How to Worship Thao Wessuwan (Vessavaṇa) the Right Way

Thao Wessuwan (Vessavaṇa) is one of the Four Great Kings, the Four World Guardians (lokapāla): Vessavaṇa, Dhataraṭṭha, Virūḷhaka and Virūpakkha. Vessavaṇa is the chief of the four Great Kings in the Cātumahārājika heaven, and his duty is to rule the yakkhas (powerful spirits) of the north. According to the evidence of the Buddha’s teaching, Vessavaṇa is a king of the devas who has become a noble one (ariya): he is a stream-enterer (sotāpanna).

The story goes that before the Buddha appeared, this great king was a brahmin named Kuvera. He built sugar-cane mills fitted with seven presses: six mills he used for trade, and one mill pressed cane to give away to the villagers. Kuvera the brahmin had faith in making merit. Whatever profit he made, he used to make merit: he built ten rest houses in the city, gave sugar-cane juice to those who stayed there, and kept up his giving for twenty thousand years, the lifespan of people in that age. When he died, he was reborn as a deva named Kuvera in the Cātumahārājika heaven, his skin the color of sugar-cane juice. In the time when a Buddha arose in the world, Vessavaṇa had the chance to hear the Dhamma and became a stream-enterer, together with the other World Guardians.

Vessavaṇa is an important king, one of the senior devas who guard and protect the Buddha’s teaching. That is why temples everywhere like to have images of Vessavaṇa made.

The four World Guardians had a role in keeping guard and warding off danger from the time the Bodhisatta took conception in the womb of Queen Mahāmāyā, through his going forth, until he attained unsurpassed perfect self-awakening and became the Buddha. In the seventh week, after he had dwelt in the bliss of liberation for forty-nine days, two merchants, Tapussa and Bhallika, came to offer him sattu, parched-grain meal both loose and pressed into cakes. But the Buddha reflected that he would not receive food with his bare hands. The four Great Kings knew the Buddha’s thought, came to attend on him, and offered him four alms bowls. The Buddha resolved that the four bowls become one, and then received the almsfood. The two men went for refuge to the Buddha and the Dhamma, and are counted as the first lay followers in the Buddha’s teaching.

Vessavaṇa has a role in the Buddha’s teaching. He is now a stream-enterer. At some temples you will see that Vessavaṇa holds not a club but a palm-leaf manuscript and a stylus for inscribing palm leaves. On every observance day that falls on the fifteenth night of the lunar fortnight, Vessavaṇa comes to inspect the human world, to see which people have undertaken the uposatha precepts, so that he can report to Sakka, lord of the devas, how much people are keeping the precepts and listening to the Dhamma.

Vessavaṇa pays close attention to the Buddha’s followers. Sometimes, when followers such as monks were practicing the Dhamma, they were troubled by non-human beings until they came to harm. So Vessavaṇa went to the Buddha and offered him a chant, the Āṭānāṭiya Paritta, paritta meaning a protection or safeguard, for the Buddha’s followers to learn and study.

The principles for reciting (chanting) the Āṭānāṭiya Paritta are:

1. The one who recites must have confidence in the virtue of the paritta.
2. It must be recited without error, that is, chanted correctly.
3. Know the meaning of the passage being chanted.
4. Have loving-kindness, a mind of faith, and a firm resolve that it bring the result wished for.

With these qualities, the chanting will succeed.

The content of the Āṭānāṭiya Paritta recalls the virtues of seven Buddhas, so it counts as the practice of buddhānussati, recollection of the Buddha. When you recollect in this way, the mind becomes steady, with mindfulness, concentration and wisdom. When the Buddha’s virtues are cultivated like this, non-human beings will not come to trouble that person, for fear of Vessavaṇa’s power.

To worship Vessavaṇa, you must know that he is a stream-enterer, and worship him rightly, as one whose five precepts and ten wholesome courses of action are complete. He has faith firmly established in the Triple Gem and pure virtue. He has cāga, relinquishment, which here means he has entirely given up the defilements of greed, aversion and delusion (lobha, dosa, moha) that would lead to the lower realms. He has the wisdom that can abandon defilements.

One thing we should not do in front of Vessavaṇa is act superstitiously, for example by asking for lucky windfalls. He does nothing superstitiously, nothing that does not go along with wisdom. So if someone behaves superstitiously, without reason or sense, he will not help them, because he lives his life by wisdom. If we go to pay respects to Vessavaṇa, we must go as people who know and understand, and recite the teaching of the Āṭānāṭiya Paritta correctly.