Toh 1907A Sādhana of Locana who Purifies Evil Destinies, Extracted from the “Tantra Purifying Evil Destinies”

Exposition of the Sadhana Scripture of Locana Who Purifies All Evil Destinies

Background

This scripture belongs to the Vajrayana Tantric tradition, an advanced branch of Mahayana Buddhism, where the practice of wisdom and skillful means is joined with the arising of faith in the transcendent power of manifested deities. The scripture titled Sarvadurgatiparisodhana-tantra (The Tantra That Purifies All Evil Destinies) is a tantric work descending from the Indian Buddhist tradition, regarded as a special means to help beings escape from the most painful states, the three evil destinies: hell beings, hungry ghosts, and animals.

This sadhana, extracted from the larger Tantra, focuses on the figure of Locana (Tibetan: Melong ma, that is, the female deity of the bright mirror). Locana is one of the wisdom goddesses (jnanadevi) in the Tantric system, representing the reflective and clear quality of mind, the capacity to perceive the world like a mirror unstained by ignorance. A sadhana (修行法門, that is, a method of practice) is an instruction for practice that includes specific steps, from mental preparation and visualization of the deity’s form to the use of mantra and uninterrupted concentration of mind.

Main Contents

According to the standard structure of Tantra, Locana’s sadhana is divided into three main stages. First, the stage of preliminaries requires the practitioner to generate the intention to liberate all beings, especially those suffering in the three evil destinies. This is not ordinary compassion, but the Tantric motivation: recognizing that the evil destinies themselves are manifestations of ignorance that must be transformed.

Second, the stage of visualization: the practitioner imagines a pure sacred space, from which Locana appears in the form of a radiant goddess, with eyes bright like a mirror, symbolizing the wisdom that perceives all phenomena without being obscured by the darkness of ignorance. This image is not ordinary thought, but a way of stirring the innate source of wisdom already present in each person’s mind.