“EVERYTHING IS KARMA AND ALL I CAN DO IS REPENT” CONFESSION TO THE BUDDHAS WRITTEN IN BLOOD: The 17th Gyalwang Karmapa copied the Thirty-five Confession Buddhas with his own blood

“Copying scriptures with one’s own blood” is a long-standing tradition in Chinese Buddhism, and many Buddhist monks have performed such austerities since ancient times. It is an excellent offering, and is similar in meaning to the “burning one’s body to offer to the Buddha” recorded in the Dharma Flower Sutra and the Brahma Net Sutra. This is a praiseworthy Buddhist practice that originated from the Buddha’s bodily offerings at the time of his enlightenment.  In spite of this, many people still could not bear to hear it and asked the 17th Karmapa why he did it. The 17th Karmapa replied, “Everything is karma, and all I can do is repent.” —report on 17th Karmapa’s actions when facing arrest by Indian police

“Nowhere else in the world, except in East Asia, can we find manuscripts written in blood. The extraordinary visual impact of blood writings, their almost living, physical presence, offers us a vastly different experience of textual material than does other writing. We typically think of written text as a means to an end, an expression of ideas and knowledge that privilege the written word as the carrier of message, something to be read and understood. However, Buddhist blood writing challenges these received notions of how meaning is communicated; blood writings are far more than carriers of a message.” Yu, J. (2020)

Recently, I read report in Chinese on social media recently, with an image of red Chinese script, said to be the Thirty-Five Confession Buddhas written in blood by the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa in 2011. It is published below with the Chinese image (and an English translation).

The blood ink script is reported to have been created by the 17th Karmapa after the Indian police were reported as breaking in to the Gyuto Monastery in Dharamsala (a Gelugpa monastery) and seizing masses of donated money stashed there. That monastery had become the 17th Karmapa’s main base since he arrived in India in 2000, after leaving Tibet. After meeting and taking refuge vows alone with the 17th Karmapa there in a private audience in 2005, I visited there many times for public teachings to small groups of foreign pilgrims on Saturdays and Wednesdays, and occasional brief private audiences.  It was a magical, pure and blessed time, when the 17th Karmapa was still reasonably approachable and accessible.

One could not have imagined even then that Gyuto Monastery would become his main place of residence for almost twenty years, and he was restricted and limited in terms of international travle and teachings, and was never allowed to return to teach and visit Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim,  the main seat of the 16th Karmapa, Rigpe Dorje (who provided a handwritten letter to 12th Tai Situpa about his future incarnation, that led exactly to the nomad boy in Tibet).

Reading this story about the 17th Karmapa’s “writing in blood'” actions on facing arrest and court prosecution in 2011,  I was yet again touched by the 17th Karmapa’s sacrifice and understanding of karma. I have never heard any other lineage head speak about their own karmic actions and how they should repent for them. It is also in stark contrast to the public statements of other Tibetan Buddhist tulkus like Osel Hita (2025) and 2nd Kalu Rinpoche (2012), whose videos were welcome in many ways as a sign of a greater transparency and unwillingness to tolerater bullying and corruption, but on the other hand, they are not that consistent or aligned with the Buddhist practice and view of karma, cause and effect and developing patience, love and compassion for those who harm us, right? Is that because the other tulkus are following the 14th Dalai Lama’s lead on how to deal with those who harm us, as can be seen with the use of US politicians to anatagonise and divide India, China and Tibet?

The alleged humiliation, disrespect and even legal court action by the Indian authorities is hard to fathom. Some Tibetans say that the Indian police took all the money that they found there and never returned it.   I was also told by a senior Indian government official that the main people pushing for his court prosecution were the Thaye Dorje faction. Their court action for Rumtek Monastery launched years ago, has also blocked the 17th Karmapa from visiting Sikkim and Rumtek and performing the black crown ceremony there to this day too.  However, it is unclear what the Gelug-biased CTA government did to help the Karmapa in that situation. Perhaps they saw it as an opportunity to further undermine, disrespect and control him? [1]

Yet, whenever anyone challenges the Gelugpa biased people on it, they cry “Don’t be so sectarian!” Don’t cause divide! We need to be united!” Without any sense of irony that they are the root causes of the Gelug sectarianism, divide and power struggle that still shadows Tibet to this day. The Karmapas had many opportunities to take absolute political and military control of Tibet with the Chinese Emperors but they deliberately chose not to do so. Instead the Gelugpas seeking to suppress the Kagyu lineages, and Nyingma and Jonang, have plagued Tibet with their sectarian dominance to this day, and brainwashing/forcing everyone to parrot off the Prasangika Madhyamika view, claiming they are following the Nalanda tradition. What a sad joke that is.

In that respect, the majority of Tibetans in exile (and even the Karma Kagyu worldly people surrounding the 17th Karmapa) can point their fingers of blame continually at the Chinese, foreigners and so on ( even while preferring to live and travel in North America and Europe) , but until they look in their own backyard and clean it all up,  how can they think to make progress while still proclaiming the Gelug-sectarian bias of the Dalai lama institution is beyond anyone with independent, rational and Buddhist thinking on it.

No-one knows why the 17th Karmapa did not attend the Kagyu Monlam in Bodh Gaya this year, and why he instead chose to attend a small, private group gathering of mainly “young-looking” laywomen, in the presence of HE Zurmang Rinpoche. The Indian government official told me that he has been offered a ten year visa with multiple entry on his new current passport. The CTA leader, Penpa Tsering also indicated last year that the court case in Himachal Pradesh had been abandoned.

Perhaps the Karmapa himself, despite him saying the opposite publicly, simply does not want to return to India, and certainly not Dharamsala, where he will continue to be controlled by Gelug sectarian forces and also persecuted by the Thaye Dorje people, who still cling on to the title of Karmapa and keep up the facade he is a worthy and legitimate Karmapa (although they have no real lineage or activities, or monasteries and nunneries following them and whose followers are mainly white Europeans). After all, it was the Thaye Dorje camp who also falsely accused 12th Tai Situpa Rinpoche of fabricating the 16th Karmapa’s letter, a gross, highly unlikely and unsubstantiated accusation, that was never proven to be true. If the 16th Karmapa’s letter was written in red ink (as can be seen in this image) , did anyone ever consider whether or not the 16th Karmapa had written it in his own blood too?  If he might have done perhaps it should be forensically tested for that by genuinely independent (and unccorruptible) experts?

In any case, as the 17th Karmapa begins his online teachings today for the annual nuns’ event (reduced from one month, to one week), patience is now wearing very thin. As they say, “Out of sight, out of mind” or “Absence makes the heart grow fonder”, only those with great patience, faith, devotion will feel the latter, but even their ‘human’ hearts have a limit to have much confusion, cancellations, delays, lack of explanations, seeming hypocricsy and deception, they can bear to take.

Symbolism of blood in Chinese Buddhism

As J.Hu (2020) writes in  Blood writing as extraordinary artifact and agent for socioreligious change. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 7, 3 (2020):

“Nowhere else in the world, except in East Asia, can we find manuscripts written in blood. The extraordinary visual impact of blood writings, their almost living, physical presence, offers us a vastly different experience of textual material than does other writing. We typically think of written text as a means to an end, an expression of ideas and knowledge that privilege the written word as the carrier of message, something to be read and understood.

However, Buddhist blood writing challenges these received notions of how meaning is communicated; blood writings are far more than carriers of a message. The extraordinariness of blood writings lies in the use of blood, with all its social and religious associations, as the medium. In ancient China, blood was considered a vital fluid that had the power to give life. Red, in the correlative taxonomy of yin 陰 and yang 陽, symbolizes the yang aspect, the light, the male, and the celestial—blood was considered to be ultra-yang. It represented the source of life. The yin came to be associated with the dark, the female, and the demonic (Kohn, 2008, pp. 81–95) and, in ritual contexts, blood was associated with the exorcistic and apotropaic powers that could keep the negative yin forces at bay (Riley, 1997, pp. 181–186).

The Avataṃsaka sūtra/Flower Ornament Sutra and practice of writing it in blood

The Flower Ornament Sutra (Avataṃsaka sūtra) contains both the “mind-only” (cittamatra, Yogacara) teachings and the emptiness teachings (associated with Prajñaparamita and Madhyamaka). The sutra thus teaches that all things are empty of inherent existence and also speaks of “pure untainted awareness or consciousness (amala-citta) as the ground of all phenomena”.  Hu (2020) explains that:

“The forty-fascicle version of the Flower Ornament Sutra, which advocates the importance of embodying the Buddhist scripture, states the following:

Since the inception of his career as a bodhisattva, Vairocana Buddha has been extremely diligent in practice and has offered his own bodies [lifetime after lifetime] in inconceivable ways. He peeled off his skin and used it as paper, broke off his bone and used it as a pen, and pricked himself to draw blood as ink; the scriptures he copied in this manner accumulated as high as Mount Sumeru. He did so out of great reverence for the Dharma.

To copy enough blood scriptures to stack up as high as Mount Sumeru is to offer millions and millions of lifetimes of bodies and blood. Passages such as this have inspired Buddhist ascetics to emulate great bodhisattvas who literally embody the scriptures—where scriptures are produced by body parts. The message is that to sacrifice oneself for the dharma is to venerate the dharma; copying the scriptures with one’s blood literally embodies the holy teachings. While ordinary people hold dear their own bodies, Vairocana sacrificed his for the continuance of the dharma, implying that those who aspire to be true bodhisattvas should emulate him.

The Flower Ornament Scripture was also one of the favorite scriptures chosen to be copied in blood by Buddhists, clerical or lay, in the history of Chinese Buddhism, particularly in late imperial times. It is not the only scripture that promotes this level of self-sacrifice. The Sūtra of Brahma’s Net, for example, enjoins all those who seek to receive the bodhisattva precepts to perform the same level of self-sacrifice.”

Thirty-five Confession Buddhas written by 17th Karmapa in his own blood

 

“Ten years ago, the Indian police broke into the Gyuto Monastery in Dharamsala. Let’s start with a story. It was 10 years ago.

In February 2011, after the Kagyu Monlam in the Holy Land, His Holiness the Karmapa and the lamas, who had been busy for quite some time, returned to the Gyuto Monastery in Dharamsala, where they had been stationed, and were preparing for a good rest and relaxation. Unexpectedly, one day, the Indian police broke into His Holiness the Karmapa’s office, searched away the cash that the devotees had offered to the Karmapa during the Kagyu Monlam, and took away the managing lamas, leaving a room full of dismayed people, speechless.

When the news broke, the world was in uproar. The Indian government’s reason for doing so, as we all learned later, was to accuse the Karmapa of “allegedly acting as a spy for China,” as evidenced by the fact that many of the Karmapa’s offerings were in the form of RMBs provided by his followers from China. It is needless to say that this was a great insult to the Karmapa, who is honored in the world of Tibetan Buddhism. Such acts of taking offerings from good men and women with political power are also extremely frightening in the eyes of Buddhists who fear karma.

A man under a low roof has to bow his head. His Holiness, who had been in India for 10 years for the sake of his studies, finally became the center of a storm in the delicate atmosphere of China-India rivalry. “In the midst of the storm, His Holiness just quietly copied the scriptures in his own blood.”

What does His Holiness, who was in the eye of the typhoon of the incident, think of this himself?
While waiting for the summons, His Holiness did something. He stayed quietly in his study, spread out the cotton paper on which he wrote his calligraphy, and laid it down. Then he took a needle and pricked his finger, letting blood flow out and injecting it into the small dish where he usually put his ink, after which he added vermilion and alum to make blood ink for copying scriptures.  His Holiness picked up a brush, used the blood as ink, and began to copy word by word, in his best calligraphy, known as Wei Bei or Clerical Script, the translation of the Thirty-five Confession Buddhas by the Tang Dynasty monk Bukong (pictured).  This was the origin of His Holiness copying the Thirty-five Confession Buddhas with his own blood.

“Copying scriptures with one’s own blood” is a long-standing tradition in Chinese Buddhism, and many Buddhist monks have performed such austerities since ancient times. It is an excellent offering, and is similar in meaning to the “burning one’s body to offer to the Buddha” recorded in the Dharma Flower Sutra and the Brahma Net Sutra. This is a praiseworthy Buddhist practice that originated from the Buddha’s bodily offerings at the time of his enlightenment.  In spite of this, many people still could not bear to hear it and asked His Holiness why he did it. His Holiness said, “Everything is karma, and all I can do is repent.”

Chinese original
法王 噶瑪巴刺血抄寫的〈三十五佛懺悔文〉
10年前，印度警察闖進了上密院……
先說個故事，那是10年前的事了。
2011年2月，聖地祈願法會過後，忙了好一陣子的法王 噶瑪巴和喇嘛們，回到駐錫地達蘭沙拉的上密院，正待好好休養生息。沒想到，有一天，印度警察闖入了法王 噶瑪巴的辦公室，蒐走了祈願法會期間法友面見法王時供養的現金，帶走了管理的喇嘛，留下一屋子錯愕的人，無言相對。
消息傳出，舉世譁然。印度政府蒐索的理由，後來大家都知道了，就是指控法王「疑似涉嫌」擔任中國間諜，證據就是供養金中有很多來自中國的法友供養的人民幣。這對在藏傳世界地位尊貴的法王，是多大的欺辱，自不待言；以政治力強取善信供養，在敬畏因果的佛弟子眼裡，也是極驚悚的事。
人在矮簷下，不得不低頭。為了修學而到印度10年的法王，終於在中印競爭的微妙氛圍中，成為風暴的中心。
「風暴中，法王只是靜靜的刺血抄經」
在事件颱風眼的法王，自己怎麼看待呢？
在等候傳訊期間，法王做了一件事。他靜靜待在書房，攤開寫書法的棉紙，鋪好，拿針刺了手指，血流出來，注入平常放墨汁的小碟，加上硃砂和明礬，研成抄經的血墨。法王拿起毛筆，以血為墨，開始以他最擅長的，人稱魏碑或漢隸體的書法，逐字抄寫唐朝沙門不空所譯的〈佛說三十五佛禮懺文〉（如圖）。這就是法王刺血抄寫〈三十五佛懺悔文〉的緣起。
雖然 「刺血抄經」是漢傳佛教由來已久的傳統，自古很多高僧都做過如此苦行，是殊勝的法供養，與《法華經》、《梵網經》明文記載的「燃身供佛」意義相近。這是源自佛陀因地時，以身作供施的菩薩行，是一件值得隨喜讚嘆的法行。
但很多人聽了不忍心，問法王為什麼要這麼做？
法王說：「一切都是因果業力，我能做的，只有懺悔。」
「法王懺罪的選擇：三十五佛懺悔文」
「一切是因果業力，我能做的，只有懺悔。」
法王懺悔的具體行動，就是刺血抄寫〈三十五佛懺悔文〉。
懺悔文一遍遍的念著，自然想起了2011年法王刺血抄經的往事，心中不無感慨。
而今法王已遠赴西方閉關，當年紛擾早就塵埃落定，各方勢力各有立場，可以理解、可以放下，已無需置評。但在我們心中歷久彌新的是，當年法王在風暴中靜定抄經，以身血抄寫〈三十五佛懺悔文〉，懺悔往昔諸惡業，這個刺血抄經的身影，像個定心丸一樣，在我們心中留下一個鮮活的提醒：「一切都是因果業力，我能做的，只有懺悔。」
文：黃靖雅（眾生文化總編輯）