Karandavyuha Sutra
by Mithun Howladar | 2018 | 73,554 words
This page relates “Varanasi-bhramana” of the Karandavyuha Sutra (English translation): an important 4th century Sutra extolling the virtues and powers of Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. The Karandavyuhasutra also introduces the mantra “Om mani padme hum” into the Buddhist Sutra tradition.
Chapter 15 - Vārāṇasi-bhramaṇa
Vārāṇasibhramaṇaṃ Pañcadaśaṃ prakaraṇam
(Chapter Fifteen named Vārāṇasibhramaṇam )
Bodhisattva Mahāsattva Avalokiteśvara then left the island of Siṃhala and went to a place where many hundreds of thousands of different kinds of insects lived within a cesspit in the great city of vārāṇasī. When Bodhisattva Mahāsattva Avalokiteśvara arrived there, he transformed himself into the form of a bee that made a buzzing sound that was heard by the insects as the words, ‘Namo Buddhāya, namo Dharmāya, namaḥ Saṃghāya.’ The insects remembered the words namo Buddhāya, namo Dharmāya, namaḥ Saṃghāya, and the thunderbolt of wisdom destroyed the mountain, which has twenty peaks, that is the view of the aggregates as a self, and they were then all reborn in the realm of Sukhāvati as Bodhisattvas named Sugandhamukha.
After Bodhisattva Mahāsattva Avalokiteśvara had ripened those beings, he left the great city of Vārāṇasī.
End of the Chapter Fifteen named Vārāṇasibhramaṇam.