The Internalisation of the Vajrasana

Sam van Schaik

2021, Precious Treasures from the Diamond Throne

As the site of Śākyamuni’s awakening, the vajrāsana at Bodhgayā was one of the main objects of worship. This paper investigates the fertile environment for the transmission and translation of Buddhist rituals provided by Bodhgayā in the 11th and 12th centuries. It looks at the collections of tantric ritual practice (sādhana) compiled and translated at Bodhgayā by Tibetan pilgrims in collaboration with local Indian Buddhist tantrikas. Heading these collections is a sādhana for the Vajrāsana Buddha, an imaginative recreation of the Śākyamuni on the vajra throne at Bodhgayā. Showing how the sādhana visualisation corresponds to descriptions of the vajra throne by earlier pilgrims such as Xuanzang, I argue that the sādhana served as a portable recreation of the act of pilgrimage and worship.