Jewel-Born, of the Five Buddhas

Ratnasambhava (Jewel-Born) is one of the Five Buddhas, the Dhyani or Wisdom Buddhas, of Vajrayana Buddhism, the scheme in which five celestial Buddhas embody five aspects of enlightenment arranged across a mandala. Ratnasambhava presides over the southern quarter and the Jewel (Ratna) family, is yellow or gold in colour, and is associated with the earth element.

The defilement he transmutes is pride, which in his wisdom becomes the wisdom of equality (samata-jnana), the insight that sees all beings and things as equal in their fundamental nature; his emblem is the wish-fulfilling jewel and his characteristic gesture the varada mudra of giving, marking his link with generosity and abundance. He is a figure of meditation and visualization rather than of narrative myth, encountered chiefly in tantric ritual, in the mandala and in art. The scheme of the Five Buddhas in which Ratnasambhava takes his place is set out in the Sarvatathagatatattvasamgraha, an eighth century tantra foundational to the later Yoga and Anuttarayoga classes of Vajrayana practice, where the five figures are arranged as a mandala of transformed afflictions rather than as a historical narrative; because tantric systems assign consorts and positions somewhat differently from text to text, Ratnasambhava's paired dakini is not fixed identically across every lineage, a variability characteristic of tantric literature generally rather than a sign of confusion in any single tradition.