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Mantras

Om Mani Padme Hum

ohm MAH-nee PAHD-may HOOM
Buddhism Mantras

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Origin 300 to 500 CE

The mantra of Avalokiteshvara and the most widely recited formula in the Buddhist world, carved on stones, turned in prayer wheels and printed on flags. The popular English rendering, the jewel in the lotus, is grammatically wrong: manipadme is a vocative addressed to one called Jewel-Lotus, and the form is feminine, which points to the consort rather than to the bodhisattva. Tibetan commentary assigns the six syllables to the six realms of rebirth and to the six perfections. It is deliberately taught to everyone, and unlike much Vajrayana material it requires no empowerment.

Facts
Practice
Who Performs It
All adherents of the tradition 1
Frequency
Continuous: a standing discipline, not an event 1
Repeated without a fixed number, and turned in prayer wheels
Solitary or Communal
Performed alone or together 1
Form
How It Is Recited or Sung
Repeated aloud or under the breath, counted on a mala, turned in a prayer wheel, and carved on mani stones so that the landscape recites it 1
Type of Mantra
Six-syllable mantra 1
Attributions
Tradition
Buddhism (Mahayana and Vajrayana) 1
Origins
Origin Period
300 to 500 CE 1
Language
Sanskrit 1
Sanskrit, recited in Tibetan and Chinese pronunciations
Use
What It Is Used For
Invocation: calls on a god or a holy name 1
What It Is Used For
Contemplative: repeated to still or transform the mind 1
Learn More
Six Syllables That Resist Translation

The most-recited formula in the Buddhist world is also among the most confidently mistranslated.

The jewel in the lotus is wrong, and the reason is grammatical rather than interpretive. If manipadme were a compound meaning jewel-in-lotus it would need a locative sense the form does not carry as written; read as it stands, it is a vocative, an address to someone called Jewel-Lotus, and the ending is feminine. A feminine vocative points to a female addressee, which in the Vajrayana context suggests a consort figure rather than Avalokiteshvara himself. This has been set out in detail by Sanskritists, notably in Donald Lopez's study of the formula, and the point is not disputed by people who read the language.

What the surrounding syllables do is not translation-shaped at all. Om is inherited from Vedic usage; hum is a seed syllable with no lexical meaning. A formula in which four of six syllables have no dictionary sense is not primarily a sentence.

The tradition's own readings are theological rather than lexical and are offered as such. Tibetan commentary assigns each syllable a realm of rebirth it closes, an affliction it purifies, and a perfection it corresponds to, with the schemes varying between commentators. The fourteenth Dalai Lama's frequently reprinted explanation follows this pattern.

The interesting thing is that a formula recited billions of times has no agreed literal meaning, and that this troubles almost nobody inside the tradition.

Deliberately Open

Vajrayana Buddhism runs a strict distinction between mantras anyone may recite and mantras that come only with the empowerment authorising the practice they belong to. This one is emphatically in the first class, and its openness is not an accident of publication.

It is carved into stone at roadsides and on mani walls, printed in blocks and hung as prayer flags, rolled into cylinders and turned, painted on rock faces, and taught to children. Tibetan teachers state without qualification that no permission is needed. Its association with Avalokiteshvara, and through him with the Dalai Lamas as his emanation, made it in effect the national formula of Tibet, and its recitation has functioned since 1959 as a marker of Tibetan identity under Chinese rule.

The contrast with the closed material is deliberate on the tradition's part rather than accidental. The mantras of specific meditational deities, the practices of the higher tantras, and the hundred-syllable purification formula are transmitted inside the rite that confers them, together with the visualisations they are inseparable from, and are not published for general use. This collection records that distinction and supplies nothing from the closed side of it.

The commonest Western error is to reason from the availability of this one to the availability of all of them, and then to treat a teacher's refusal as secrecy for its own sake. The tradition's own reasoning is that a mantra without its practice and its transmission is a sound without a technique, and that supplying the first without the second is not generosity.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Addressed To

Avalokiteshvara, Deities

Om Mani Padme Hum is the mantra of Avalokiteshvara.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Belongs to Tradition

Buddhism, Religions

Derived from the tradition recorded on the mantra, Buddhism (Mahayana and Vajrayana).

Element Of

Kagyu, Denominations

The Karmapas are held to be emanations of Avalokiteshvara, whose mantra this is, so the recitation and the lineage make the same claim.

Karma Kagyu, Denominations

Recited in the Karma Kagyu the more insistently because the head of the lineage is understood to be the bodhisattva the mantra addresses.

Mahayana, Denominations

The mantra of Avalokiteshvara, whose vow to hear the cries of the world is the Mahayana account of what a bodhisattva is for.

Tibetan Buddhism, Denominations

Carved on roadside stones, turned in prayer wheels and printed on flags, and the most recited formula in the Tibetan world.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Originates in Language

Sanskrit, Languages
Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Related To

Tantra, Disciplines

This six-syllable mantra is a widely known example of Vajrayana Buddhist tantric mantra practice. Specific thematic correspondence between this mantra and this discipline.

Source The Weaving of Mantra: Kukai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist DiscourseRyuichi Abe
Tibetan Ma མ, Alphabet Letters

Ma writes the first syllable of the two that give the six-syllable mantra of Avalokiteshvara its common name. The mantra is public, is carved on mani stones and mani walls across the Himalayan world and is turned in prayer wheels, and it is the single most widely seen string of Tibetan writing anywhere.

Source The Handbook of Tibetan Buddhist SymbolsRobert Beer
Sources
1. The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism
Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr., Princeton University Press, 2014from the mantra's own catalogue recordView the Source
Mantra
Harvey P. Alper, editor, State University of New York Press, 1989On the grammar of manipadme as a feminine vocative
Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005s.v. Avalokitesvara and s.v. MantraView the Source
Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West
Donald S. Lopez Jr., University of Chicago Press, 1998The grammar of manipadme
Quote, The grammar of manipadme
The form is a feminine vocative, so the jewel-in-the-lotus rendering is not available; the addressee is one called Jewel-Lotus.
View the Source
Karandavyuha Sutra
AnonymousThe mantra in its sutra setting
Quote, The mantra in its sutra setting
The Karandavyuha Sutra, of perhaps the fourth or fifth century, is where the formula is framed.
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