Vajrasattva

Vajrasatva's name translates to Diamond Being or Thunderbolt Being. The vajra is an iconic marker for Esoteric Buddhism.

Vajrasattva is an important figure in the tantric Buddhism of the Newar People of the Kathmandu Valley. He represents the ideal guru, and he is frequently invoked in the guru maṇḍala, the foundational ritual for all other Newar Buddhist rituals and the daily pūjā for Newar priests (vajrācāryas). The śatākṣara (100 syllable prayer to Vajrasattva) is memorized by many practicing Newar Buddhist priests.

Depiction of Vajrasatva seated on a lotus. Japan, 14th century CE

In Chinese Buddhism and Shingon, Vajrasatva is traditionally viewed as the second patriarch of Esoteric Buddhism, the first being Vairocana Buddha. According to Kukai's writings in Record of the Dharma Transmission he relates a story based on Amoghavajra's account that Nagarjuna met Vajrasatva in an iron tower in southern India. Vajrasatva initiated Nagarjuna into the abhiseka ritual and entrusted him with the esoteric teachings he had learned from Vairocana Buddha, as depicted in the Mahavairocana Sutra. Kukai does not elaborate further on Vajrasatva or his origins.[3]

Elsewhere, Vajrasatva is an important figure in two esoteric Buddhist sutras, the Mahavairocana Sutra and the Vajrasekhara Sutra. In the first chapter of the Mahavairocana Sutra, Vajrasatva leads a host of beings who visit Vairocana Buddha to learn the Dharma. Vajrasatva inquires about the cause, goal and foundation of all-embracing wisdom, which leads to a philosophical discourse delivered by the Buddha. The audience cannot comprehend the teaching, so the Buddha demonstrates through the use of mandala. Vajrasatva then questions why rituals and objects are needed if the truth is beyond form. Vairocana Buddha replies to Vajrasatva that these are expedient means whose function is to bring practitioners to awakening more readily, and so on. In Shingon Buddhist rituals for initiation; the kechien kanjō; the initiate re-enacts the role of Vajrasatva and recites mantra and dialogue from the sutras above. The Mahācārya enacts the role of Mahavairocana Buddha, bestowing wisdom upon the student.

In certain esoteric Chinese Buddhist rituals such as the Grand Mengshan Food Bestowal ceremony (Chinese: 蒙山施食; pinyin: méngshān shīshí) and the Samadhi Water Repentance Ceremony (Chinese: 三昧水懺; pinyin: Sānmèi shuǐchàn), Vajrasatta's mantra is commonly recited as part of the liturgy while the performing monastic uses ritual vajras and ghantas to expel demons from the ritual platform.

In Tibetan Buddhism the Vajrasattva root tantra is Dorje Gyan, or "Vajra Ornament".[4] Vajrasattva practices are common to all of the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism and are used both to purify obscurations so that the Vajrayana student can progress beyond Ngondro practices to the various yoga practices of tantra and also to purify any broken samaya vows after initiation. As such, Vajrasattva practice is an essential element of Tibetan Buddhist practice.

In addition to personal practice, the Vajrasattva mantra is regarded as having the ability to purify karma, bring peace, and cause enlightened activity in general. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche announced a project, Prayer 4 Peace, to accumulate one billion six syllable Vajrasattva recitations from practitioners around the world. The six syllable mantra (oṁ Vajrasattva Hūṁ), is a less formal version of the one hundred syllable mantra on which it is based but contains the essential spiritual points of the longer mantra, according to lama and tulku Jamgon Kongtrul.[5]

An important mantra associated with Vajrasattva is the Hundred Syllable Mantra. This mantra appears in the Sarvatathāgata-tattvasaṃgraha.[8] The earliest appearance of the mantra is in a collection of mantras (T.866) translated into Chinese by Vajrabodhi (c. 671-741) in 723 CE called A Summary of Recitations Taken from the Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṃgrahasūtra (金剛頂瑜伽中略出念誦經).[9]

The mantra is the following:

In Tibetan Buddhism

The 100 syllable mantra of Vajrasattva in Lañja and Tibetan scripts

In Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist practice, Vajrasattva is used in the Ngondro, or preliminary practices, in order to purify the mind's defilements, prior to undertaking more advanced tantric techniques. The yik gya, the "Hundred Syllable Mantra" (Tibetan: ཡིག་བརྒྱ་, Wylie: yig brgya) supplication of Vajrasattva, approaches universality in the various elementary Ngondro sadhana for sadhakas of all Mantrayana and Sarma schools bar the Bonpo. The pronunciation and orthography differ between lineages.

The evocation of the Hundred Syllable Vajrasattva Mantra in the Vajrayana lineage of Jigme Lingpa's (1729–1798) ngondro from the Longchen Nyingtig displays Sanskrit-Tibetan hybridization. Such textual and dialectical diglossia (Sanskrit: dvaibhāṣika) is evident from the earliest transmission of tantra into the region, where the original Sanskrit phonemes and lexical items are often orthographically rendered in the Tibetan, rather than the comparable indigenous terms (Davidson, 2002).[11] Though Jigme Lingpa did not compose the Hundred Syllable Mantra, his scribal style bears a marked similarity to it as evidenced by his biographies (Gyatso, 1998).[12] Jigme Lingpa as pandit, which in the Himalayan context denotes an indigenous Tibetan versed in Sanskrit, often wrote in a hybridized Sanskrit-Tibetan diglossia.

• Ritual purification

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Vajrasattva.

• Rangjung Yeshe Dictionary entry
• Samye Institute Library entry
• Video of a segment of a Chinese Yogacara Flaming Mouth ceremony (瑜伽焰口法會) where Vajrasattva's mantra "Oṃ Vajrasattva Hūṃ" is recited (at around the 10 second mark)
• Video of a segment of a Samadhi Water Repentance ceremony in Taiwan where Vajrasattva's mantra "Oṃ Vajrasattva Hūṃ" is recited (at around the 20:17 minute mark)
• Video of a segment of a Chinese Yogacara Flaming Mouth ceremony (瑜伽焰口法會) showing recitation of Vajrasattva's Hundred Syllable Mantra