Toh 533Dhāraṇī Tâm Tủy Của Śākyamuni

Summary

This short dhāraṇī contains the essence mantra of Śākyamuni. After a formulaic homage to the Buddha Śākyamuni, his essence mantra
is presented followed by a description of the benefits of its recitation.

Acknowledgements

This publication was completed under the patronage and supervision of
84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha.

The text was translated, edited, and introduced by the 84000 translation
team. Bruno Galasek-Hul produced the translation and wrote the introduction.
Nathaniel Rich edited the translation and the introduction, and Dawn Collins
copyedited the text. Martina Cotter was in charge of the digital publication
process.

Introduction

The dhāraṇī has no narrative frame or interlocutors and starts with
a formulaic homage to the Buddha Śākyamuni. Immediately after that, the
dhāraṇī mantra that invokes the Buddha is presented. The
dhāraṇī concludes with the marvelous benefit that can be expected when one
recites Śākyamuni’s dhāraṇī mantra only once: all the negative actions that
one has accrued during eighty million kalpas will be completely purified.

The Dhāraṇī of the Essence of Śākyamuni has no
Sanskrit title, no translators’ colophon, and we do not know who translated
it or when. To our knowledge, no Sanskrit text of this dhāṛaṇī is extant and
it does not appear to have been translated into Chinese. The catalogs of the
early imperial translations, the Denkarma and the Phangthangma, do not list
it. The short title is mentioned in the catalog of translated works in the
Kangyur that is included in Butön’s monumental fourteenth-century History of Buddhism. Richard O. Meisezahl records an interesting
variant of the dhāraṇī in a catalog of Tibetan manuscripts and prints kept
in the Linden Museum in Stuttgart. Here, the dhāraṇī of Śākyamuni is clearly
comprised of the homage (in transcribed Sanskrit) and the essence mantra, while in the Degé
version of The Dhāraṇī of the Essence of Śākyamuni,
the homage is translated into Tibetan and appears separate from the essence mantra. The version in the Linden Museum reads as follows: na maḥ śākya mu na ye ta thā ga tā ya| arha te
samyaksaṃ buddhā ya| tadya thā| mu ni mu ni ma hā mu ni ye sbā
hā.

The mantra of the Buddha Śākyamuni occurs in a few
other places in the Kangyur, most notably in The
Perfection of Wisdom in a Few Syllables (Toh 22) and in The Perfection of Wisdom for
Vajrapāṇi (Toh 29), as well as several
times in A Portion of the Practice of the Sovereign
Tantra Purifying Evil Destinies (Toh 485).

This English translation was prepared based on the two versions in
the Degé Kangyur (Toh 533 and Toh 860 ) in consultation with the variant
readings of the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur
ma) of the Kangyur and the version in the Stok Palace Kangyur (S
492). Śākyamuni’s mantra was edited based on the Degé edition and an
English translation is provided in a note.

The Translation

The Noble

Essence Dhāraṇī of Śākyamuni

Homage to the thus-gone, worthy, fully and
perfectly awakened Śākyamuni!

tadyathā| muni muni mahāmunaye
svāhā

The Noble Dhāraṇī of the Essence of Śākyamuni is complete.

Notes

Bibliography

Tibetan Sources

Modern Sources