The 35 Confession Buddhas are the Buddhas invoked in one of the best-known purification practices of Mahayana Buddhism. Practitioners recite their names while making prostrations, to acknowledge harmful actions and broken vows and to purify them. Shakyamuni Buddha is the first of the 35.
How they are shown
- Shakyamuni at the centre, usually larger than the rest, his right hand touching the earth and his left holding an alms bowl.
- The other 34 Buddhas in rows around him, each seated on a lotus within a halo.
- Colours and hand gestures that tell them apart. Painters follow at least three systems. In that of Sakya Pandita, the Buddhas form five groups of seven, each group taking the colour and gesture of one of the Five Buddhas: the first seven white with the teaching gesture, the next seven red in meditation, and so on.
- A few objects in the system that follows Tsongkhapa's vision: four of the Buddhas hold a victory banner, a coat of armour, a sword and Mount Meru, and Nageshvararaja, "King of the Nagas", has a blue body, a white head and a hood of seven snakes.
- Other figures are often added, such as Shakyamuni's two chief disciples standing beside him, and deities above and below.
The practice
The names come from the Sutra of the Three Heaps, a Mahayana text in the Ratnakuta collection, recited in Tibetan practice as the Bodhisattva's Confession of Downfalls. Its three "heaps" are homage, confession and dedication: the practitioner bows to the Buddhas, acknowledges faults and resolves not to repeat them, then dedicates the merit to full awakening.
Tsongkhapa, founder of the Gelug school, is remembered for making many hundreds of thousands of prostrations to the 35 Buddhas in retreat, and for a vision of them that shaped later paintings. In Chinese Buddhism the same 35 names form part of the widely recited Repentance of the Eighty-Eight Buddhas.
In a painting
This is a subject where the painter's patience shows. Each small Buddha should have a complete face, clear hands and a clean halo, and the rows should be evenly spaced. In paintings that follow one of the systems, the colours and gestures change from figure to figure, and it is worth checking how carefully this is done. Some of our paintings set Shakyamuni on a lotus throne supported by snow lions, with his two disciples standing beside him, Amitayus above and Jambhala below.
