Part 1 - Introduction (Oṃ Maṇi Padme Hūṃ)

As the aim of Kāraṇḍyavyūha Sūtra is the glorification of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, it also glorifies six syllable mantra in order to please or grant a fabour of great Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. The Kāraṇḍyavyūha’s principal content is the introduction of the Oṃ Maṇi Padme Hūṃ mantra [see notes regarding mantra] and the descriptions of its inconceivable benefits. These are also the most quoted sections of the sūtra. In this sutra, Śākyamuni Buddha says, "This is the most beneficial mantra." Even I made this aspiration to all the million Buddhas and subsequently received this teaching from Buddha Amitābha."^[1] However, it contains no instructions on the qualities and benefits of each syllable, of the kind that subsequently became widespread in Tibetan Buddhism. It also gives no explanation of the meaning of the mantra as a whole, a meaning that has been understood in various ways. Donald Lopez has given an account of various interpretations of the mantra in the West in his Prisoners of Shan-gri-la.^[2] Alexander Studholme, in his The Origins of Oṃ Maṇi Padme Hūṃ, describes how the sūtra was composed within the context of familiarity with, and under the influence of, Purāṇic literature, in particular the Skandapurāṇa. In this sūtra, Avalokiteśvara has taken on various attributes and characteristics of Śiva, to the extent that one passage could be misread as describing Avalokiteśvara to be the creator of the universe. Even so, he is still being described as the creator of its deities, including Śiva and Viṣṇu. In particular, Avalokiteśvara’s mantra is evidence of the influence of Śiva’s five-syllable mantra, oṃ namaḥ śivāya (“Oṃ—Homage to Śiva!”), which is found in the Skandapurāṇa together with a description of the benefits of its recitation.

In Tibetan Buddhist culture, Oṃ Maṇi Padme Hūṃ is the most important mantra associated with the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, the Buddhist equivalent of the patron deity of Tibet. The six-syllable mantra Oṃ Maṇi Padme Hūṃ is the core essence of an entire range of Buddhadharma, and it’s a practice very suitable for samsaric beings like ourselves. This practice can purify all karma and we can achieve the results at the moment of our death. If practised well, one can see the benefits even before death. In this regard, Alexander Studholme says "Oṃ Maṇi Padme Hūṃ is, to begin with, a prominent visual feature of the landscape, carved and painted onto the rocks that line a road or a path, written in huge letters high up on a hillside, or present in monumental form in the so-called maṇi-walls (in Tibetan, maṇi gdong) the glorified dry-stone walls that are constructed entirely out of rocks each inscribed with a sacred formula, which, as the name of these edifices would suggest, is most often Oṃ Maṇi Padme Hūṃ. Oṃ Maṇi Padme Hūṃ is also (with few exceptions) the formula that, in printed form, fills the “prayer wheels” (mani chos’khor) of the Tibetan religious world. These are the cylinders or drums—sometimes large and sometimes small—which line the outside walls of monasteries and temples, waiting to be spun around by visitors, as well as the personal, hand-held contraptions, kept revolving by a gentle flicking of the wrist. Prayer wheels are also found, in different shapes and sizes, harnessed to the power of mountain streams, to the currents of hot air rising from butter lamps, and even, in modern times, to the flow of electric currents".^[3]

The simple recitation of Oṃ Maṇi Padme Hūṃ, usually accompanied, by the counting of prayer beads, is also the most popular religious practice of the Tibetan Buddhist system. The formula, constitutes an essential part of the texture of Tibetan life. Its sound can be heard at any time of the day and in any kind of situation. The Tibetan world is constantly humming with the subtle vibration of Avalokiteśvara’s six-syllable mantra. Lama Anagarika Govinda observes:“The deep devotion with which this hopeful message was accepted and taken to heart by the people of Tibet is demonstrated by the innumerable rock-inscriptions and votive-stones on which the sacred formula of Avalokiteśvara is millionfold engraved. It is on the lips of all pilgrims, it is the last prayer of the dying and the hope of the living. It is the eternal melody of Tibet, which the faithful hears in the murmuring of brooks, in the thundering of waterfalls and in the howling of storms, just as it greets him from rocks and mani-stones, which accompany him every-where, on wild caravan tracks and on lofty passes.”^[4]

Alexander Studholme claims that Oṃ Maṇi Padme Hūṃ is also an important constituent of the more private or esoteric part of Tibetan religious practice. It would be practically impossible, for instance, to count every occasion on which the formula is used, incidentally, in the course of all the many different rites and rituals of Tibetan Buddhism. Oṃ Maṇi Padme Hūṃ is used as a means of preliminary purification in the practice, often performed early in the morning, of making an offering of sang, or incense. It is a basic, foundational practice taught to children and beginners. The use of Oṃ Maṇi Padme Hūṃ is regarded not as an adjunct to other, more vital forms of religious procedure, but as a powerful means of spiritual development in its own right.^[5] It is also a practice that not even the most advanced practitioner would ever wish to leave behind.^[6] The recitation of Oṃ Maṇi Padme Hūṃ is one of the central pillars of the Tibetan religious system.^[7] Alexander Studholme observes "In order to give a particular focus to this recitation, a large number of sādhana texts step-bystep invocations of supernormal beings—connected to the formula were composed, each culminating in a concentrated session of the repetition of Oṃ Maṇi Padme Hūṃ in conjunction with the visualization of a particular form of Avalokiteśvara. The Tibetan bs Tan’gyur contains a number of ṣaḍakṣara (or ṣaḍakṣarī) “six-syllable” sādhanas. These works continued to be composed in Tibet long after the definitive creation of a fixed Tibetan Buddhist canon in the first part of the fourteenth century. But, possibly the most extraordinary and most mysterious application of Oṃ Maṇi Padme Hūṃ is its use in the socalled Black Hat (zhva nag) ceremony of the Karma b Ka’ brgyud school of Tibetan Buddhism, during which the Karmapa, the lama who sits at the head of that particular sect, is believed to manifest as a form of Avalokiteśvara while slowly reciting the six-syllable formula and while wearing a special black crown, given to the fifth Karmapa by the Chinese emperor at the beginning of the fifteenth century."^[8]

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Khandro.net: Mantras.

[2]:

Lopez (1998, 114–34).

[3]:

Studholme, Alexande. The Origins of Oṃ Maṇi Padme Hūṃ -A Study of Kāraṇḍyavyūha Sūtra, State University of New York Press., Albany,2002, pp.1-3. See also Lorne Ladner, Wheel of Great Compassion: The Practice of the Prayer Wheel in Tibetan Buddhism (Somerville: Wisdom, 2000), for a survey of the prayer wheel tradition.

[4]:

Lama Anagarika Govinda, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism (London: Rider,1969), p. 256f.

[5]:

A text attributed to the late-eleventh-and early-twelfth-century Tibetan teacher Ma cig Lab kyi sgron ma says: “... infants learn to recite the six-syllable (mantra) at the very same time that they are beginning to speak...” Karma Chags med, Thugs rje chen po, translated in Matthew Kapstein, “Remarks on the Maṇi b Ka”bum and the Cult of Avalokiteśvara in Tibet,” in Tibetan Buddhism, Reason and Revelation, Steven D. Goodman and Ronald M. Davidson eds. (Albany: State University of New York, 1992), p. 85. Thang stong rgyal po, the fourteenth-and fifteenth-century Tibetan yogin who was highly influential in the propagation of the use of Oṃ Maṇipadme Hūṃ by his countrymen, is said, as a youth, to have taught a group of traders to recite the mantra five hundred times a day as a minimum Buddhist practice. See Janet Gyatso, The Literary Transmission of the Traditions of Thang stong rgyal po: A Study of Visionary Buddhism in Tibet (Ph.D. diss., University of California, 1981), p. 107.

[6]:

This point is particularly well illustrated in a story about the thirteenth-century r Nying ma guru Chos kyi dbang phyug, who, when asked by a disciple whether he had achieved siddhi, or supernatural power, through his meditations, replied: “I have reached the real point of their practical application, but because I devote myself to reciting the mantra Oṃ Maṇipadme Hūṃ I have no leisure to practise them.” The guru, though capable of performing magic, considered it more important to recite the six-syllable mantra. See Dudjom (b Dud’joms) Rinpoche, The Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism (Boston: Wisdom, 1991), p. 767.

[7]:

In the’Drol ba zang mo, a play depicting the struggle to establish Buddhism within the Tibetan cultural realm that is performed at the Maṇi Rim’Dus festival held at Tengboche monastery in Nepal, Oṃ Maṇipadme Hūṃ is treated as if it is the essence of Buddhist practice. For instance: “The basis of religion is reciting the six-syllable prayer.” Regions which have not been converted to Buddhism are described as follows:“They did not know how to pronounce the magic formula of six syllables.” Luther G. Jerstad, trans., Maṇi Rimdu: Sherpa Dance Drama (Washington: University of Washington Press, 1969), pp. 22 and 24. See also Dilgo Khyentse, The Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones (Boston: Shambhala, 1992), for a presentation of Oṃ Maṇipadme Hūṃ as the distilled essence of the complete Buddhist path.

[8]:

Tibet and its History: Hugh E. Richardson. Shambhala, Boston and London, 1984, 2 nd edition. pp. 28 -42.