The pantheon · The Six Realms of Rebirth
Samantabhadra
普賢 · Puxian (Wade-Giles: P'u-hsien)
Buddhist
Bodhisattva of Great Practice
The bodhisattva who embodies the enactment of the Buddhist path — vows carried into action — traditionally paired with Manjushri as one of Shakyamuni's two great attendants.
- Portfolio
- practice and action · the great vows · meditation · protection of those who uphold the teaching
- Observance
- His anniversary is traditionally kept on the twenty-first day of the second lunar month, and Mount Emei remains a major pilgrimage destination associated with him.
How to recognise them
Samantabhadra is most often depicted seated on a white elephant with six tusks, the animal symbolising the strength and steady tread of disciplined practice. He may hold a lotus, a scroll or a wish-fulfilling jewel. Alongside Manjushri, who rides a lion and carries a sword of wisdom, he attends the Buddha as a matched pair: wisdom on one side, practice on the other.
Samantabhadra (P'u-hsien, 普賢) is the bodhisattva of practice, whose Sanskrit name means 'Universally Worthy' and whose Chinese name, Puxian, carries the same sense of goodness extended to all. Where the bodhisattva Manjushri stands for wisdom and insight, Samantabhadra stands for its enactment: the patient, active carrying-out of the path in conduct, meditation and service to others.
He is best known for the Ten Great Vows set out at the close of the Avatamsaka Sutra, a programme of devotion that includes honouring all buddhas, rejoicing in others' merit and dedicating one's own good to the benefit of every being. In East Asian Buddhism these vows became a widely recited summary of how the bodhisattva ideal is meant to be lived out day by day.
In China he is enshrined at Mount Emei in Sichuan, one of the four mountains sacred to the great bodhisattvas — Guanyin at Putuo, Dizang at Jiuhua, Manjushri at Wutai, and Samantabhadra at Emei. Pilgrims have climbed there for centuries. The pairing of the four gives Chinese Buddhism a kind of geography of virtue, with each mountain anchoring one aspect of the awakened life to a place people can actually walk to.
Nearby
Written from
- The Flower Ornament Scripture: A Translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra — Thomas Cleary (trans.), 1993
- Buddhism in Chinese History — Arthur F. Wright, 1959
These pages are written from published scholarship and primary texts, and each figure lists what it was written from. Where sources disagree, we say so rather than picking one and presenting it as settled. This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or speaking for any temple, monastery, lineage, or religious organisation. Nothing here is a substitute for a tradition’s own teachers. We describe what practitioners have believed and done. Describing a belief is not asserting it is true.