Thereupon Medicine-King Bodhisattva said to the Buddha, “World-Honored One! Now I will give dhāraṇī-spells to the expounder of the Dharma in order to protect him.”

This promise to the Buddha from Medicine-King Bodhisattva comes in Chapter Twenty-Six of the Lotus Sutra. The dhāraṇīs are given in a language that nobody understands any more. But this does not reduce their effectiveness. In the second chapter of the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha declared that his wisdom cannot be reached by understanding alone. There is another, nonverbal aspect of his teaching that we must comprehend. The dhāraṇīs not only give us reassurance that beings we cannot comprehend are helping us to become enlightened, they also remind us to look for the unspoken teachings that are part of the Buddha Dharma.

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