Om Ah Hum Vajra Guru Padma Siddhi Hum

This is the Vajra Guru mantra, addressed to Padmasambhava, the eighth-century master whom Tibetan tradition credits with establishing Buddhism in Tibet and reveres under the title Guru Rinpoche, the precious teacher. Widely recited across the Nyingma and other Tibetan traditions, it invokes him by name, Padma, the lotus, from which he is said to have been miraculously born, and calls for the attainment (siddhi) that flows from his blessing. It is used in daily practice, on retreat, and at times of difficulty, counted on the rosary in vast numbers, and is treated as a means of connecting with Padmasambhava's continuing presence and protective power. Within the Nyingma tradition of the treasure-teachings (terma), held to have been concealed by Padmasambhava for later discovery, the mantra carries particular authority. It is among the best known of all Tibetan mantras, second in popular use only to the six-syllable mantra of Avalokiteshvara.

This twelve syllable formula is closely associated with Padmasambhava, the eighth century figure Nyingma tradition credits with subduing obstacles to Buddhism's establishment in Tibet, but its attestation is bound up with a transmission mechanism particular to the Nyingma school, the terma, or treasure, tradition. Termas are teachings said to have been hidden by Padmasambhava and his circle for revelation at a later, more receptive time, to be discovered centuries afterward by a terton, a treasure revealer, rather than transmitted in an unbroken teacher to student chain the way most Buddhist material is. Because of this, texts and mantras connected to Padmasambhava, including commentary elaborating this mantra out from the shorter Seven Line Prayer, carry a documented history of discovery events, specific tertons at specific dates, that sit alongside and sometimes in place of a continuous historical chain back to the eighth century, a transmission model unlike anything in Theravada or in most of Mahayana practice.

The mantra's own grammar is transparent by tantric standards, vajra guru, thunderbolt or diamond teacher, and padma siddhi, lotus accomplishment, are ordinary Sanskrit compounds naming Padmasambhava by his epithets rather than opaque seed sounds, framed by the body speech mind triad om ah hum at the start and a closing hum. Its use is not confined to a restricted empowerment the way some higher Vajrayana sadhana material is; it is printed on prayer flags and carved into rock across the Himalayan Buddhist world and recited by lay Nyingma practitioners generally, which places it, despite its exalted subject, among the more openly transmitted rather than the initiation bound layer of Vajrayana mantra.