The Quintessence of “The Great Peahen”

Mahāmāyūrī­garbha

The Quintessence of “The Great Peahen”

Mahāmāyūrī­garbha

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Homage to the Three Jewels.
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Homage to all buddhas whose teaching is unopposed. oṃ piśune svāhā!
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By upholding this, one will have upheld The Noble Great Peahen. is more explicit when he replaces the verb with kaṇṭhasthīkṛ (“to place it in one’s throat”), which is the Sanskrit idiom for “to learn by heart.” He also spells out the benefit as the “meritorious karmic fruit” (puṇyaphala) of memorizing the parent text. This sentence is then followed by a fascinating short discussion, which merits to be quoted in full: “Surely, this is an exaggeration! No, one should not say this. For countless thus-gone ones have empowered this dhāraṇī to serve as a method for gaining the equipment of merit for women, immature people, and simpletons, as well as for learned people whose minds are confused, just like the pole of a snake charmer[, which is preprepared by the expert snake charmer to be effective even when he is no longer present,] for removing poison; however, it is not a method for gaining the knowledge conveyed by The [Perfection of Wisdom in] One Hundred Thousand Lines. This should be understood to apply in other cases [i.e., where the text is abbreviated into a dhāraṇī] as well” (nanv atyuktir eveti. na caitad vaktavyam. yataḥ strībāla­mūrkhān paryākuli­tamatīn paṇḍitān praty api puṇya­saṃbhārasādhana­tvenā­saṃkhyeya­tathāgatair adhiṣṭhi­teyaṃ dhāriṇī, yathā viṣaharatvena gāruḍikaṃ stambhaḥ; na tu lakṣāprati­pādita­jñāna­sādhana­tvena. evam anyatrāpi boddhavyaḥ). In his note to this dhāraṇī, he reiterates the point about “to uphold” meaning “to memorize” and promises as the reward the fruit of reciting the text (pāṭhaphala).

English translation published by 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha (https://84000.co), CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. Translated by Gergely Hidas.

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