- kōmyō shingon 865
the sand of the divine power of the mantra of light.... The karmic ret-
ribution of their sins will be eliminated, they will discard their suffering
bodies, and they will go to the Western Land of Bliss (the Pure Land of
Amida). They will be reborn in the lotus blossom [of Amida] and will
not fall back until they attain bodhi (awakening).
After many years and many moons come to pass, sentient beings may
be stricken with frailty, illness, and myriad other hardships. This is the
karmic retribution suffered by the ill due to [their actions in] past lives.
If one sits before the stricken for one, two, or three days and intones this
mantra one thousand and eighty times every day with a full voice, then
the hindrance of illnesses from past karma will be destroyed. Suppose
one is tortured by a demonic spirit and loses one’s voice. Although one
does not say a word, if one holds the hand of someone who maintains
the mantra and rubs her face one hundred and eight times.... then one
can get rid of [the spirit]....This is an excerpt from the earliest extant sūtra devoted solely to the
mantra, the Bukong zhuansuo piluzhenafa daguanding guangming
zhenyan jing (Sūtra of the
Mantra of Light of the Baptism of Vairocana of the Unfailing Rope
Snare; T. 1002.19:606b–607a). This translation is by Amoghavajra,
early patriarch of Chinese Zhenyan , and it actually corresponds
to the twenty-seventh fascicle of Bodhiruci’s earlier translation of the
Bukong zhuansuo shenbian jing (Sūtra of the
Mantra of Divine Transformation of the Unfailing Rope Snare). These
texts belong to a group of scriptures on related themes, such as the
Bukong zhuansuo shenzhou wang jing (Sūtra of
the King of the Divine Incantation of the Unfailing Rope Snare), trans-
lated by Bao Siwei (673–706), and the Bukong zhuansuo shen-
zhou tuoluoni jing (Sūtra of the Dhāraṇī of
the Unfailiing Rope Snare), translated at the beginning of the eighth
century by Li Wuzhao.
When one examines Amoghavajra’s translation of the Sūtra of the
Mantra of Light, it is striking that all major functions of the mantra
practice are already evident in this early scripture, including its effica-
cies in this world and the next and its association with Amida and the
Western Pure Land. Through the work of such monks as Myōe Kōben
, Eizon , and Dōhan in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, the mantra of light reached a hitherto unknown level of
popularity. All of these functions, the seeds of which were planted a
millennium or more earlier, then came into play, as they were key
to addressing the historical circumstances faced by these monks and
others.