Toh 865[Untitled Dhāraṇī of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas]

Summary

This short untitled text teaches a dhāraṇī and a rite for
its practice.

Acknowledgements

This text was translated and introduced by Catherine
Dalton and edited by members of the 84000 editorial team.

The translation was completed under the patronage and
supervision of 84000: Translating the Words of the
Buddha.

Introduction

This short untitled work begins with
an homage to the Three Jewels, to the Buddha
Vairocana, and to Ākāśagarbha. It then provides a
short dhāraṇī and brief instructions in its rite.
Through this, the practitioner will be unharmed by
negative influences and will see Amitābha and other
buddhas and bodhisattvas at the time of death.

The text is included in the Compendium of
Dhāraṇīs section of the Degé Kangyur and other
Tshalpa lineage Kangyurs that include a separate
Dhāraṇī section. In Tshalpa lineage Kangyurs that
lack a section so named, the text is only found in
the equivalent but unnamed dhāraṇī collection
comprising part of the Tantra section. It is not
included in any Thempangma lineage Kangyurs.

Notably, the dhāraṇī is one of only twelve works
in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section that, because they are not
duplicated in other sections of the Kangyur,
are likely to have found
their way into the Tshalpa lineage Kangyurs
as a result of having been included in earlier collections
of dhāraṇīs and associated ritual texts from which the
Compendium of Dhāraṇīs seems to have been compiled. These collections, known in Sanskrit as
dhāraṇīsaṃgrahas, circulated
throughout South Asia and Tibet—including at
Dunhuang—as extracanonical dhāraṇī collections.

Since the text lacks a translator’s colophon, we
do not know when it was translated into Tibetan.
Furthermore, the absence of a title makes it
difficult to determine whether the text is extant in
Sanskrit, or whether it was ever translated into
Chinese.

The present English translation was made based
on the Degé Kangyur with additional reference to the
notes from the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma), as well as
to the two recensions of the work in the Namgyal
Collection. The text is stable across all recensions
consulted, with some slight variation in a single
alternative recension found in the Sūtra section of
the Namgyal Collection. The dhāraṇī itself has been
rendered in this translation according to the Degé
Kangyur recension.

The Translation

[Untitled Dhāraṇī of Buddhas and

Bodhisattvas]

Homage to the Three
Jewels.

Homage to the thus-gone, worthy, completely
perfect Buddha Vairocana, the King.

Homage to the bodhisattva, the great being, the
one with great compassion, noble Ākāśagarbha.

This completes the dhāraṇī.

Bibliography

Tibetan

Western Languages