History of Chinese Buddhism: the Ancient Custom of Buddhist Abhiseka from India.
Living Buddha Dechan Jueren, June 3, 2003
Los Angeles Dari Rulai Temple
Translated by: Jaliniprabhakumara
Trascribed by: Decheng

How did abhiseka originate? Abhiseka was an old custom in ancient India. When a prince was to be enthroned to become a king, he would receive the waters from the 4 seas as a showering upon him in the sense of… enthrone him to become king. It symbolizes that the king's power and authority goes to the corners of the earth or to the seas. That means he rules or is sovereign of the whole land.

Later, Buddhist schools adopted this kind of custom. In the beginning, in Buddhist abhiseka, they did use the waters from the four seas or the four directions, or they would use a very rare, what we would call dew of the spirits or essence. This is how a real abhiseka should be.

Those dews, usually collected from springs in deep mountains, or in the sea waters from the four directions of the land, the teacher of the students actually had to get this for himself, and take all these waters and put them in a cave. And the teacher or guru of the students had to do this himself, nobody could do this for him. The teacher had to take the water into the cave, put it there, mantrize it with his own heart mantra and leave the water in that cave for 100 days. After 100 days of blessing on all those waters, they naturally combined together into one, and began to give off a radiance of light. Then the teacher used this water to perform the abhiseka for his students. That means that the student's wisdom will be as vast as the oceans and will dissolve into the waters everywhere in the four directions.

In the old days the first abhiseka kettle was just an ordinary water bottle made of earth or clay. In the beginning period of Buddhist history, when they began to do abhiseka, very often the guru himself will travel a great distance to get to the sea in the four directions in order to collect the water. However, many of them never survived the trip. I am talking about in the very early periods, certainly over 2000 years ago. There were no automobiles, no helicopter, no airplane, no train nothing for them to travel that great distance.

Gradually all these different Buddhist masters attained enlightenment through different research and methods, and began to be able to mantrize water for the purpose of abhiseka. This is the history, until the day this Buddhist master, his name was ??Tyro Sipo?? , he was able to hold the abhiseka kettle in his hand, and in a great loud yell to the skies, he could command through prayers his kettle to be filled with water in an instant. Therefore he did not have to travel to get water anymore.

That's the beginning chapters of today's real abhiseka with wisdom dew, not ordinary water. Sometime later in Nagarjuna's time now, Nagarjuna is able to have 49 different kettles, in a loud yell or command or prayer, all 49 kettles fill up with 49 different types of water. That's how the beginnings of the wisdom dew for the abhiseka really happened in the first place. When Nagarjuna, just nine days before he was going to pass away, he poured all the water from these 49 kettles into one kettle.

Then he evolved or developed a new mantra. The description is the 49-as-one mantra, or 49 as eternal six mantra. What does that mean? …49 across… 6 mantra … I haven't figured out what it means(kuo). Seven mantra in seven lines make up the 49 words. O.K. across if you block the middle line of the mantra, you have three lines above and three lines below. That mantra, you can chant it horizontally or vertically. You can chant it across and down like that and you will come up with 776 mantras with that one. After you finish chanting these mantras, very simple, I tell you, that abhiseka kettle will be filled with water all by itself.

You certainly will see this in the future, after I have left the U.S., my students will begin to realize many things. Certainly they will feel such regret that they did not take the opportunity to learn the dharma from me. I am the one who holds the real teaching of dharma. I am the one who doesn't hold back anything. I will teach anything that anybody wants to learn. All these things I just told you about, it doesn't matter which disciple of mine anywhere in this world. Any one of these disciples ever get to that level and really attain the dharma, I will teach them right away, this. This 49 word mantra, with six rows across if you block the middle one, there's only one person in this world who knows how to do this. Me.

Another way of applying this, is taking that middle row of the seven words, as the first words for seven colors of mantras and seven …. (unclear) … Because of these seven word and seven different stanzas of the mantra, that represents seven parts of abhiseka, seven levels of the teaching. If you hold out your hand, how much energy can you feel from this piece of paper? Even if I just circle it like this. What you feel, even though I did not write out the mantra, only circles on the paper, I was thinking the mantras as I drew the circles there. Mantric power is very unimaginable, what it can do.

I have only taught you the application for Aum, Ah, Houm, and you can change the food. If I go any further into more advanced teachings of Aum, Ah, Houm, according to Nagarjuna's teaching of the middle view or the middle path, you can go further with Aum, Ah, Houm, and you can actually change heaven and earth with Aum, Ah, Houm.

A few days ago, most of you have seen this for yourself, there's a woman's father is very ill with cancer. And she asked me to do something for her. For those who already know about the story, and those who have seen me do this, I only used a piece of yellow grass paper, about this long, and this wide, a strip of paper. I picked up my brush pen, and on that piece of paper I wrote a few words, and put a few strokes there. After I finished, that gentleman who was very ill, passed away instantly, very peacefully. Even the doctors were surprised that their patient passed away so quickly and peacefully, without any pain. When this old gentleman passed away, his facial features looked even better, and the color of his face, was even better. In his case do you need to do an assist the deceased funeral service for him? No. He's already there, in one step he has crossed over to heaven.

Abhiseka today, real abhiseka from a real Baptist, they have to get the water this way. Fill the kettle with water by itself. That will be a real abhiseka. This is actually a practice from Nagarjuna, he emptied 48 kettles of water into one, poured them all into one, what that means is he is combining and merging all the mantras into one mantra. One mantra, one kettle.

I don't know if you notice or not when I do the abhiseka for different people, the water or dew from the kettle pours onto the students head, the color of the water, they are all different for different people. And they also taste different for different people. The other night some of you have seen this that I empty out the kettle, and poured all the water into the glass. Everybody knows I set the abhiseka kettle on the table there, and I never touch the kettle, and whenever I give an abhiseka I just pick up the kettle and there will be water there already. If I take out the peacock feather and that stick from the kettle, then that kettle will no longer have water going into it. If I stick that stick back into the kettle and chant the mantras, in three days that kettle will be filled with water again.

These dharmas, these methods, why is it that you must practice and attain to a certain level before I can even tell you how to do it? Because in this world, this world of duality, anything that has such a great benefit, the other dark side has great consequences. If I were to teach you this now, you still have defilement in your mind, your heart is not pure, you are not clean in that sense. You can chant the mantra, and the kettle will fill with water, but it will also be filled with worms.

You want to talk about abhiseka, let me stress this again, whatever abhiseka you get, there's a big difference whether you get it with a kettle that has been filled by itself from wisdom dew, or whether that kettle has been filled with tap water.

There's a big difference. I have a disciple, his name is …. . He lives in ……, the first year he took initiation with me and received abhiseka from me, it's a private conversation but I'm going to say this anyway, he said that he has actually received abhiseka from many different teachers before, but he has never felt anything from any of his abhisekas. I remember that we were in El Monte and ….. He came and received an abhiseka and said that there's a big difference from what he experienced before. However, at that time I have never told him or anyone about the difference between the water that I put in the kettle…that the water fills by itself.

Every time I do an abhiseka for you, what's the difference? Different types of abhiseka for different dharmas or empowerment, I have to invite different Buddha for that purpose. Anybody who has paid attention you know this already, every time I do an abhiseka, I will feel very tired. Because which ever Buddha I have called on or invited, that Buddha will be standing on my shoulders. That's a lot of weight for me to carry. If you can see this for yourself. Therefore abhiseka cannot be requested lightly. If in a conversation some may ask, Master can you give abhiseka for this person now? And you are joking. Nobody can do abhiseka like that. They really don't understand what abhiseka is really about.

Every time that I have to perform an abhiseka no matter where that place is, that place is going to be called a bodhimanda. What a bodhimanda is, is a place to perform an abhiseka, first I must form the bodhimanda by chanting a lot of mantra to form that field first. Every time I in a way encircle a place to make that into a bodhimanda to perform abhiseka, certainly I have to chant a lot of mantras. In a way, I clean the place of all kind of evil arisings. If I were to perform abhiseka lightly, without going through the proper procedures, then I would actually misguide the people that receive and cause a lot of problems.