The Mantra of the Historical Buddha

The Shakyamuni mantra is the mantra of the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, known as Shakyamuni, the sage of the Shakya clan. Built around muni, the word for sage that stands within his epithet, the mantra invokes the Buddha himself and is recited in devotion to him, in his visualisation practices, and as a means of connecting with the awakened qualities he embodies.

While the historical Buddha of the earliest tradition did not teach the recitation of mantras, which belong to the later Mahayana and especially Vajrayana developments, the mantra of Shakyamuni takes its place within the Tibetan and East Asian practice of invoking buddhas and bodhisattvas by sound, applying to the founder himself the devotional forms that grew up around the celestial buddhas. It is used in daily recitation and on the rosary, and in giving the historical Buddha his own mantra the later tradition draws him into the same circle of sonic invocation through which its other buddhas are approached.