Thirty-five Confession Buddhas

The Thirty-Five Confession Buddhas (Wylie: gsheg lha so lnga) are known from the Sutra of the Three Heaps (Sanskrit: Triskandhadharmasutra; Tib.

phung po gsum pa'i mdo), popular in Tibetan Buddhism.

This Mahāyāna sutra actually describes the practice of purification by confession and making prostrations to these Buddhas, and is part of the larger Stack of Jewels Sutra (Sanskrit: Ratnakutasutra; Tibetan: dkon mchog brtsegs pa'i mdo).

Both of these schools developed their own 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.

[1] The names of the 35 Buddhas of confession differ depending on the sutra.