OBON. SeeGhost Festival
OM MANI PADME HUM
Ommani padme humis the MANTRAof the bodhisattva
Avalokites ́vara. In recitation, rotation, and writing, the
six-syllable mantra, as it is popularly known, is deeply
embedded in daily life throughout the Tibetan cultural
sphere. It is an invocation to the bodhisattva in the
guise of Manipadma (the final e is a vocative case end-
ing to the feminine noun). It might therefore be ren-
dered “OmO [thou who] hast a jewel and lotus Hum.”
This interpretation, though familiar to Tibetan ex-
egetes since at least the ninth century, has largely
eluded Westerners, who have commonly misconstrued
its meaning as some variation of “Hail to the jewel in
the lotus.”
While multiple Avalokites ́vara DHARANI and
mantra were in circulation by the third century C.E.,
the six-syllable mantra seems to have first appeared in
the Karandavyuha-sutra. This text, composed as early
as the fifth century C.E., offers extensive description
of the mantra’s power, chief among them rebirth in
the pure realms contained within the hair pores of
Avalokites ́vara. According to legend, a copy of the
Karandavyuha-sutra—or alternatively simply the six
syllables contained in a jeweled casket (karanda means
casket)—fell out of the sky onto the roof of the semi-
historical sixth-century Tibetan king Lha tho tho ri.
The sutra was translated some time before 812, as it is
included in the Ldan dkar ma catalogue of imperial-
period translations published in that year. Although
comparable mantras associated with Avalokites ́vara are
found in several DUNHUANGtexts, usage of the six-
syllable mantra appears to have gained wide popular-
ity only in the eleventh century.
Tibetans traditionally interpret the mantra and its
six syllables in terms of numerical correspondences,
such as to the six realms of existence. Oral recitations
of the mantra, commonly counted on prayer beads, are
said to prevent REBIRTHin the six realms and purify
even the gravest of sins. Recitation is often supple-
mented by simultaneous spinning of the well-known
prayer wheel (mani ’khor lo, chos ’khor lo,or lag ’khor).
This is a device that allows the practitioner to acti-
vate the mantra’s efficacy through spinning the wheel.
According to tradition a single revolution produces
an amount of merit equal to reading all of the Bud-
dha’s discourses; ten revolutions purify an amount of
sin equal to Mount Meru, and so forth. The mantra
is also written, engraved, and painted on rocks, its
physical presence understood to offer protection to
those nearby.
Western travelers to Tibet have been fascinated by
the prevalence of the mantra since the thirteenth cen-
tury, when the Franciscan missionary William of
Rubruck observed the continual chanting of on mani
baccam,as he recorded it. The mantra, and its ubiqui-
tous mistranslation, Jewel in the Lotus, has over the
centuries worked its way into the Western fascination
with all things Eastern, engendering any number of
mystical (including sexual) interpretations, and seep-
ing into various Western countercultural movements,
spiritual and otherwise.613