Jīngāngdǐng yújiā qiānshǒu qiānyǎn Guānzìzài púsà xiūxíng yíguǐ jīng 金剛頂瑜伽千手千眼觀自在菩薩修行儀軌經
Cultivation Manual Sūtra of the Thousand-Hand Thousand-Eye Avalokiteśvara from the Vajra-śekhara Yoga by 不空 (Bùkōng, Amoghavajra, 譯)
About the work
A two-fascicle Esoteric yíguǐ 儀軌 manual setting out the Vajra-śekhara-style cultivation procedure of Sahasrabhuja-Avalokiteśvara — the Thousand-Hand Thousand-Eye form. Translated by Amoghavajra (不空), the colophon listing his full senior court titles (開府儀同三司特進試鴻臚卿肅國公…大廣智…大興善寺三藏沙門) reflects the post-Tiānbǎo-era apex of his official standing under Sùzōng (肅宗) and Dàizōng (代宗) (746–774). The text places the popular Sahasrabhuja deity within the Lotus-section (蓮華部) of the Vajra-śekhara maṇḍala and gives the full arc: bodhicittotpāda and saṃvara, abhiṣeka, maṇḍala-construction, mudrā / mantra-recitation, and homa.
Abstract
The opening rubric (“我依瑜伽金剛頂經…說蓮華部千手千眼觀自在菩薩身口意金剛祕密修行法”) explicitly anchors the work in the Vajra-śekhara cycle (KR6c0007 KR6c0008) and the yoga-tantra tradition that Amoghavajra had brought back from Sri Lanka and South India in 746. The contents of the two fascicles work through the standard Tángmì yoga-tantra ritual sequence, organised around the Sahasrabhuja deity rather than the Tathāgata-Vairocana of the parent kalpa-rāja: the practitioner is to receive the lineage abhiṣeka from a yoga-ācārya (瑜伽阿闍梨), establish the maṇḍala, perform self-generation as the deity, recite the mantras with mudrās, and close with homa. The text is the most systematic and Esoteric of the Tángmì Sahasrabhuja manuals — markedly distinct from the popular Bhagavaddharma (伽梵達摩) rendering (KR6j0260) used in the Dàbēizhòu liturgy that became central to East-Asian devotional practice. Subsequent Tángmì manuals in the Avalokiteśvara cycle (KR6j0272, KR6j0273, KR6j0274) build on this yoga-tantra framework.
The CANWWW Related Texts note for T20N1056 explicitly cross-references KR6j0260 (T20N1060, Bhagavaddharma’s Dàbēixīn tuóluóní jīng) and KR6j0269 (T20N1064, Amoghavajra’s Dàbēixīn tuóluóní) as parallel / textually related works in the Sahasrabhuja corpus.
Translations and research
- Orzech, Charles D., Henrik Sørensen, and Richard Payne, eds. Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia. Leiden: Brill, 2011 — essential synoptic treatment of the Tángmì Sahasrabhuja corpus.
- Reis-Habito, Maria. Die Dhāraṇī des Großen Erbarmens des Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara mit Tausend Händen und Augen. Nettetal: Steyler, 1993.
- Chandra, Lokesh. The Thousand-Armed Avalokiteśvara. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, 1988.
Links
- CBETA T20n1056
- Kanseki DB
- 不空 DILA
- Dazangthings date evidence (750) — T = CBETA [Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association]. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經. Edited by Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 and Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō shinshū daizōkyō kankōkai/Daizō shuppan, 1924-1932. CBReader v 5.0, 2014.