the short form of his name in Tibetan being Sangyé Menla (sangs rgyas sman bla). As this text demonstrates, his aspirations and activity are by no means confined to the relief of suffering caused by illness, but his popularity stems no doubt from this universally experienced need. A large number of liturgies in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition were written for the purpose of invoking, visualizing, and praying to him, and in these texts as well as in many paintings and murals he is depicted as a blue-colored buddha, holding in his alms bowl a sprig of myrobalan to represent medicinal plants. He is often visualized or depicted surrounded by the other six tathāgatas with which he is associated, accompanied by the two bodhisattvas mentioned in , and sometimes by the twelve great yakṣa generals mentioned in . Practices dedicated to him often involve the recitation of the dhāraṇī included in the third text of the cycle, The Dhāraṇī of the Tathāgata Vaiḍūryaprabha (Toh 505),¹² and of the homage and short mantra that compose the fourth, untitled text that we have numbered Toh 505a.¹³