ABSTRACT
The Nāmamantrārthāvalokinī (hereafter NMAA) interprets its root text within an elaborate framework of tantric visualisation and meditation, based on an expanded version of the Vajradhātu-maṇḍala of the Tattvasaṃgraha, the fundamental scripture of the yogatantras. The maṇḍala’s principal deity is Mahāvairocana, in whose heart Vilāsavajra has the practitioner visualise the primordial Buddha, or Ādibuddha, understood as a form of Mañjuśrī. Within the Ādibuddha’s heart in turn is visualised a mantra-bearing wheel at the centre of which is the key figure of Vilāsavajra’s exegesis, the gnosis-being Mañjuśrī (mañjuśrījñānasattva), the embodiment of non-dual gnosis (advayajñāna). Mañjuśrī thus becomes the Buddha, or the gnosis (or both), that underlies not only the Ādibuddha but also all its/ his manifestations within the cosmos.
