Toh 942 intro: 84000's introduction
The Dhāraṇī to Uphold “The King of Samādhis Sūtra” intro
- Language
- English
84000's introduction
intro.1
This text consists of a short dhāraṇī said to encompass a famous sūtra in the Kangyur, The King of Samādhis Sūtra (Toh 127), and the benefit of its recitation.
intro.2
This text consists of a short dhāraṇī said to encompass a famous sūtra in the Kangyur, The King of Samādhis Sūtra,¹ and the benefit of its recitation.
intro.3
Such short texts served a variety of purposes, the primary being that by reciting them one could acquire the positive karmic benefits of reciting an entire, sometimes extremely long, text. On a practical level, the recitation of these short texts also served as equivalent to the recitation of the parent text, should a prescribed ritual so require.
intro.4
The text lacks both a Sanskrit title and a translator’s colophon. In South Asia, the text was transmitted within collections such as the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs (Dhāraṇīsaṃgraha),² but it is also embedded into some ritual manuals such as the corpus of “rituals for beginners” (ādikarmika, las dang po pa) texts, in our case the Ādikarmāvatāra by Mañjukīrti,³ the Ādikarmavidhi by Tatakaragupta,⁴ and the *Bodhipaddhati by Abhayākaragupta.⁵
intro.5
This 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)⁶ in the Degé Kangyur in consultation with the various Sanskrit sources mentioned above.