The Vajrasattva ("100-syllable") Mantra and the Lord's Prayer

The Vajrasattva (“100-syllable”) Mantra and the Lord's Prayer DAVIDE VENTURA February 3rd, 2014 Origin The text of the Mantra occurs for the first time in the Sarvatathāgata-tattvasaṅgraha, a 7 th century Tantric text belonging to the Chinese canon. It is written in Classical Sanskrit (albeit with some weird spellings); features that characterize the so-called “Hybrid Sanskrit” language more normally used in the Buddhist literature are not found. Text The text reads1: oṁ vajra sattvasamayamanupālaya vajrasattvatvenopatiṣṭha dṛḍho me bhava sutoṣyo me bhavānurakto me bhava supoṣyo me bhava sarvasiddhiñca me prayaccha sarvakarmasu ca me cittaśreyaḥ kuru hūṁ ha ha ha ha hoḥ bhagavan sarvatathāgatavajra mā me muṁca vajrībhava mahāsamayasatva āḥ|| The divergence with the usual Tibetan rendering in recitation is in some points quite stark. Apparently, a long chain of transmission has gradually “worn out” the text, impairing the correct understanding of some terms. 1 For the reconstruction of the Sanskrit text I rely on the work of Sthiramati Andrew Skilton, The Vajrasattva Mantra, notes on a corrected Sanskrit text, published on the WBO Order Journal, vol. 3, Nov. 1990, differing in many details from the traditional Tibetan reading, especially in the matter of breaking up words and lines. Further details can be found in Jayarava Attwood, The 100 Syllable Vajrasattva Mantra, available online at http://www.academia.edu/1328050, to which I refer for an extensive bibliography. Interpretation 1. Oṁ – Standard opening. 2. vajra sattva samayam anupālaya – Oh Vajrasattva (being of diamond/thunderbolt), honor the agreement. (In Tibetan versions, the last m of samayam is usually attached to the following word, giving a non readily intelligible result). 3. vajrasattvatvena upatiṣṭha – Manifest your being Vajrasattva. (Here the only possible way to make sense in Sanskrit is to read the first term as a single word, namely an instrumental case of an abstract “vajrasattvatva”, the “fact of being Vajr.”). 4. dṛḍho me bhava – Be steadfast to me. 5. sutoṣyo me bhava – Be pleased of me. 6. anurakto me bhava – Be gratified at me. 7. supoṣyo me bhava – Be nourishment for me. (The last two lines are usually swapped in the Tibetan texts). 8. sarvasiddhiñca me prayaccha – And grant me a comprehensive fulfillment. (The first term is singular, so it is not “all attainments”). 9. sarvakarmasu ca me cittaśreyaḥ kuru – And in all my actions make (show) a benign mind. (This is a key passage. Normally the su of the first term – a locative plural ending – is joined with the following ca to make suca. This term in turn is wrongly read as śuca – purify. Hence, the purification sense traditionally given to the mantra is not to be found explicitly in the text, even though it can be restored if we give an implicit negative meaning to the term karma “(defiled) actions”. So, the line can be given two different, or rather parallel, meanings: “show forgiveness for all my defiled actions” and “show all my actions as (having been made by) a benign mind”. 10. hūṁ ha ha ha ha hoḥ – ... some laughter. (Well, lots of symbolic meanings, surely). 11. bhagavan sarvatathāgatavajra mā me muṁca – Oh blessed one, diamond of all the gonebeyond ones, do not abandon me. 12. vajrībhava mahāsamayasattva – Become a diamond, oh essence of the Great Assembly. 13. āḥ. Maybe a coincidence? The Lord's Prayer as it occurs in Matthew 6, 9:13 The Lord's Prayer as it occurs in Luke 11, 2:4 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. . Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. 8. And lead us not into temptation. 9. . I was drawn to some comparisons between our Buddhist text and the well-known Lord's Prayer once I read the first line of the former, “honor the agreement”. Because the first line of the Prayer (or rather the second one, after the address “Father...”), actually conveys the very same meaning. “Hallow” there is a synonym of the more frequent “sanctify”, a term with a wide variety of usages, most of which make reference to priests in the Temple or to offerings, or worship tools. You can sanctify a sheep, an altar, the sons of Aaron... The obvious sense is “to confer a legitimate ritual role on them”. But what does it mean to “sanctify God”, or “His name”? Some passages of the Jewish Bible2 shed light on that acception. “This is the thing which the Lord spoke, saying, I will be sanctified among them that draw nigh to me” (Leviticus 10:3). God has just let die two sons of Aaron, who had performed a sacrifice not in the manner that had been agreed upon. So the meaning of sanctify here is: “I will show that I act according to the agreement”. “... because ye transgressed my commandment in the wilderness of Sin, when the congregation resisted and refused to sanctify me; ye sanctified me not at the water before them”. (Numbers 27, 14). Again, the meaning is: “you did not rely on me to do what I had said”. From this meaning, which is primary, it was straightforward to develop a secondary meaning “entitled to worship”, a meaning that is found dozens of times in the liturgical books of the Bible: somebody or something is sanctified if he/it has met all the agreed prescriptions, and thus he/it can licitly perform a liturgical role in the Temple. Finally, a third sense of “sanctified” develops, in close continuity with the second one: “set aside for God's service”. Going back to the primary sense, a remarkable text explicitly joins together the notions of sanctification and fidelity to a pact: “And ye shall observe my ordinances, and do them: I am the Lord who sanctifies you”. (Leviticus 20, 8). So, “hallowed be your name” means exactly “May it be shown that You will act according to the pacts, to the covenant that was agreed between You and us”. Which coincides with the beginning of the 100-syllable mantra. I will touch upon the following lines in order to check if the coincidence noticed above can evolve into a stronger case. • The term “vajrasattvatva” in the third line of the Mantra is an abstract, as if “the fact that you essence is unwavering”. That fact must be manifested. Which is more or less what the Lord's Prayer asks about the “kingdom” (another comparable abstract term). • The sense of the request 4. in the Prayer (absent in Luke) is: may your will be done by us just as it is unerringly done by the heavenly powers and celestial bodies (some of the early Fathers explicitly add “by us” or “in us” after or instead of “on earth” within the text). And lines 4, 5 and 6 of the Mantra, after asking a “steadfast” or “firm” direction of Vajrasattva, go on to express the wish that our own behavior may find his warm approval. • The nutritional parallelism between line 7 of the Mantra and line 5 of the Prayer is too obvious to be commented. Rather, some remarks can be made on the term “sarvasiddhi” in line 8. In the technical parlance of religious practice, siddhi has the noted meaning of “magical powers”. But that is not its primary, everyday sense. The direct sense of siddhi is rather an indication of comprehensive completion and fulfillment, as in Siddhartha, “the purpose is fulfilled”. So, sarvasiddhi indicates the full moon day, but it can also have the material meaning of a liquidation, the final settlement of an obligation, the final installment of a delivery. Now, keeping that in mind and going back to line 5 of the Prayer, we find that the usual English translation trivializes the deepest meaning of the sentence. The biblical 2 All Old Testament citations are drawn from the Greek LXX version, translated into English by L. C. L. Brenton, Hendrickson Publishers, 2007. reference there is to the Manna falling upon the Israelites in the desert; and falling twice the usual amount on Friday, because picking it is forbidden on Saturday. Hence, reading the Greek term epiousios as “forthcoming” rather than “daily” (as many early Fathers do), the request is “give us today our bread of tomorrow”, or “liquidate today our weekly delivery”. Sarvasiddhi... • As to the parallel between line 9. in the Mantra and lines 6. and 7. in the Prayer, I can only rewrite what was observed above, namely that the Sanskrit line can be given two different, or rather parallel, meanings: “show forgiveness for all my defiled actions” and “show all my actions as (having been made by) a benign mind”. • The mā me muñca “do not abandon, forsake me” of line 11. of the Mantra has obvious, though incomplete resonance with line 8. of the Prayer. No explicit mention is made in the Mantra of a danger of temptation by an evil one. • On the other hand, lines 11. and 12. of the Mantra include several expression of praise. Vajrasattva is extolled as the blessed one, the firm essence of all the fully realized beings and of the “great assembly” (of the gods). No such doxology is contained in the canonical text of the Prayer; but a doxology is actually contained in the most common English version: “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen”. This sentence was attached to the Prayer in the King James Version on the grounds of some Eastern manuscripts. Most Syriac versions of Matthew's Gospel have the doxology, showing that the addition had found its place in the written tradition of the Gospels of what we call (improperly) the Nestorian Church, that is, the Christian Church active within the Persian Empire before the Islamic conquest in the seventh century. A Church that was thus coextensive with an empire stretching from the banks of the Euphrates to those of the Indus, and that comprised the Greco-Buddhist regions of Gandhara and Bactria, where Mahāyāna and Tantric schools were flourishing. And where unexpected hybridizations may have happened. Conclusions The correspondence in meaning between single lines of different texts can be accidental. When the parallelism holds for virtually all the lines, order included, chance can be safely ruled out. This does not mean that the Sanskrit text of the Mantra is merely a translation of the better known Lord's Prayer, nor any evidence can be found of the opposite case. Even though the correspondence of sense is as strict as it has been shown, the words and constructs that are utilized are different enough. Key concepts of the Lord's Prayer are conspicuously absent in the Sanskrit text, notably the reference to a heavenly Father, and the apotropaic meaning conveyed by the last two lines of the Prayer. The sense explicitly expressed by lines 2. and 8. of the Mantra has been found here to be strictly correspondent to what is asked in the lines 2. and 5. of the Prayer; but in the latter text, that meaning is stated by means of elaborate citations from the Hebrew Bible. Still, whoever composed the Vajrasattva Mantra must have been familiar with the sense and the very text of the Lord's Prayer 3. His intention was apparently to mold the latter text into a conceptual form more adapted to a predominantly Buddhist culture, a purpose that proved very successful. The Greco-Buddhist Bactrian milieu of the first centuries a. C., an environment that was later heavily penetrated by the Christian preaching, and that hosted several Nestorian dioceses before the Islamic onslaught, is ideally posed to be the birthplace of such a peculiar hybridization. 3 The time frame of the diffusion of Tantric texts and doctrines seems to rule out an influence in the opposite direction.