The Dhāraṇī “Purifying All Karmic Obscurations”
Toh 743
Degé Kangyur, vol. 94 (rgyud, tsha), folios 236.a–236.b
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Table of Contents
Summary
The Dhāraṇī “Purifying All Karmic Obscurations” is a relatively brief text consisting of a short dhāraṇī and a passage about its applications and benefits. Most applications have to do with death and funerary rituals, as the text provides many methods to aid the departed toward a favorable rebirth.
Acknowledgements
This text was translated and introduced by the Buddhapīṭha Translation Group (Gergely Hidas and Péter-Dániel Szántó).
The translation was completed under the patronage and supervision of 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha. Andreas Doctor 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 “Purifying All Karmic Obscurations” is a short but important text providing many teachings to aid the dead toward a favorable rebirth. The text provides glimpses into the types of practices Buddhist communities in India and Tibet undertook for a situation that affects us all: the death of a loved one. The most important canonical text in this regard is The Tantra Purifying All Evil Destinies (Toh 483), and indeed, if the form of the dhāraṇī is anything to go by, our text does seem to have some kind of connection with that major scripture.
The evidence for the original Sanskrit is somewhat thin: a mere fragment of two and a half lines in an Indian Compilation of Dhāraṇīs.1 However, even from this small fragment, which contains the full dhāraṇī and a passage from the applications, we can surmise that the version transmitted in India was somewhat different. We also know of an eponymous goddess who is clearly a personified dhāraṇī from the Indian tradition. The distinguished and influential scholar Abhayākaragupta in his Niṣpannayogāvalī describes her as an inhabitant of the Dharmadhātuvāgīśvara maṇḍala, green in color and holding a white lotus with a red tint marked by a vajra scepter with three prongs.2
The Tibetan translation is recorded in the imperial catalogs3 and there is at least one Dunhuang witness available to us.4 Unfortunately, the identity of the translators was not recorded, or if there was once a record, this has not survived. This witness from the famous Dunhuang collection is, despite its age, not a perfect copy. However, it provides some interesting variant readings, which we discuss in the notes to the translation. This text is included in both the Action Tantra section (Toh 743) and the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section (Toh 1009) of the Degé Kangyur and other Tshalpa-lineage Kangyurs that include such a separate section. As far as we are aware, there is no extant Chinese translation.
This English translation was made principally on the basis of the Tibetan translations of the text found in the Tantra Collection (rgyud ’bum) and the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs (gzungs ’dus) of the Degé Kangyur in consultation with the Stok Palace Kangyur. We also compared these texts carefully against the Dunhuang witness, as will be evident from the notes that mark all major discrepancies. Additionally, we consulted the Sanskrit manuscript fragment, a transcript of which we include here in an appendix.
Text Body
Purifying All Karmic Obscurations
The Translation
namo ratnatrayāya | oṃ kaṅkani kaṅkani rocani rocani troṭani troṭani trāsani trāsani pratihana pratihana sarvakarmaparamparāṇi me svāhā |5
If one recites it constantly,6 the entire succession of karma will be purified one by one.
If one recites it at the three junctures of the day,7 even the five sins of immediate retribution will be purified.
If one recites it once, bad omens, bad dreams, and inauspicious events will disappear.
If one holds it on one’s body or writes it into a booklet and8 wears it tied around one’s neck, one will never experience any of the untimely deaths.
If one is overcome with compassion and recites it into the ears of a moribund9 beast, bird, human, or nonhuman being, that being will not be reborn in the unfavorable destinies.
Moreover, if somebody has died some time ago and one recites it one hundred, one thousand, or one hundred thousand times, with friendly kindness and compassion, in the name of the dead person,10 that sentient being will be liberated at that very moment, even if they have already been born in the hells.
If one recites it over some earth, or sesame seeds, or mustard seeds, or water and scatters that over the corpse, or washes the corpse,11 and then has it cremated,12 or places it for keeping in a caitya,13 or if one writes the spell [F.236.b] and places it on their head, that person will certainly be liberated in seven days, even if already born in an unfavorable destiny. That person will be reborn in a favorable destiny, among the gods, or wherever the aspirational prayer wished.
If one undergoes purification by ritually bathing throughout the waxing fortnight of the moon, changes clothes three times a day, fasts or eats white meals, and recites the spell one hundred thousand times in the name of a dead person,14 while circumambulating a caitya containing a relic, that person will be liberated from the lower realms. That person will then be reborn among the gods of the Pure Abodes and appear in front of the practitioner,15 perform worship, manifest his own appearance,16 congratulate the practitioner,17 circumambulate him three times, and then finally disappear.
If one writes down a dead person’s name, recites the spell, and creates one hundred thousand caityas18 worshiped with parasols, banners, streamers,19 and so on, and casts them into the sea or a great river, then that person will be liberated from the hells, and so on.20
Alternatively, having performed worship in the same way, if at the end one constructs a great caitya at a crossroads, worships it with parasols, banners, streamers, and so on, and then offers a meal and makes donations to the noble monastic community in worship21—as well as proclaims, “May this become a root of merit for so-and-so!22 Indeed, by this,23 may he attain a favorable rebirth among the gods!”—that person will be reborn there, manifest his own appearance, offer one congratulations,24 and then disappear.
25Whether one has committed the five sins of immediate retribution, or whether one is an apostate of the true Dharma, or whether one has disrespected the noble ones, if one sees this dhāraṇī, say, written on a wall at the time of death, all one’s karmic obscurations will cease, how much more so if one chants and recites it! That very tathāgata shall come to one and say “Noble son! Come to me!”26
Here ends “The Noble Dhāraṇī ‘Purifying All Karmic Obscurations’.”
Appendix
This is a revised reading of the manuscript fragment Cambridge University Library Ms. Add. 1680.8.3 (+ denotes a lost akṣara):
namo bhagavate ’kṣobhyāya tathāgatāyārhate samyaksaṃbuddhāya | tadyathā oṃ hūṃ kakani kakani | vākani vākani | rocani rocani | troṭani | troṭani | saṃtrāsani | saṃtrāsani + + + 2 pratihana 2 sarvakarmaparamparāni me svāhā | ya imāṃ dhāraṇīm antaśaḥ kuḍyalikhitām api paśyet tasya pañcānantaryāṇi parikṣayaṃ [explicit]
Notes
Bibliography
Source Texts
’phags pa las kyi sgrib pa thams cad rnam par sbyong ba zhes bya ba’i gzungs (Āryasarvakarmāvaraṇaviśodhanīnāmadhāraṇī). Toh 743, Degé Kangyur vol. 94 (rgyud, tsha), folios 236.a–236.b.
’phags pa las kyi sgrib pa thams cad rnam par sbyong ba zhes bya ba’i gzungs (Āryasarvakarmāvaraṇaviśodhanīnāmadhāraṇī). Toh 1009, Degé Kangyur vol. 101 (gzungs ’dus, waṃ), folios 178.a–179.a.
’phags pa las kyi sgrib pa thams cad rnam par sbyong ba zhes bya ba’i gzungs. Stok Palace Kangyur vol. 108 (rgyud, tsa), folios 88.a–89.b.
Pelliot tibétain 49.3. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. Accessed through The International Dunhuang Project: The Silk Road Online.
Other Sources
Chakravarti, Chintaharan. Guhyasamājatantrapradīpodyotanaṭīkā-ṣaṭkoṭīvyākhyā. Tibetan Sanskrit Works Series no. 25. Patna: Kashi Prasad Jayaswal Research Institute, 1984.
Denkarma (pho brang stod thang ldan dkar gyi chos kyi ’gyur ro cog gi dkar chag). Toh 4364, Degé Tengyur vol. 206 (sna tshogs, jo), folios 294.b–310.a.
Herrmann-Pfandt, Adelheid. Die lHan kar ma: ein früher Katalog der ins Tibetische übersetzten buddhistischen Texte. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2008.
Hidas, Gergely. Powers of Protection: The Buddhist Tradition of Spells in the Dhāraṇīsaṃgraha Collections. Beyond Boundaries 9. Boston: de Gruyter, 2021.
Kawagoe, Eishin, ed. dKar chag ’Phang thang ma. Tōhoku Indo Chibetto Kenkyū Sōsho 3. Sendai: Tohoku Society for Indo-Tibetan Studies, 2005.
Lalou, Marcelle. Inventaire des Manuscrits tibétains de Touen-houang conservés à la Bibliothèque Nationale (Fonds Pelliot tibétain nos. 1 - 849), vol. 1. Paris: Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1939.
Lee, Yong Hyun. The Niṣpannayogāvalī by Abhayākaragupta. Seoul: Baegun Press, 2004.
Szántó, Péter-Dániel. “Selected Chapters from the Catuṣpīṭhatantra.” 2 vols. Unpublished DPhil diss., University of Oxford, 2012.
Glossary
Types of attestation for names and terms of the corresponding source language
Attested in source text
This term is attested in a manuscript used as a source for this translation.
Attested in other text
This term is attested in other manuscripts with a parallel or similar context.
Attested in dictionary
This term is attested in dictionaries matching Tibetan to the corresponding language.
Approximate attestation
The attestation of this name is approximate. It is based on other names where the relationship between the Tibetan and source language is attested in dictionaries or other manuscripts.
Reconstruction from Tibetan phonetic rendering
This term is a reconstruction based on the Tibetan phonetic rendering of the term.
Reconstruction from Tibetan semantic rendering
This term is a reconstruction based on the semantics of the Tibetan translation.
Source unspecified
This term has been supplied from an unspecified source, which most often is a widely trusted dictionary.
Abhayākaragupta
- —
- —
- abhayākaragupta
Akṣobhya
- mi ’khrugs pa
- མི་འཁྲུགས་པ།
- akṣobhya
aspirational prayer
- smon lam
- སྨོན་ལམ།
- praṇidhāna
banner
- rgyal mtshan
- རྒྱལ་མཚན།
- dhvaja
caitya
- mchod rten
- མཆོད་རྟེན།
- caitya
dhāraṇī
- gzungs
- གཟུངས།
- dhāraṇī
five sins of immediate retribution
- mtshams med pa lnga
- མཚམས་མེད་པ་ལྔ།
- pañcānantarya
karmic obscurations
- las kyi sgrib pa
- ལས་ཀྱི་སྒྲིབ་པ།
- karmāvaraṇa
parasol
- gdugs
- གདུགས།
- chattra
Pure Abodes
- gnas gtsang ma
- གནས་གཙང་མ།
- śuddhāvāsika
relic
- sku gdung
- སྐུ་གདུང་།
- dhātu
root of merit
- dge ba’i rtsa ba
- དགེ་བའི་རྩ་བ།
- kuśalamūla
spell
- gzungs
- གཟུངས།
- dhāraṇī
streamer
- ba dan
- བ་དན།
- patākā
tathāgata
- de bzhin gshegs pa
- དེ་བཞིན་གཤེགས་པ།
- tathāgata
The Tantra Purifying All Evil Destinies
- ngan song thams cad yongs su sbyong ba’i rgyud
- ངན་སོང་ཐམས་ཅད་ཡོངས་སུ་སྦྱོང་བའི་རྒྱུད།
- sarvadurgatipariśodhanatantra
Three Jewels
- dkon mchog gsum
- དཀོན་མཆོག་གསུམ།
- ratnatraya
three junctures of the day
- dus gsum
- དུས་གསུམ།
- triṣkāla
untimely death
- dus ma yin par ’chi ba
- དུས་མ་ཡིན་པར་འཆི་བ།
- akālamaraṇa