35 Buddhas

35 Buddhas

The Thirty-Five Confession Buddhas are known from the Sutra of the Three, popular in Tibetan Buddhism. This Mahayana Sutra describes the practice of purification by confession and making prostrations to these Buddhas, and is part of the larger Stack of Jewels Sutra.

In Tibet, there were two distinct traditions of the Thirty-Five Confession Buddhas which arose from the two main Indian schools of Mahayana Buddhism: one from the Madhyamaka school founded by Nagarjuna, and the other from the Yogacara school founded by Asanga and Vasubandhu. Both of these schools developed their rituals for conferring the Bodhisattva vows, each incorporating a visualization of the Thirty-Five Buddhas along with the recitation of the confession from the Triskhandhadharma Sutra.

The Thirty-Five Confession Buddhas are a common subject depicted in Himalayan Buddhist paintings and sculptures. There are at least three different iconographic systems for depicting the Thirty-Five Buddhas, based on the different descriptions found in ritual texts and commentaries by different authors including Nagarjuna, Sakya Pandita, Jonang Taranatha, and Je Tsongkhapa.

The three main iconographic traditions are:

1. The system attributed to Nagarjuna where the 35 Buddhas are depicted with different objects in their hands,
2. The system of Sakya Pandita where the 35 Buddhas are depicted with hand gestures only (no hand objects), and
3. The system is based on Je Tsongkhapa's vision of the 35 Buddhas where only some of the Buddhas have objects in their hands.