Chapter 29

29.1At that time the blessed Śākyamuni again directed his gaze at the realm of the Pure Abode and spoke to Mañjuśrī, the divine youth, as follows: {29.1}

29.2“There is, Mañjuśrī, in this division of your ritual prescriptions, a seventh [set of] rites involving a painting that will be effective at the end of the [dark] eon and will without fail lead to accomplishment. This accomplishment will include the arising and maturing of happiness, the knowledge of the physical world, and the forestalling of all painful destinies, and it will certainly lead to awakening.” {29.2}

29.3The blessed Śākyamuni then taught the heart mantra of Mañjuśrī, the divine youth:

“Oṁ vākyeda namaḥ!

“Now its ritual will be taught. Living on a diet of solid and liquid dishes of vegetables or barley, bathing [F.229.b] [F.246.b] and changing clothes thrice a day, one should recite the mantra one hundred thousand times. This constitutes the preliminary practice. Then, one should commission a painter who is fasting to paint Noble Mañjuśrī on an undamaged cloth with fringed edges, using uncontaminated paints. He sits on a lotus seat and teaches the Dharma in the form of a divine youth, adorned with all the ornaments, with his upper robe over one shoulder. {29.6}

29.7“To his left there is Noble Avalokiteśvara with a lotus and a yak-tail whisk in his hands, and to his right, Noble Samantabhadra. Above [Mañjuśrī], two vidyādharas should be drawn emerging from the clouds and holding garlands. Below [Mañjuśrī] should be drawn the practitioner, holding an incense holder in his hand. Mountain peaks should be drawn all around, and below, a lotus lake. {29.7}

29.8“One should install this painting, facing west, in a caitya containing relics, offer a large pūjā, light butter lamps, and cast one thousand and eight flowers of royal jasmine at Mañjuśrī’s face, one at a time, incanting each of them with the mantra. Subsequently, a loud and deep sound of hūṁ will be heard, or the painting will shake. If the sound is heard, one will become a king over the entire earth; if the painting shakes, one will excel among all speakers and will become an adept of all worldly treatises. If one does not succeed [in this], one will become proficient in all rites.”

This concludes the first rite. {29.8}

29.9“One should offer oblations, throughout the entire night, of agalloch sticks smeared with mustard oil, more than half a finger long, onto the smokeless embers of cutch firewood. At sunrise, one will behold Noble Mañjuśrī, who will grant whatever boon one desires, except for hedonistic ones. {29.9}

29.10“One should recite the mantra all night, while burning sandalwood incense in front of the painting without interruption. Subsequently, Blessed Mañjuśrī will arrive in person and give profound [F.230.a] [F.247.a] Dharma teachings. One should apply oneself to them with confidence. By doing so, one will be free from all disease and able to fully exercise one’s own will. {29.10}

29.11“One should make a lotus flower out of red sandalwood, six fingers in circumference, complete with a stem, and wipe it with red sandalwood paste. One should then incant the residue of one thousand such oblations one thousand times. Then, during the full moon, one should place it on a lotus leaf and hold it up in one’s hands in front of the painting. One should recite the mantra until the substance emits light. By taking hold of it, one will obtain the form of a sixteen-year-old divine youth, the color of molten gold, exceeding in splendor the sun itself. One will be honored by all the vidyādharas and will live one great eon. After death, one will be reborn in Abhirati. {29.11}

29.12“During a lunar eclipse, one should get some white sweet flag, wipe it with the five products of a cow, stuff some pipal leaves underneath it, and recite the mantra until the sweet flag gets hot, then emits smoke, and then bursts into flames. If it gets hot, one will be able to enthrall all people and outmatch all speakers. If it emits smoke, one will become invisible and live thirty thousand years. If it bursts into flames, one will be able to walk on air and will live for one great eon. {29.12}

29.13“One should obtain some ghee from a tawny cow that has given birth to a calf of the same color, place it in a copper bowl stuffed with seven pipal leaves, and recite the mantra until the triple effect occurs [of the ghee becoming hot, emitting smoke, and bursting into flames]. After drinking it, one will be able to, [respectively], retain in one’s memory everything that one has heard, become invisible, and walk on air. {29.13}

29.14“During a lunar eclipse, one should place some puṣkara seeds in one’s mouth and recite the mantra until the seeds make a bubbling sound. If one places them in the mouth wrapped in the three metals, one will become invisible. One will become visible again after spitting them out. {29.14}

29.15“One should place in one’s mouth some fragrant cloves and recite the mantra six hundred thousand times. Whoever one speaks to will become enthralled. If one recites the mantra one million two hundred thousand times while subsisting on dishes of milk and barley, [F.230.b] [F.247.b] one will become a vidyādhara. If one recites the mantra one hundred thousand times while living on alms and observing a strict vow of silence, one will become invisible. If one recites the mantra ten million times, one will receive Dharma teachings from Noble Mañjuśrī [himself] so that one becomes a bodhisattva who sojourns on earth for the last time. If one recites continually, all one’s aims will be accomplished. {29.15}

29.16“The target whose effigy, made of ‘all fragrances,’ one chops up and offers the fragments of as oblations will become enthralled after seven nights. If one offers one hundred thousand oblations of bdellium pills, the size of a kernel of the jujube fruit, smeared with ghee, one will obtain one hundred thousand dinars. {29.16}

29.17“One should descend to a river that empties into the ocean and offer one hundred thousand lotuses. One will obtain a great treasure equal in size to the heap [of the offered] lotuses. This treasure will never become exhausted. If one offers into the fire one thousand and eight oblations of white mustard seeds smeared with saffron [paste], one will enthrall a king. If one offers one hundred thousand oblations of sesame seeds smeared with curds, honey, and ghee, one will become a great householder who gives everything away. {29.17}

29.18“One should draw a circle with uncontaminated cow dung, bestrew it with flowers, and recite the mantra one hundred and eight times. If one subsequently reads aloud a genuine Dharma text, one will become supremely intelligent within one month. If one incants bovine bezoar one hundred and eight times and applies it as a bindi, one will be loved by all the people. If one incants [one’s] topknot seven times, one will become invulnerable to assault by any being. {29.18}

29.19“If one offers ten thousand oblations of kiri garlands, one will become free from all disease. If one recites the mantra seven times every day, one will purify the karma that would otherwise be inevitably experienced. If one recites the mantra one hundred and eight times at the time of death, one will behold the complete [form of] Noble Mañjuśrī face to face.

This concludes the seventh [set of] rites [that employ] the painting.” {29.19}

29.20This concludes the detailed chapter with the seventh [set of] rites in the section on the ritual procedures that employ the painting of Noble Mañjuśrī, twenty-ninth in “The Root Manual of Noble Mañjuśrī,” an extensive Mahāyāna sūtra that forms a garland-like basket of bodhisattva teachings.