Universally Worthy: The Bodhisattva of Practice

Samantabhadra (Universally Worthy or All-Good) is a great bodhisattva of Mahayana Buddhism, associated above all with practice, meditation and the carrying-out of the bodhisattva vows, the active complement to Manjushri's wisdom, with whom he is often paired as an attendant of the Buddha. He is especially known through the Avatamsaka (Flower Garland) Sutra, whose closing section sets out his ten great vows, a foundational statement of the bodhisattva aspiration recited across East Asian Buddhism.

In Chinese Buddhism, as Puxian, he is the presiding bodhisattva of Mount Emei in Sichuan, one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains, and he is conventionally shown mounted on a six-tusked white elephant. The same name (Kuntu Zangpo) is also used in the Tibetan Nyingma school for the primordial Buddha, the ever-present enlightened ground of all things, a distinct and more exalted usage that should not be confused with the bodhisattva of the same name.