Visible Mantra Blog

New Siddhaṃ Calligrapher

2012-01-17T20:38:00.002Z

There's a new Buddhist calligrapher on Flickr. Levente Bakos does work in Siddhaṃ (left) and Tibetan scripts. Some beautiful work here, and with a distinctive style of his own. He does seals as well.

Buddhist Sutra Siddham

2012-01-16T11:16:00.001Z

Buddhist Sutra Siddham, a photo by geraldford on Flickr.

3rd line:

* na maḥ sa rva jñā ya a ryā va lo ki te śva ra bo dhi sa ttva ga mbhī raṃ pra jña
* namaḥ sarvajñāya - homage to the all knowing
aryāvalokiteśvara bodhisattva gambhiraṃ prajña[pāramitā ca]

4th line:

ryāṃ ca ra mā ṇo vya va lo ka ya ti sma paṃ ca ska ndhaḥ tāṃ śca sva bhā va...
[ca]ryāṃ caramāno vyavalokayati sma pañca skandhaḥ tāṃś ca svabhāva [śūnyān paśyati sma]

The Bodisattva Avalokiteśvara coursing in the course of perfect wisdom, beheld the five skandhas and saw them as empty of independent existence.

Pronouncing Anusvāra

2011-12-04T09:54:00.002Z

The question of how to pronounce anusvāra in syllables like oṃ and hūṃ is a question I get asked quire frequently. There are two answers to this, and I'm not sure it's any longer possible to decide which is right.

Anusvāra means 'after-sound'. It is was originally written, in the Brahmī scrpit as a small dot on the right-hand side of a syllable, but soon migrated to the top as in modern day Devanāgarī: e.g. ta त vs taṃ तं In Roman script we use an m with an underdot ṃ; or some times an overdot ṁ; or an n with a tail in older books: ŋ. There is also the anunāsika 'from the nose' which is a more general word for nasal sounds including consonants like ṅa, ña, ṇa, na and ma, and the nasalised semivowels e.g. lṃ. The anunāsika is indicated with candra-bindu in Devanāgarī: la ल vs lṃ लँ. Note that in modern languages such as Hindi the anusvāra and anunāsika are used interchangeably, but the anunāsika is used with seed-syllables where is adds to the symbolism.

What the anusvāra does when added to a syllable is nasalise the vowel of the syllable. Even though the sound is indicated by an additional letter in Roman script (the modified m) it is only indicating a change in the quality of the vowel sound. When speaking the air coming out of your lungs to make the sounds usually escapes through he mouth where the tongue and mouth shape the sound into distinct units. With a nasal sound, however, some or all of the air escape through the nasal cavity - which changes the timbre of the sound to produce the distinct nasal drone or buzz. You can experiment with the different sounds by pronouncing pairs of sounds that are only different because on is nasal: pa and ma have more or less the same articulation except the ma is nasal. Similarly ka and ṅa, ca and ña, ṭa and ṇa, or ta and na.

Now a vowel is produced with an open vocal tract - one doesn't interrupt the flow of air with the velum, tongue, or lips. Nasalising a vowel sound only requires a lowering of the velum (the soft palate at the rear of the mouth). The sound is used in English as the end of words like sung, sing, sang.

However there is another way to make a nasalised sound which is to bring the lips together at the end of the syllable, forcing all of the out going air through the nose to make a nasal humming sound. This is different from the ma syllable which begins with closed lips that open suddenly to release the built up pressure With the labial anusvāra the lips stay pressed together.

Both of these methods are common, and as far as I know there is no way to decide which is more correct.

So oṃ can be pronounced two different ways: ong and om (with no release at the end). With oṃ the latter is more common, but when one is learning Indic languages one hears a range of pronunciation of nasalised vowels.

Similarly hūṃ is pronounced as both hoong and hoom. The ū sound is a bit like the English vowel sound in 'hoot', but more open (i.e. the lips are not so bunched up). Make the face for hoot and then relax the lips. But please note that accents are all about how you pronounce vowels. You tend not to hear your own accent, so you pronounce vowels quite automatically. So describing how a vowel sound should be pronounced is usually folly at best. For ū the International Phonetic Alphabet sign is /uː/.

So we see oṃ pronounced more usually with the -m sound, and seed syallbles such as tāṃ, or hūṃ with the -ng sound. Take your pick. What most people do is follow the people around them. And then at least we're all doing the same thing, and what is language but a social convention anyway?

The idea of reproducing the "original" pronunciation is probably just a fantasy. Sometimes we can reconstruct pronunciation from rhyming patterns in verse, but the fact is the we just don't know and we never will, because we can't hear the ancient speakers. Pronunciation changes. Modern day Hindi speakers do not pronounce the vowels exactly as Sanskrit would seem to demand either. For instance they flatten the ai vowel so that it sounds like e. So the "original" pronunciation is lost. We must be content to do our best, and produce sounds that seem to fit what is written.

As I showed in my article on the 100 syllable Vajrasattva mantra in the Western Buddhist Review the errors introduced into mantra recitation are sometimes due to mis-reading rather than mis-hearing. So we are not the first to struggle with these issues!

How Wikipedia has Changed

2011-10-17T20:38:00.002+01:00

In 2003 this is what the Wikipedia entry on mantra looked like:

mantra(sanskrit)-"awareness spell" According to traditional etymology, mantra gets its name from providing protection (trâna) for the mind (manas).

A mantra can consist of a single letter, a syllable, a word, or even an entire phrase.

The next editor expanded this a little including the phrase:

Originally these were meaningless, and were a mechanism used to prevent thought. Usage in Western society today is primarily with meaningful phrases that an individual wishes to bear in mind constantly, particularly when striving to create personal change.

and a see also reference to "OCD" (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). This was the state I found it in. I set about writing a lot more text, under my then online nom-de-plume. Little of what I wrote 9 years ago remains, but what I wrote spurred people to edit and write more so it was almost worth it. Subsequently Wikipedia realised that they needed editorial guidelines and these shaped the article as it evolved. I don't participate in Wikipedia much these days - I post in some discussion pages but I don't edit. I haven't even read the latest entry just in case I get drawn into it again.

It is one of the interesting features of Wikipedia that the entire history of an article is preserved and can be accessed. We can see how entries evolved, and not doubt as we speak someone is doing a PhD on just this topic. At least with Wikipedia we get a sense of the article as an evolving, changing thing unlike a print encyclopedia where the process of creation is completely hidden.

Wikipedia even provides stats. The article has been edited 1373 times, an average of once every 2.28 days since 16 March 2003. A total of 599 users have been involved! Each making on average 2.29 edits. 2008 was the peak year for edits with 317. Since then the rate has dropped off steadily so that last year there were only 115. Nearly half the edits were by the most active 10% of users, which suggests that the other 90% made about 1 edit each.

Kūkai's Theory of Mantra

2011-10-14T12:08:00.005+01:00

I've just posted a short essay about an aspect of Kūkai's writing about mantra on Jayarava's Raves, my other blog. In Sound Word Reality I link Kūkai's 声字実相義 (Shōji jissō gi) to the Arapacana meditation tradition. I argue that Kūkai's three level analysis must stem from the Arapacana where a sound, represents a word, which reminds us of an aspect of the emptiness (śūnyatā) of all dharmas.

We see this in the phrase:

akāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ ādyanutpannatvāt

where akāro means the 'letter a', anutpanna is the keyword indicated by 'a' and it means non-arisen. And the whole phrase reminds us that dharmas are just mental events and that nothing substantial arises when we have an experience.

See also:

15% of Visible Mantra (and all Lulu Books)

2011-09-19T20:08:00.003+01:00

Go to the Visible Mantra Book.

Enter coupon code OKTOBERFESTUK305 at checkout and receive 15% off your order.

The maximum savings for this offer is £200. Sorry, but this offer is only valid in Pounds and cannot be applied to previous orders. You can only use this code once per account, and unfortunately you can't use this coupon in combination with other coupon codes. This great offer expires on 23 September 2011 at 11:59 PM, so don't miss out! While very unlikely, we do reserve the right to change or revoke this offer at anytime, and of course we cannot offer this coupon where it is against the law to do so. This coupon is good for self-purchases (i.e., Authors buying their own books) and/or it can be shared with Readers and Buyers. Lulu incurs the cost of this discount, so it does not impact the Author's proceeds of the book. This coupon will work for multiple titles but savings cannot go past the maximum of £200. Finally, this coupon does not pertain to shipping costs or taxes.

Copyright © 2002-2011 Lulu, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Visible Mantra Book is back on the menu...

2011-09-15T22:58:00.000+01:00

Problems with the book Update

2011-09-15T20:58:00.002+01:00

There have been problems with the distribution of Visible Mantra caused by Lulu which seems have set my book to not published. How they did that, and why they have responded to my inquiries (they have responded to one customer and told him I'd closed my account!) I do not know. However I have republished the book and it should be online again soon. My apologies for the confusion, but it was entirely out of my control.

The book can be purchased right now by following this link: http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/visible-mantra-visualising-writing-buddhist-mantras/10070917

But it will take a little while to re-appear in my Lulu 'author spotlight'.

Problems with the book

2011-09-11T17:46:00.001+01:00

There is a glitch on the Lulu site that is preventing customers from buying Visible Mantra. I have asked Lulu for an explanation but not heard back from them. Apologises to those people who've been trying to buy the book and been unable to.

I will let you know when it's working again.

Visible Mantra at the Triratna Order Convention

2011-08-23T18:22:00.005+01:00

Customers , a photo by jayarava on Flickr.

Stand, a photo by jayarava on Flickr.

Mystery Calligraphy

2011-07-26T18:47:00.004+01:00

A friend sent me this image of some calligraphy obtained in Nepal asking what it says.

It looks like dbu me or one of the other headless scripts. I'd guess it says:

shes bya ཤེས་བྱ་
"object of knowledge"

c.f. the THL Dictionary definition.

When I searched for shes bya I found this book, and the image on the book jacket appears to confirm my suspicions: c.f. the first characters of this book jacket.

Am I correct?

Article on Mantra

2011-07-20T08:06:00.003+01:00

3quarksdaily has published an article on mantra. (thanks Bodhipakṣa from Wildmind for the tip):

The Hallucinogenic Meaning of Mantras.
by Hartosh Singh Bal

The article is a bit light on conclusions, but gives nods to the research of Steve Farmer and Michael Witzel on the Indus Valley script. It also quotes Frits Staal who has written a lot about mantra, though I would not endorse most of it.

What conclusions there are, are based on the idea that Soma was a hallucinogen. Though I do not think there is any consensus on what Soma was (it has since been lost and replaced by another plant) it seems to me that the most likely candidate is ephedra which has ephedrine as an active ingredient. Ephedrine is a stimulant rather than a hallucinogen. In his documentary "India" Michael Wood seeks out and takes Ephedra tea in a market in Peshawar and describes the effects on camera: a feeling of energy, heightened senses, and talkativeness.

BBC Radio program on Sacred Sounds

2011-07-17T15:22:00.001+01:00

The Power of Oṃ. BBC Radio 4 documentary on mantra. Might only be available in the UK.

"Reverend Richard Coles explores the world of spiritual sound and meditation and tries to understand what it is about certain sounds and chants which gives practitioners a sense of proximity to the Divine."

evaṃ

2011-07-12T19:25:00.004+01:00

For a long time I've been intrigued by Tashi Mannox's calligraphy of the word evaṃ. Evaṃ is, of course, is the word that is supposed to start all genuine sūtras:

evaṃ mayā śrutaṃ

In fact many Pāli texts do not start this way, but even so it is distinctively associated with sūtras. The authors of the tantras also began their texts with this word, and developed a number of esoteric associations.

Earlier on this blog I did my own version of evaṃ in Siddhaṃ script.

Here is my take on the Wartu script bīja based on Tashi's calligraphy.

Micro-publishers

2011-07-12T17:05:00.002+01:00

I'd quite like to hear from other Buddhist micro-publishers. I'd like to investigate possibilities of working together on marketing and distribution.

Maṇi Mantra Wartu Script

2011-07-10T12:53:00.001+01:00

mani mantra wartu, a photo by jayarava on Flickr.

This is the mantra of Avalokiteśvara.
** oṃ maṇipadme hūṃ ||

The script is called Wartu and is an adaptation of Lantsa - a headless form - from Tibet. I don't know this script, but have based this on some calligraphy by Tashi Mannox.

mani mantra uchen

2011-07-09T17:12:00.002+01:00

mani mantra uchen, a photo by jayarava on Flickr.

I recently did a weekend workshop on Tibetan calligraphy with Tashi Mannox. I would not say that I have progressed beyond the level of beginner, but after a couple of weeks of practice I think this is not too bad.

This is the mantra of Avalokiteśvara.
** oṃ maṇipadme hūṃ ||

The script is called dbu can, pronounced like 'uchen', and is from Tibet.

Visible Mantra Book

2011-07-07T13:43:00.002+01:00

So I finally reached the end, and I'm very happy to announce that the book is now for sale!

As a publisher I'm delighted to be able to finally offer this book because it achieves the goals of the project in a way that the website cannot. It combines a higher quality of calligraphy, and the use of fonts for mantras to provide a great deal more consistency and generally higher quality. It brings together other material on mantra from my blog, and I think makes an attractive package.

As an author I am painfully aware of all of the inconsistencies, the imperfections and omissions that are left. But the project needed to have an end point, and with my publishers hat on I've said "this is it". It's time to let it go, and if necessary start collecting ideas and corrections for a second edition. I only hope that my readers will be forgiving and appreciate the spirit behind the endeavour.

This book has been an incredibly difficult project - many scripts, many languages, hundreds of images, 75,000 words of text, and I have done most of it myself - though with help from many people. To get to this point, even if there are still remaining imperfections feels like a milestone in my life! The idea came six years ago on my ordination retreat when there were a lot of questions about seed-syllables and mantras that I was answering as best I could. As I say - this is a book I wanted to read rather than write.

So here it is. I must say I'm extremely anxious at this point, but here goes... I hope you will find the book as enjoyable and informative as people tell me the website is. I think the book is a great improvement on the website, and this means I have a lot of work ahead bringing the website up to scratch!

I've thanked many people in the book, including many of you who will be reading this and who have contributed via the blog or Facebook, or other media (not least to correct my spelling which seems to be getting worse lately!). Thanks again. And thanks also to those people whose donations, past and present, small and large which pay for the website, and my calligraphy pens! I'd like to make special mention of my friend Maitiu O'Ceileachair whose contribution is felt throughout the book.

Lakṣmī

2011-07-03T14:48:00.006+01:00


siddhaṃ	lantsa	dbu-can

A friend wrote today to ask about the way to write the name of the goddess of good fortune Lakṣmī. This is traditionally done in Tibet as a bīja or single stack of letters (ignoring the a in la) in both dbu-can and Lantsa scripts. My version of this are on the left in three scripts.

An interesting thing about Lakṣmī is that she is not a Vedic goddess, i.e. doesn't appear in the Ṛgveda. She does appear - under the name Sirimā or Śrī - in the Pāli Canon (Rhys Davids Buddhist India, p.216-9). So she seems to have been a local goddess in North-East India that was adopted into both Buddhism and Hinduism. She puts in an appearance as Lakṣmī in the Golden Light Sūtra. Note that Wikipedia doesn't mention either her origins or her Buddhist associations. I have written on my other blog about how the Buddha describes village people as maṅgalika or superstitious, i.e. concerned with omens and luck (see: Gesundheit! Making Accommodations with Custom).

One also sees this written in Lantsa with a long ā and short i - i.e. लाक्ष्मि - this is common, though I think it is certainly an error. For example there is this image of the corrupt version with two hanzi: 壽 & 福 (Shòu & fú) literally 'life' and 'blessing'. More calligraphy of this version can be found on the East Wind Gallery site.

One sees the problem of mixed up vowel lengths a lot in Chinese and Japanese Siddhaṃ - for example the bīja dhīḥ is routinely written as dhiḥ (with a short i) in Japan. John Stevens says, in regard to other spelling errors that: "rightly or wrongly they have become part of the tradition." (Sacred Calligraphy, p.33). Personally I'm inclined to correct them as I say here and here.

For another (and much better) image of Lakṣmī's bīja written correctly see George Fisher's Indian Scripts website (the link is to a pdf, scroll down, Lakṣmī is the last bīja). The main website is www.lantsha-vartu.org.

Digital Tibetan

2011-06-30T09:39:00.006+01:00

For those who use Tibetan on computers, Digital Tibetan Wiki, looks to be a very useful site. Also if I write this:

༄༅།ༀ་མ་ཎི་པ་དྨེ་ཧཱུྃ༎

And what you see is this:

Then see: How to configure Web browsers for correct display of Tibetan script.

Tibetan Calligraphy Course.

2011-06-27T08:28:00.005+01:00

Tibetan Calligraphy Course With Tashi Mannox. What a great way to spend a weekend, though I think we were all exhausted by the end! Pictures are on my Flickr Site. They're all a bit grainy, but email me if you want to get copies of the originals.

My own calligraphy is here.

Cheers Jayarava

Final Cover Design

2011-06-23T21:48:00.004+01:00

Well, here is the final cover design for the book. Front and back. The background image is made from layered Mandlebrot set images I made a while back (see more on my Flickr site). The lettering on the front is a garbhadhātu maṇḍala with a, ā, aṃ, aḥ, and āṃḥ, and the Avalokiteśvara mantra in white. The back is part of the Karaṇḍamudrā Dhāraṇī. I'm quite pleased with this, it is striking and communicates something of the content, and the fire of my own passion for the subject.

I still want to check a few little details - for example I need to thank another friend in the acknowledgements that I had overlooked. But the text is basically finished. I hope to be able to announce that it is for sale by the end of next week - but you know if you've been following this thread that everything takes longer than expected! Nearly there.

If anyone is going to be at the Tibetan Calligraphy workshop with Tashi Mannox in London this weekend, then I look forward to meeting you, and I will have a proof copy of the book to look at.

Palm Leaf Manuscript

2011-06-07T15:17:00.004+01:00

text-monochrome, a photo by jayarava on Flickr.

Just bought this for £5 from a charity shop. Trying to identify the script. It looks a bit like Sinhala to me, but the images on the cover are of Ganeṣa, Dūṛga and Hayagrīva. Clearly it is some kind of Southern Brāhmī script.

Can anyone shed light on what this script is?

Most of the manuscript is in poor condition, and very difficult to read.

Upadate 12-6

Hi Jayarva,

I went through the Manuscript again, actually the transcribed sentence should be:
+රරූඩ්කොටවෙලාද්රග+
[+]rarū|ḍ|kŏṭavĕlā|d|raga[+]
(The vertical loop is the virama. The /i/ sign is more open looped in the manuscript). In cursive handwriting, the adjacent /aa/ vowel sign seems to have written connected to the ka. Though I am not sure of /ḍ/ & /d/ readings.

කොටවෙලා/කොට වෙලා seems to give some Google hits in Sinhala.

I could make out some thing with 7th line of the left section:
[+]දේ කිරි ගෙනෙල්ලා කටෙ තිය[+]
[+]de kiri gĕnĕllā kaṭĕ tiya
(de is probably a partial word ending)
කිරි/ගෙනෙල්ලා/කටෙ/තිය as individual words give Sinhala hits in Google. The Combined කටෙ තිය is also giving hits. In the initial part of the manuscript, කේ ke (with explicit long o) is written, which is characteristic of Sinhala. (Similary /re/ is written with explicit long /e/ )

Also, there seem to be some word endings with /ya/ - again pointing the Sinhala (Even the Skt. sutra is written as sutraya in Sinhala ). The document is most probably Sinhala. If you can get some one with working knowledge of Sinhala, the content of the manuscript can be figured out.
Vinod

[Thanks Vinod. Something odd happened with your comment so I cut and pasted from the email notification - hope you don't mind. Thanks for your help! JR]

Book Progress

2011-06-06T11:12:00.002+01:00

At the beginning of the week before last I thought I'd be finished in a few days. However indexing is slow work, plus I was forced to make some changes that mucked up the first draft of the index (which I am - probably unwisely - doing manually). Also I've had some difficulties with the cover. My current estimate is another two weeks at the current rate of progress. After 6 years a couple of weeks extra don't seem so bad, but I'm excited about the prospect of getting it finished.

I will be attending Tashi Mannox's calligraphy workshop in London on the 26th June and hope to have a few copies with me for that. (Reminds me I must brush up on the Tibetan alphabet!)

Brāhmī inscription from Sañchi

2011-06-01T12:51:00.004+01:00

Brahmi, a photo by nikhilgul on Flickr.

Brāhmī script: poṭhakasa bhikhuno dānaṃ *
i,e, donated by Bhikkhu Poṭhakasa

The final maṅgala symbol represents a bodhi tree surrounded by a railing.

Book Progress

2011-05-24T08:25:00.002+01:00

I'm now in the last stages of the Visible Mantra book. The text is finalised (though errors keep leaping out at me rather alarmingly) and I'm more or less happy with all of the images. I need to check the indexing and bibliography for consistency today, but it's probably only a day's work. This evening I'll pick up the cover art from my artist friend (my first glimpse which I'm a bit nervous about - I hope I like it!). I need to have it scanned at hi resolution, and then create the cover itself.

Then I'm done... years, months, and weeks have telescoped into days.

My other project on reprinting Plato's Cratylus along with Kūkai's Shōji jissō gi ('Explaining Sound, word, reality') and Thomas Kasulis's article linking the two of them is going well. I have the permissions I need (at a price I can afford!) and I've commissioned Dr Margaret Magnus of Margo's Magical Letter Page to write an introduction to Plato and Sound Symbolism. I will write an introduction to Kūkai and some background on Shōji jissō gi. I'm thinking about soliciting a celebrity forward from someone. I'm excited about this bringing together of East and West. I don't expect to sell many copies, but it's a book I'd love to read!

Kūkai is much on my mind as the Visible Mantra project comes to fruition. I'm a non-fiction writer rather than a story teller, but I love the story of Kūkai's journey to China and it lacks a really good retelling in English. Yet another book I want to read, but may end up having to try to write!

Brāhmī Script - causation formula in Pāli

2011-05-23T08:05:00.003+01:00

Brāhmī Script - causation formula in Pāli, a photo by jayarava on Flickr.

ye dhammā hetuppabhāva
tesaṃ hetuṃ tathāgato āha
tesaṃ ca yo nirodho
evaṃ vādī mahāsamaṇo

Of those experiences that arise from a cause,
The Tathāgata has said, 'this is their cause',
And this is their cessation.
Thus the Great Striver teaches.

Yig mgo and shad

2011-05-22T10:03:00.010+01:00

I noticed this image on Wikipedia this morning under Mongolian writing systems. I've straightened it, cropped it, and saturated the colours to highlight the text. The image combines a number of scripts and helps to illustrate something I've been researching for my book. There are two lines of vertical phags pa script at either end and five lines of horizontal text in the following scripts:

Lantsa
dbu can
soyombo (A Mongolian script based on dbu can)
dbu can
Classical Mongolian

The top line reads : *|| la kṣiṃ ja nya su kha hī paṃ ||
The next line reads: **|| la kṣiṃ dza nya sukha hī paṃ ||

This is not a mantra I'm familiar with, but in any case I was mainly interested to draw attention the the marks I have transcribed as * and ||.

The sign transcribed by * I only know by its Tibetan name yig mgo pronounced 'yimgo'. It is followed by the vertical stroke । in Sanskrit is called daṇḍa 'rod, stick', and in Tibetan shad (pronounced shé), which here is doubled ॥ . In this case the Tibetan yig mgo combines both the standard yig gmo - ༄ - and the 'following' yig mgo - ༅ - to give ༄༅. This and even more ornate forms are often found at the head of texts. The Lantsa yig mgo adds what looks like the long ā diacritic which probably is the same idea.

The latter is simply the double daṇḍa or nyis shad in Tibetan. The daṇḍa is the only form of punctuation regularly used in Sanskrit. In poetry a single daṇḍa marks the end of a line, and a double daṇḍa marks the end of a stanza. In prose it is used more freely where in English we might use commas, semi-colons, dashes, colons, and full-stops.

I'm planning a longer article about these and similar marks for my blog in a couple of weeks, and have more detail in my forthcoming book.

New Book Project

2011-05-19T11:34:00.002+01:00

I'm pleased to announce that I have concluded negotiations with Columbia University Press, and can proceed with a project I have been thinking about for a long time. At the heart of it will be this article:

Kasulis, Thomas P. ‘Reference and Symbol in Plato’s Cratylus and Kūkai’s Shōjijissōgi’ Philosophy East & West, Vol. 32, 1982.

I will be reprint the article courtesy of the University of Hawai'i Press. It will be accompanied by translations of both the Cratylus dialogue (an out of copyright edition); and Kūkai's Shōji jissō gi (声字実相義), in Yoshito Hakeda's translation courtesy of CUP. I've asked Dr Margaret Magnus, author of Gods of the Word and The Magic Letter Page, to write an introduction to Plato and Sound Symbolism. I will write an introduction to Kūkai and the Shōji jissō gi.

This brings together several strands of interest for me, but especially helps to make the link between sound symbolism, especially Margaret's work on phonosemantics, and Buddhist mantra. I hope to publish this as the 4th offering from Visible Mantra Books sometime in late 2011.

I've approached another author about an existing unpublished manuscript on Buddhist mantra, and hope that it will be our 5th book sometime in 2012. I'm trying to encourage friends of mine to produce a book of audible mantras - i.e. to notate the tunes we use for mantras in the Triratna Community.

arapacana alphabet in Siddhaṃ script

2011-05-16T10:50:00.001+01:00

arapacana alphabet in Siddhaṃ script, a photo by jayarava on Flickr.

Book Progress

2011-05-16T08:34:00.002+01:00

I have finished all of the corrections found by my proof readers (in English, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese and Japanese!) for the Visible Mantra book. They won't, of course, be the last of the errors, if only because I've tinkered with the text since then. I need to do some restructuring, move things around to create a more logical order, and then light indexing, and tidy up a few cross references that now point to new pages. I'm seeing light at the end of this long tunnel.

Siddhir astu

2011-05-11T09:02:00.005+01:00

Since we have builders in the house and it's hard to concentrate here, I spent part of yesterday rummaging around the Cambridge University Library. I was looking for some articles on the symbols at the beginning of mantras. I plan a full scale blog post on that subject, but it's not ready yet. I did come across several references to this Sanskrit phrase: siddhir astu. Intriguingly when I began to look on the Internet I found it in several places, not only on Buddhist sites, but on Hindu sites as well where it is apparently a Ganeṣa mantra. The phrase, even when used as a mantra, is often incorrectly written as siddhi rastu.

Just to clarify there is no word rastu (in Sanskrit). The word is astu, which is the 3rd person singular imperative of the verb √as 'to be' and means 'may there be, may it be'. This leaves us with siddhir, which we can see is the word siddhiḥ (nominative singular) meaning 'accomplishment, perfection'. It is affected by the sandhi rule that -iḥ followed by a vowel becomes -ir: hence siddhir astu 'may there be perfection'. Note that when we transliterate Sanskrit in Roman script we break the word between the consonant and the vowel. However in Devanāgarī the situation is more confusing because the whole thing is written as one word - the r and a are combined into a single akṣara : सिद्धिरस्तु the syllables being सि द्धि र स्तु (si ddhi ra stu). This is one of the disadvantages of Indic scripts, and part of what makes learning Sanskrit difficult. To read it you have to know the suffixes and sandhi rules very well.

This kind of mistake is quite common amongst Buddhists, i.e. the mistake of seeing a familiar word like siddhi, and breaking there, even when it produces non-sense words like rastu. It seems to have happened in Tibetan readings of the Vajrasattva mantra from the Sarvatathāgata-tattvasaṃgraha as well - as I discuss in my Western Buddhist Review article on the mantra: The Hundred Syllable Vajrasattva Mantra. The best example is the phrase sarvakarmasu ca me cittaṃ sreya kuru' and, in all actions make my mind more excellent' being read as sarva karma suca me cittaṃ śreya kuru, thereby obliterating the sense of the words, leaving words without any grammatical relationships, and creating the nonsense word suca. Basically it's what happens when you have a tradition in a language you don't speak.

This does not explain the form found on page 33 of John Stevens' Sacred Calligraphy of the East: siddhāṃrastu (which I have commented on before). But at least we can now see where it comes from. What was written on ancient Sanskrit manuscripts was not siddhāṃastu, or even siddhamastu, but siddhir astu.

siddhirastu

Reference:

Roth, Gustav. (1986) 'Mangala-symbols in Buddhist Sanskrit Manuscripts and Inscriptions' in Bhattacharya, G (ed.) Deyadharma : Studies in Memory of Dr D. C. Sircar. Sri Satguru Pubs. Delhi, p. 239-250.

Siddham

2011-05-09T14:51:00.003+01:00

After a long wait I have finally got hold of a reasonably priced copy of:

van Gulik, R.H. (1956) Siddham: An Essay on the History of Sanskrit Studies in China and Japan. New Delhi: Aditya (reprinted 2001).

It's part of Śata-piṭaka series produced by Lokesh Chandra and his illustrious father, Raghu Vira, who have been incredibly prolific in making this kind of material available. The book cost 1000 Rs in India and about 4x as much here in the UK, though I've seen copies advertised on Amazon for 4x as much again.

For anyone interested in the script and the history this is a very good book to own. Not only does it have the essay, but it contains examples of Siddhaṃ calligraphy from many eras of history stretching back to the mid 8th century. Many of the familiar images of Siddhaṃ calligraphy have been originally copied from this book I suspect.

The Art of Calligraphy.

2011-05-04T08:20:00.002+01:00

hūṃ
a photo by jayarava on Flickr.

This is a hūṃ I did recently. I've added lines to indicate the salient features of the form - to bring out the internal relationships.

Ideally the diagonal lines would all be parallel - note mine aren't! The bindu of the candra-bindu gives the smallest unit - the nib width. In western calligraphy the nib width is critical to understanding the design of a script. Here though we do find half-widths partly because the pen is always (supposed to be) at 45°.

Horizontally the body of the syllable is about 3 nibs wide - with some extension beyond in the outer details (the tail of the ha for instance). Vertically the main part of the ha is 4 nibs. The candra-bindu is about 2.5; while the ū is about 2. In an ideal world the ratios height to width of the ha, and the height of the candra-bindu to the height of the ha would approach the golden ratio ~ 1.618.

Without being perfect this figure points to where perfection lays. And there is a deep truth here that Buddhism taps into. There is a Mahāyāna sūtra which describes the whole world as a scroll, and all the dharmas, all the mental phenomena, as letters on that scroll. However the sūtra says that each letter contains the whole of the Buddhadharma. In other words each and every experience we have is pointing towards the same truth - that experience itself is insubstantial and unsatisfactory.

By a deep analysis of the flaws of my calligraphy I come to see where I might improve. I gain a deeper understanding of the way this script works, and with it a deeper understanding of my own experience of the world. Gradually I improve. I began, as all beginners do, copying the work of masters - my master was not present to correct me, but I could see his calligraphy, and I was able to correct myself. This is a slow way to make progress I may say. It is much better to have a teacher - but I am somewhat stubborn and Siddhaṃ calligraphy teachers are hard to come by. Even so after some years I have come to my own understanding of the form. I would not say that I have mastered the art, but I know good from bad calligraphy these days, and I am usually honest with myself about my own efforts. One needs to be critical without being harsh, which is a fine line sometimes.

Calligraphy is a fascinating art because each time one writes something, even after years of practice, there are variations. Training oneself to notice these variations is important. It is all part of Buddhist practice. We have to see clearly what has been done, comparing it with the intention, with the template one is trying to copy - whether it is the syllable executed by a master, or the internal model that develops with time - to see how we have deviated from our aim. We may even come to understand why we deviate.

Achieving perfection is definitely the goal, but in the meantime we focus on the striving for it - on the technique. Along the way one sometimes reaches a milestone in understanding and practice. It's good, in my opinion, to celebrate these milestones. I often post something on my blog or on Flickr that seems especially good. Then in a few months or years one can look back and see the imperfections and wonder at one's own superficiality and naivety! LOL! I look at the calligraphy on my own website and think that most of it is poor, some of it very poor. It was the best I could do at the time, but now I know I can do better.

When doing calligraphy it is good to be aware of your body, your breathing. Your whole body contributes to the process - not just the hand. One must have a firm base for instance. The hand and arm are connected to the trunk by many muscles and sinews. In order to have a free hand, one must have free shoulders, for instance. And of course in order for the body to be relaxed and free, the mind must be relaxed and free. The lack of calm and freedom is the main source of imperfection in calligraphy. This is perhaps why some of the greatest calligraphers of Japan -- Kūkai, Hakuin, Ryōkan -- have also been masters of meditation.

A single syllable can be a challenging practice. We tend to do the syllable again and again. Mantras of several syllables give a different challenge - each syllable in a mantra like oṃ maṇipadme hūṃ has it's own form and harmony. The intense focus of the bīja must broaden out to encompass the multiplicity of forms. A long mantra, like the 100 syllable Vajrasattva Mantra or some of the long dhāraṇīs are another challenge. When working with ink on paper, the slightest lapse in concentration results in an error. The paper is then ruined and one must start again. I once did calligraphy of the Heart Sutra which is almost 500 syllables. The effort was a great strain and I don't know if I could manage it again! 500 syllables without a significant error in writing. This took careful planning and study of the Sanskrit, and was certainly not achieved on the first attempt. It is the sort of thing best attempted whilst on a solitary retreat I think.

Clearly calligraphy is a good śamatha practice, but it has the potential to be a vipaśyanā practice as well. The close examination of the tiny differences, and the attention to what happens when we set off to write something, can allow us to see just how our mind works to create experience. The interconnectedness of mind and body, and the interplay of the two in calligraphy show us something about the interconnectedness of the phenomenal world.

Those who merely cut and paste, or who use fonts instead of spending years learning the script and putting in the 100s and the 1000s of hours required to become proficient, are really missing the point. Some people seem to think that calligraphy is just images to be consumed, owned or tattooed. But that is only the most superficial and naive response to the art. Perfection is something that we each, individually strive for. Without the striving there is no perfection. Simply copying the master is not enough, even if one does it by hand. Owning an image is truly worthless. On his funny, if coarse, blog "Shit my Dad says" Justin Halpern recalls showing off his newly acquired cellphone to his now infamously cantankerous father. Dad replies:

"Son, no one gives a shit about all the things your cell phone does. You didn't invent it, you just bought it. Anybody can do that."

My own favourite calligrapher (there aren't that many of us) is Tashi Mannox (website and blog). Tashi first trained as an artist, and then spent 17 years an a monastic scribe. It shows both in his art, and in his manner (I would say from our correspondence and one meeting ). Tashi makes amazing and inspiring works of calligraphic art, I would say he's a master calligrapher. But in some ways I prefer my own calligraphy, because it is the result of my own striving. I draw inspiration from Tashi's work, but I would never be content merely to own something he did (though I do have a few samples he kindly gave me when I visited him in London a couple of years ago). I learn so much more from keeping up my own practice. I hope that others are inspired to take up the art of calligraphy - it has been a very rewarding practice for me.

Book Progress

2011-04-25T11:12:00.003+01:00

I've just finished the English Proof reading for the Visible Mantra book. I have quite a bit of correcting of Chinese and Tibetan to correct, and some structural work to do. My artist friend tells me he has finished the cover art - though I haven't seen it yet!

āṃḥ - decorative Siddhaṃ script

2011-04-24T10:17:00.003+01:00

āṃḥ - decorative Siddhaṃ script,
a photo by jayarava on Flickr.

This syllable āṃḥ contains many symbols - vision and transformation, śūnyatā, nirvāṇa, triratna etc. And it has great calligraphic potential as you see. It's made from four syllables: a ā aṃ aḥ so also is a 5-fold maṇḍala. Everything is here.

Arapacana - translation

2011-04-21T13:09:00.005+01:00

I've finished my translation of the Arapacana in the Sanskrit edition of the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra (PPS), or The Discourse on Perfect Wisdom in 25,000 lines, produced by Takayasu Kimura (1986-2009).

In creating this translation I have also consulted the Sanskrit edition by Dutt (1934); the Chinese translations by Kumārajīva (T. 223) and Xuán Zàng (T. 220 - incorporating PP versions in 18k, 25k, and 100k lines) as found in CBETA online version of the Taisho Ed. of the Chinese Tripiṭaka ; and Edward Conze’s English translation (1975), particularly his notes on translation and ms. variants. Conze cites Mokshala [sic] which I take to be a reference to T. 221, the translation of the PPS by Mokṣa (or Mokṣala); and Yüan-tsang [sic; i.e. Xuán Zàng] which I take to be a reference to T.220.

I have also used Brough’s (1977) discussion of the Arapacana in 普曜經 (Pǔ yào jīng = The Lalitavistara Sūtra; T. 186), translated by Dharmarakṣa in 308 CE, to shed light on Chinese translations. Brough himself also refers to Kumārajīva’s translation of the Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa (T. 1509 ) a commentary on the PPS attributed to Nāgārjuna which appears not to coincide with T. 223 in every detail; and Xuán Zàng’s various translations of the large Perfection of Wisdom text contained within T. 220.

In addition there is a very old Arapacana Alphabet in the Bajaur Collection which is mostly unpublished and I have consulted it where possible. Salomon (1990) is invaluable for understanding the alphabet in any script or language. The Sanskrit editions, and presumably the Sanskrit mss. contain several conflicts that are resolved by Conze – and in each case I have followed his example, but only after consulting some of the same sources (particularly the Chinese texts) and the secondary literature. The last few lines are very confused and show a great deal of variation in both the syllable and the keyword, not to mention the fact that the number of syllables varies from 41 – 43, while the text itself later refers to 42 letters ‘dvācatvāriṃśad akṣarāṇi’.

Download a pdf of my Arapacana Translation

Please contact with any comments on this work. My thanks to readers of my VM Facebook page for contributing to Chinese translations.

jñā - decorative

2011-04-17T20:42:00.001+01:00

jñā - decorative, a photo by jayarava on Flickr.

"know, knowledge" root of many important Buddhist technical terms: jñāna, prajñā, saṃjñā, vijñāna, sarvajñā.

another tāṃ

2011-04-16T12:28:00.001+01:00

tāṃ, a photo by jayarava on Flickr.

tāṃ - seed syllable of Tārā

2011-04-15T18:55:00.001+01:00

tāṃ - seed syllable of Tārā, a photo by jayarava on Flickr.

Developing my calligraphy style towards more decorative forms.

Arapacana Alphabet in the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā prajñāpāramitā in Sanskrit and Chinese

2011-04-13T14:03:00.007+01:00

A comparative table of Arapacana Alphabets in the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra in Conze's English Translation; the new Sanskrit edition by Takayasu; Kumārajīva's 404 CE Chinese translation (Taisho 223); and Xuán Zàng's 663 CE Chinese translation which collates a number of PP sūtras (Taisho 220).

There's quite broad agreement up to about letter 26. Note that Conze also uses the Chinese translation by Mokṣa of Khotan (Taisho 221), but so far I haven't identified the arapacana alphabet in this text. All the lists except Conze include repetitions. Conze's solutions to this problem look likely and involve Prakrit spellings of Sanksrit words, i.e. ṣaṃga for saṅga at no.10. (Note that the Chinese transliterations support this sustitution by using an aspirated sibilant sound.) The number of syllables in the various alphabets various from 41-43 (Dutt has 44!) but we know that later in the Pañcaviṃśati the text is expecting 42 (dvācatvāriṃśad akṣarāṇi PSP_6-8:67-8).

	Conze	Takayasu	Kumārajīva		Xuán Zàng
1	a	a	阿	Ā	[褒-保+可]	[Bāo-bǎo +kě]
2	ra	ra	羅	Luó	洛	Luò
3	pa	pa	波	Bō	跛	Bǒ
4	ca	ca	遮	Zhē	者	Zhě
5	na	na	那	Nà	娜	Nuó
6	la	la	邏	Luó	砢	Luǒ
7	da	da	陀	Tuó	柁	Duò
8	ba	ba	婆	Pó	婆	Pó
9	ḍa	ḍa	荼	Tú	荼	Tú
10	ṣa	sa	沙	Shā	沙	Shā
11	va	va	和	Hé	縛	Fù
12	ta	ta	多	Duō	[多*頁]	[Duō*yè]
13	ya	ya	夜	Yè	也	Yě
14	ṣṭa	sta	咤	zhà	瑟吒	(Sè zhà)
15	ka	ka	迦	Jiā	迦	Jiā
16	sa	sa	娑	Suō	娑	Suō
17	ma	ma	磨	Mó	磨	Mó
18	ga	ga	伽	Jiā	伽	Jiā
19	stha	stha	他	Tā	他	Tā
20	ja	ja	闍	Dū	闍	Dū
21	śva	śva	簸	bǒ	濕縛	(Shī fù)
22	dha	dha	馱	Tuó	達	Dá
23	śa	śa	賒	Shē	捨	Shě
24	kha	kha	呿	Qū	佉	Qū
25	kṣa	kṣa	叉	Cha	羼	Chàn
26	sta	sta	哆	Duō	薩[多*頁]	(Sà [duō*yè])
27	jña	jña	若	Ruò	若	Ruò
28	rta	ha	拖	Tuō	剌他	(Là tā)
29	ha	ccha	婆	Pó	呵	Ā
30	bha	sma	車	Chē	薄	Báo
31	ccha	hva	摩	Mó	綽	Chuò
32	sma	sa	火	Huǒ	颯磨	(Sà mó)
33	hva	gha	嗟	Jiē	嗑縛	(Kè fù)
34	tsa	ṭha	伽	Jiā	蹉	Cuō
35	gha	ṇa	他	Tā	鍵	Jiàn
36	ṭha	pha	拏	Ná	搋	Chǐ
37	ṇa	ska	頗	Pō	拏	Ná
38	pha	ja	歌	Gē	頗	Pō
39	ska	ca	醝	Cuó	塞迦	(Sāi jiā)
40	ysa	ṭa	遮	Zhē	逸娑	(Yì suō)
41	śca	ḍa	咤	zhà	酌	Zhuó
42	ṭa		荼	Tú	吒	Zhà
43	ḍha				擇	Zé

Chinese Arapacana Alphabet

2011-04-12T14:45:00.005+01:00

This is the Arapacana Alphabet that appears in Kumārajīva's Chinese translation of the Large Perfection of Wisdom Text (CBETA T. 223 - 0256a).

阿羅波遮那邏陀婆荼沙和多夜 [口*宅] 迦娑磨伽他闍 [其*皮] 馱賒呿叉哆若拖婆車摩火嗟伽他拏頗歌醝遮 [口*宅] 荼

Google offers the following transliterations:

Ā luó bō zhē nà luó tuó pó tú shā hé duō yè [kǒu*zhái] jiā suō mó jiā tā dū [qí*pí] tuó shē qū cha duō ruò tuō pó chē mó huǒ jiē jiā tā ná pō gē cuó zhē [kǒu *Zhái] tú.

I'm looking at the Sanskrit version and got interested enough to track this down. This version has 42 syllables which fits the number mentioned in the text. Conze's translation has 43 letters, and the two Sanskrit editions online at the Gretil Archive (Dutt and Takayasu) both have 41.

Ideally I'd like to get more info about the fragment from the Bajaur collection to compare the versions. We know it has 42 letters and what a few of the key words are, but the conservators of the collection are occupied with other texts at present (and have been for some years now!)

BTW The reason I'm looking at this is because I am doing my own translation for the book. I could use Conze's but it is covered by copyright and I'm trying to minimize the amount of copyright material in the book (hopefully I'll eliminate it altogether because applying for permission is slow and time consuming, and potentially expensive!). But as I go I find I am not at all satisfied with Conze's translations any way - at times I am none the wiser about what the Sanskrit means for having read his translation. Unlike translating Pāli texts in which one can usually see quite easily what is meant, the Perfection of Wisdom texts are esoteric in the sense of requiring a commentary that I lack access to if it exists!

triratnāḥ - three jewels

2011-04-10T09:57:00.001+01:00

triratnāḥ - three jewels, a photo by jayarava on Flickr.

akāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāmādyanutpannavāt

2011-04-09T14:34:00.008+01:00

akāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāmādyanutpannavāt, a photo by jayarava on Flickr.

akāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāmādyanutpannatvāt

अकारो मुखः सर्वधर्माणामाद्यनुत्पन्नत्वात्

Sanskrit translates as: "The letter 'a' is an opening because of the primal quality of non-arising of all mental phenomena." [my translation]

First line of the Arapacana acrostic as found in the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramita Sūtra (The Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra in 25,000 lines). More info on the Visible Mantra Arapacana page.

Each line of this acrostic has a key word which begins with the the corresponding letter of the Gāndhārī alphabet (as envisaged by Sanskrit speakers). The whole collection make up a meditation practice in which the practitioner tries to see the true nature of experience as empty of independent existence - i.e. that all experiences are conditioned by the meeting of mind and mental objects.

(Thanks again to Dksht for spotting errors. I think both the Siddhaṃ and Roman are correct now)

Arapacana Alphabet in the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā prajñāpāramitā

2011-04-08T13:51:00.002+01:00

The last volumes of the new Sanskrit edition of the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā prajñāpāramitā Sūtra by Takayasu Kimura, are now available online from the GRETIL Archive. This means that the section with the Arapacana Alphabet has now been published. Here is the Sanskrit text from vol.1. Note that akāro, pakāro, cakāro means the syllables a, pa, ca. The syllable ra has a special form repho. I'll try to do a comparison with the other versions (Conze and Dutt) at some point but note that this version has only 41 letters. The text itself mentions 42 later on (dvācatvāriṃśad akṣarāṇi - PSP_6-8:68), and Conze's version has 43 letters!

akāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇām ādyanutpannatvāt,
repho mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ rajo 'pagatatvāt,
pakāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ paramārthanirdeśāt,
cakāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ cyavanopapattyanupalabdhitvāt,
nakāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ nāmāpagatatvāt,
lakāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ lokottīrṇatvāt, tṛṣṇālatāhetupratyayasamudghātitvāt,
dakāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ dāntadamathaparicchinnatvāt,
(PvsP1-2: 86)
bakāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ bandhanavimuktatvāt,
ḍakāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ ḍamarāpagatvāt,
sakāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ saṃgānupalabdhitvāt,
vakāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ vākpathaghoṣasamucchinnatvāt,
takāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ tathatācalitatvāt,
yakāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ yathāvadanutpādatvāt,
stakāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ stambhānupalabdhitvāt,
kakāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ kārakānupalabdhitvāt,
sakāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ samatānupalabdhitvāt,
makāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ mamakārānupalabdhitvāt,
gakāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ gaganānupalabdhitaḥ,
sthakāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ sthānānupalabdhitaḥ,
jakāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ jātyanupalabdhitaḥ,
śvakāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ śvāsānupalabdhitaḥ,
dhakāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ dharmadhātvanupalabdhitaḥ,
śakāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ śamathānupalabdhitaḥ,
khakāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ khasamatānupalabdhitaḥ,
kṣakāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ kṣayānupalabdhitaḥ,
stakāramukhāḥ sarvadharmās tac cānupalabdhitaḥ,
jñakāramukhāḥ sarvadharmāḥ sarvajñānānupalabdhitaḥ,
hakāramukhāḥ sarvadharmāḥ hetor anupalabdhitaḥ,
cchakāramukhāḥ sarvadharmāś cchaver apy anupalabdhitaḥ,
smakāramukhāḥ sarvadharmāḥ smaraṇānupalabdhitaḥ,
hvakāramukhāḥ sarvadharmā āhvānāpagatatvāt,
sakāramukhāḥ sarvadharmā utsāhānupalabdhitaḥ,
ghakāramukhāḥ sarvadharmā ghanānupalabdhitaḥ,
ṭhakāramukhāḥ sarvadharmā viṭhapanānupalabdhitaḥ,
ṇakāramukhāḥ sarvadharmā raṇavigatatvāt,
phakāramukhāḥ sarvadharmāḥ phalānupalabhitaḥ,
skakāramukhāḥ sarvadharmāḥ skandhānupalabdhitaḥ,
jakāramukhāḥ sarvadharmā jarānupalabdhitaḥ,
cakāramukhāḥ sarvadharmāś caraṇānupalabdhitaḥ,
ṭakāramukhāḥ sarvadharmāḥ ṣṭaṃkārānupalabdhitaḥ,
(PvsP1-2: 87)
ḍhakāramukhāḥ sarvadharmā ḍhaṃkārānupalabdhitaḥ.

Sacred Calligraphy of the East

2011-04-07T16:46:00.004+01:00

I noted earlier today that Sacred Calligraphy of the East appeared to be out of print, and is suffering a massive inflation of prices. I wrote to Shambala Publication, and I've heard back from them:

Unfortunately, Sacred Calligraphy of the East is out of print. Our last printing of this title was in 2002 and there is no planned future reprinting. Once books go out of print, they are harder to find and the prices to buy them does go up quite a bit. [sic]

Only demand is likely to result in the book being reprinted. Please consider writing to Shambala Publications (customercare@shambhala.com) to ask them to reprint the book. Meanwhile I will investigate the possibility of producing my own edition of the book. I suspect it might be more than I can afford, but hopefully we can work something out.

Siddhāṃ vs Siddhaṃ

2011-04-07T10:49:00.002+01:00

In his book Sacred Calligraphy of the East, John Stevens admits that some of the spellings of Sanskrit may not be "strictly speaking, grammatically correct Sanskrit". On page 33 for instance he notes the story of how the name siddhaṃ came to be attached to the script. The teacher would write siddhaṃ 'perfection' at the top left of the manuscript for the student to copy. It became de rigueur to include this word when copying a manuscript. Stevens suggests that three things might be written: siddhāṃ, siddhaṃrastu, or namaḥ sarvajñāya siddhāṃ.

I think we should be clear that these forms are just wrong, and that a mistake repeated for 1000 years is wrong on a much larger scale. Everything that is faulty with religion is summed up in this idea that we should simply accept something we know to be erroneous because 'that's how we've always done it'. The whole point of retaining the Siddhaṃ script in East Asia was in order to preserve the Sanskrit pronunciation. As Kūkai himself says:

"The mantras, however, are mysterious and each word is profound in meaning. When they are transliterated into Chinese, the original meanings are modified and the long and short vowels are confused. In the end we can get roughly similar sounds but not precisely the same ones. Unless we use Sanskrit, it is hardly possible to differentiate the long and short sounds. The purpose of retaining the source materials, indeed, lies here." - Kūkai. Shōrai mokuroku. Hakeda. Kūkai: Major Works, p.144.

What's more these are elementary mistakes, one's that even with a little Sanskrit anyone can see. So, let's correct them.

Siddhāṃ is wrong because siddhaṃ is a neuter word and the form should be siddhaṃ with a short a. This is precisely the kind of problem with long and short vowels that Kūkai had in mind I think!

siddhaṃ

Siddhāṃrastu is wrong again because of the long ā, but in addition because there is no word 'rastu'. Judging from the translation 'may there be perfection' we can guess that what is intended is the word astu. This is the 3rd personal singular imperative of the verb √as 'to be' and means 'may it be'. Where the ra comes from is a mystery, and it renders the phrase meaningless. The correct form (with sandhi) is siddhamastu.

siddhamastu

Namaḥ sarvajñāya siddhāṃ presents more of a challenge. Steven's translation is 'homage to the all-knowing perfection'. Here sarvajñāya represents a kind of false Sanskrit - it uses the idea that if you just add -ya onto a word it makes it into the dative case indicating 'to' or 'for'. We find this in the homage 'namo buddhāya' for instance, which works OK because Buddha is a masculine noun in -a. But jñā is a feminine noun in -ā, and the dative would be jñāyai. This form is found in the homage to the perfection of wisdom for example: oṃ namo bhagavatyai prajñāpāramatāyai. But in a sense this is beside the point because the word is clearly intended to from a compound with siddhaṃ. 'The all-knowing perfection' would be sarvajñāsiddha - taking it as a karmadhāraya compound. In this case the first element loses it's case endings and only the second element is declined. In this the dative form would be: sarvajñāsiddhāya. So the correct form of this would namaḥ sarvajñāsiddhāya. There is an option sandhi here which would affect the final visarga in namaḥ giving namassarvajñāsiddhāya.

namaḥ sarvajñāsiddhāya

I note btw that Sacred Calligraphy seems to be out-of-print. It is selling on Amazon UK for £30 second-hand and up to £150 new! The RRP is US$32.50 on my copy (about £20). This is outrageous and I can only hope that Shambala Publishing opt to reprint soon!

ārya-satya - The Noble Truths

2011-04-05T13:04:00.003+01:00

ārya-satya - The Noble Truths,
a photo by jayarava on Flickr.

Some calligraphy for the book - getting towards the end of the English proof reading and fixing images now. I think you will agree that this is much better work than what's on the website currently. The four noble truths are one of the most succinct summaries of the Buddhist teachings.

āryasatya - noble-truths
duḥkha - disappointment
samudaya - cause (of disappointment)
nirodha - cessation (of disappointment)
mārga - road (to the cessation of disappointment)

K.R. Norman has pointed out that, despite the received tradition, a more likely translation is 'truths of the noble ones' which is supported by the Pāli commentaries.

Calligraphy Workshop in London

2011-04-04T14:34:00.000+01:00

A special opportunity is coming up if you are interested in Tibetan calligraphy.

The Shang Shung London Institute of Tibetan Studies presents a weekend workshop of Tibetan calligraphy , lead by Tashi Mannox on 25-26th June 2011.

Tashi is an expert calligrapher with a lifetime of study and practice.

Siddhaṃ Seed Syllables - ha hāṃ hoḥ hrīḥ hūṃ

2011-04-03T13:23:00.001+01:00

Siddhaṃ Seed Syllables - ha hāṃ hoḥ hrīḥ hūṃ, a photo by jayarava on Flickr.

Variations on the Saṃskrita akṣara ha.
ha - Kṣitigarbha - Jizō (地蔵).
hāṃ - Acala Vidyārāja - Fudō Myōō (不動明王)
hoḥ - jaḥ hūṃ vaṃ hoḥ!
hrīḥ - padma family especially Amitābha
hūṃ - vajra family especially Akṣobhya

Book Progress

2011-03-28T08:08:00.003+01:00

Got the English proof-reading back in the Weekend. So it's all down to me again. Will be working on it as my main project from today. Still some images that need improving, but otherwise it's just correcting text now I think (major changes will have to be in a 2nd edition).

Book Progress

2011-03-25T13:18:00.003Z

I've just received back the proof-read draft of the book from my Tibetan/Chinese expert. There is some work to do on the mantras and Buddha names in those languages, but not a huge amount. I've also been speaking to the artist I commissioned to do the cover art and he tells me that his work is nearly ready. Finally the English proof-reading (the most daunting task) is close to being finished.

I want to do some indexing, though I suspect that most people will find the structure of the book guides how they use it, and the contents pages are quite helpful. The book is now 263 pages of A4 - it's turned into a bit of a monster!

Although I don't have a deadline I'd like the get the book finished for the August 2011 biennial Triratna Order convention (where I hope to sell many copies!). I seem to be on track for this.

Meanwhile I've been piecing together another Visible Mantra project which will bring together various already published work along with some original essays. More on this when everything is in the bag.

Plato

2011-03-19T15:28:00.002Z

εὐγραμματία
"Calligraphy," said Plato, "is the physical manifestation
of an architecture of the soul."
- cited in The Comodore, by Patrick O'Brian, p.173.

Mongolian Calligraphy Exhibition and Workshop

2011-03-18T19:03:00.006Z

At the West London Buddhist Centre

Solo exhibition by Sukhbaatar Davaakhuu at the Centre, 18-25 March 2011.
Open 2-6pm, closed Saturday 19 and Tuesday 22 March.
No charge. The paintings are for sale.

Mongolian Script and Calligraphy: the literate nomads - Workshop and talk
Saturday 26 March 2011. Talk 1pm., Workshop 2-6pm.
Please book for the workshop, the charge is £15. Talk no charge, donations welcome.

Arapacana Mantra monogram and eternal knot

2011-03-07T14:29:00.002Z

Arapacana Mantra monogram and eternal knot a photo by jayarava on Flickr.

The monogram in the centre is the letters a ra pa ca na (अ र प च न) in the Lansta script woven together. This is the mantra of perfect wisdom, and also the first five letters of the Gāndhārī alphabet.

I should say that the braiding is inspired by the weaving of the Māori in New Zealand - I grew up there and learned how to do this with paper and NZ flax (Phormium tenax).

Some Audible Mantra Resources

2011-02-26T17:06:00.002Z

I've been browsing the Free Buddhist Audio website and discovered some gems.

Mantras of the Five Consorts
Vessantara himself chants the mantras of Locanā, Māmāki, Paṇḍāravāsinī, Tārā and Ākāśadhātvīśvarī. Vessantara has been on retreat in Germany for several years now.

A led Mantra Meditation.
A led meditation using three mantras: Vajrapani (energy), Avolokiteshvara (compassion), and Manjusri (wisdom). Plus Q and A with Paramānanda (author of Change Your Mind: Practical Guide to Buddhist Meditation).

The Sound of Reality.
by Padmavajra. "This richly rewarding talk explores the place and function of sound in Buddhist practice and history, as well as within Padmavajra's own spiritual life." Padmavajra has been based at the Padmaloka Retreat Centre since 1990 leading retreats and study especially for men training for ordination into the Triratna Order.

Visible Mantra Book

2011-01-17T11:48:00.002Z

I've just physically cut the proof copy of the Visible Mantra Book in half so that I can begin to work on corrections while my proof reader continues to work on the 2nd half. I'll be working mainly on the text, though some of the images will also need work. Once this phase is done the mantras in various scripts will all need careful checking. Then the formatting of the book can be tweaked, and finally an index created once the pages have settled down. Still a lot of work to do, but making progress.

I am starting to get an insight into why a book like this is a risky venture for a commercial publisher - if everyone was being paid for their time it would be very very expensive.

I still hope to get the book done by the time of the Triratna Order Convention in Aug.

I really appreciate all the donations that people have given over the last year, and all of the emails and comments. The 50p idea did not raise very much money in the end, but it may well cover the cost of hosting the website - I haven't counted up yet.

Thanks for all your support, and please continue to exercise that great Buddhist virtue of patience.

Sanskrit characters 梵字

2011-01-08T14:15:00.001Z

Sanskrit characters 梵字
Originally uploaded by urapyon

Very cool Siddhaṃ lettering...

Giku

2011-01-07T09:47:00.005Z

Recently Tracie wrote in:

I have a piece of calligraphy that I purchased 20 years ago at the monastery on Mt. Koya in Japan when I was an exchange student. At the time I just thought it was interesting but didn't look into its meaning.

Recently I was going through my things at my parents home and came across this piece of artwork again, I would like to know more about this character. The Japanese accompanying it says the pronunciation is Giku.

I can identify the character as gīḥ which fits with the Japanese pronunciation Giku, but I cannot find any more information about this syllable. I asked for help and my friend Maitiu replied:

In the East Asian tantric tradition at least the syllable gīḥ seems to be the bījā in mantras to the inner offering goddess Vajragītā [song of the thunderbolt]. I found Siddhaṃ mantras in two texts in the Taisho, T.867 and T.875.

T.867
金剛峯樓閣一切瑜伽瑜祇經
The Sūtra on all the Yogas and Yogins of the Vajra Peak Pavilion
唐南天竺國三藏沙門金剛智譯
Attributed to Vajrabodhi but it seems to be a compilation of ritual material rather than a translation of an Indian text.

一切如來內護摩金剛軌儀品第十
Chapter 10 – The Vajra Rite of the Internal Homa of All the Tathāgatas

[0266b18]
oṃ　va　jra　gī　te　a　gni
唵(引) 　嚩　日囉 (二合) 　儗　帝　阿　儗儞(二合)
huṃ　gīḥ
吽　儗(入聲)
[0266b18]

T.875
蓮華部心念誦儀軌
The Recitation Rite of the Heart of the Lotus Section

[0324b09] 內口供養。
The [four] Inner Offering [Goddesses]:
[0324b10] oṃ va jra lā sa haḥ 　oṃ va jra ma la traṭ
[0324b11] oṃ va jra gī te gīḥ 　oṃ va jra dṛ tye kṛ ṭ [this should be varjanṛtye kṛṭ]
[0324b09] 內口供養。

In the 16th section of the Sarvatathāgata-tattvasaṃgraha gīḥ occurs in a slightly different context but still connected with the word gītā.

STTS - ṣoḍaśamaḥ
Padmaguhyamudrāmaṇḍalavidhivistaraḥ

athāsāṁ mudrā bhavanti|
oṁ padmaratipūje hoḥ||
oṁ padmābhiṣekapūje raṭ||
oṁ padmagītapūje gīḥ||
oṁ padmanṛtyapūje kṛṭ||
oṁ dhūpapadmini huṁ||
oṁ padmapuṣpi hūṁ||
oṁ padmakulasundari dharmāloke pūjaya hūṁ||
oṁ padmagandhe hūṁ||

Blog for Corrections to Nāmapada

2010-12-31T12:05:00.001Z

I'm keen to keep track of user generated corrections, and new names which require new entries in a future edition. So I've created a blog for this purpose: namapada.blogspot.com.

Visible Mantra Press

2010-12-29T17:09:00.003Z

I've now published a second book under the Visible Mantra Press imprint via the Lulu print on demand service. My two books are

Nāmapada : A Guide to Names in the Triratna Buddhist Order.

Pilgrimage Diary (a first person account of being on pilgrimage in India)

My third book will be the book of this website. It is taking longer than I expected - my proofreader has taken several months already - it's a complex task involving multiple languages and scripts. However work is continuing on it. With the biennial Triratna Order Convention coming up in August 2011 I'm hoping to have the Visible Mantra Book finished by then.

Mantra Quote

2010-12-25T11:49:00.000Z

"The mantras, however, are mysterious and each word is profound in meaning. When they are transliterated into Chinese, the original meanings are modified and the long and short vowels are confused. In the end we can get roughly similar sounds but not precisely the same ones. Unless we use Sanskrit, it is hardly possible to differentiate the long and short sounds. The purpose of retaining the source materials, indeed, lies here."

- Kūkai. Shōrai mokuroku in Hakeda. Kūkai: Major Works, p.144

Capitalising Mantras

2010-11-28T20:08:00.004Z

The use of capital letters for mantras is puzzling a times. Take the mantra oṃ maṇipadme hūṃ. It's not uncommon to see this written Om Mani Padme Hum, or Even Om Ma Ni Pa Dme Hum etc. Wikipedia is full of this kind of idiosyncratic capitalisation and very resistant to change! Scholars often resort to all-caps: OM MANIPADME HUM. (Note that maṇipadme is one word, not two.)

No Indic script, including Tibetan as far as I know, has capital letters. They just write the sounds, though of course Tibetan includes a number of decorative characters but these are often used to mark the beginning of sentences or texts as a whole and aren't specific to mantras. But let me concentrate on what I know well which is Indic.

Capitals are supposed to be used for proper nouns, for the beginning of a sentence, and for the words in the title of a publication. But of course they are also, less conventionally, used for emphasis in things like advertising slogans and newspaper headlines. All-caps are OK though they don't look so good with Diacritics, and with longer mantras are difficult to read. In this age of email and SMS they appear to SHOUT! Capitalising every word looks a bit vulgar to me, like a slogan. Capitalising every syllable is ridiculous. Some of habits of capitalising religious words date back to the King James authorised version of the Bible which capitalises anything to do with God "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1.1). It's almost as though by using capitals we are seeking to assert the special status of written mantras, an assertion that Indians felt no need to make. If we think a mantra is special then it is only piety to insist on it, and makes us look insecure in our belief. Capitals add nothing to the mantra really - after all the mantra is in the sounds, not the letters themselves, especially not the Roman script letters.

Over many years of contemplating mantras, especially in their written forms I've come to the conclusion that what marks the mantra out is usually the oṃ. Oṃ in Buddhism doesn't have the same kind of mystic symbolism as in Hinduism. Mainly what is says is "what follows is a mantra."

I've long just used lower-case for mantras, along with the academic convention of italics for foreign words. I think mantras are easier to read this way, and the diacritics are easy to see (for those who use them, and everyone should). It also seems a less strident, less ostentatiously pious, more confident way of writing mantras. On the whole we know the significance of a mantra if we are writing it and there's no need for a song and dance routine. Of course there is room for calligraphy and for decorative writing, but if we are representing the sounds then I advocate just using standard English conventions for capitalisation.

The correct way to write the mantra is: oṃ maṇipadme hūṃ.

Interview

2010-11-13T15:24:00.000Z

I was interviewed by Ted of The Secular Buddhist. We talked about lots of stuff but especially karma, rebirth, and my brand of pragmatic Buddhism. www.thesecularbuddhist.com.

A Real Buddhist Tattoo

2010-11-09T16:08:00.006Z

So. I'm still regularly asked for tattoo designs, for advice about tattoos. I still regularly get people who want tattoos of glib slogans, in scripts that they can't read, and in languages they don't speak. Often they can't distinguish between a script and a language. And in any case the tattoo is destined for some place they can't see. I'm seldom thanked for my responses because I'm honest about being bemused by the idea of tattooing something incomprehensible on one's body as a reminder of anything. I ask why someone would do such a thing, why they would spend money on it. Often a lot of money.

So I was giving some though to a really appropriate Buddhist Tattoo. I think the ideal would be to have this tattooed in English somewhere prominent that you can see:

I AM GOING TO DIE!

This seems to me to contain the essential thing that most people need to be reminded of, and doesn't pander to cosy New Age nonsense or soft-peddle the Buddha's message. This is really something that will make you stop and think about what you are doing and why. In view of the fact that you could die any time without notice are you fully prepared, is what you are doing right now the most important thing for you?

Of course there will die-hards who believe in the magical power of Sanskrit and Asian writing systems. So I have translated this in Sanskrit:

मरिष्यामि
mariṣyāmi.

Here it is in Siddhaṃ script:

Here it is in Tibetan script and orthography (but still in the Sanskrit language).

Please feel free to use these images for tattoos. Send me pictures!

British Library Lotus Sūtra Lectures

2010-11-02T16:13:00.003Z

Free Talks at the British Library on 23^rd November

In order to mark the recent publication of the Sanskrit Lotus Sutra Manuscript from the British Library (Or. 2204): Facsimile Edition, the IOP-UK and SGI in association with the British Library are presenting two talks on the Lotus Sutra. Jamie Cresswell, Director of the Institute of Oriental Philosophy - UK, will host an evening of lectures by international experts on the transmission and uses of the Lotus Sutra in different cultural contexts. Lectures by

Dr Sam Van Schaik (British Library) ‘The Lotus Sutra on the Silk Road and in China,
Dr Lucia Dolce (SOAS) ‘Practices of the Lotus Sutra in Japan’

23^rd November 2010 from 6.30 pm to 9.00pm.
At the British Library Conference Centre
96 Euston Road
London NW1 2DB.

All are welcome to this event and tickets must be booked in advance: Book Tickets here.

Rigpa Mantras

2010-10-18T17:07:00.003+01:00

I'm a fan of the Rigpa Wiki website. I've just found that they have quite a few mantras, with some of them written out in dbu-can script. Overall I find it a handy reference for Tibetan iconography and have used it recently for the proper Tibetan spelling of names for Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

Śraddhā

2010-10-16T16:07:00.004+01:00

From my book on Buddhist names:

śraddhā (f.)
m. (in compounds only) śraddha. (Pāli saddhā) “faith, trust, confidence, loyalty” < śrad + dhā ‘to put or place’. Sanskrit śrad is believed to be from the PIE root *√kerd > Latin cred, and so probably allied to Latin credo (cred + do) and English creed, though śrad does not survive as an independent word, except perhaps in the form √hṛd, e.g. hṛdaya 'heart'. The literal meaning, then, is ‘to put one’s heart on’.

I was thinking about how to explain the meaning in Sanskrit:

The text reads: śraddha tatra hṛdaya mama dadhāmi. Faith: there I place my heart. Or perhaps it should be where yatra.

Book Progress

2010-10-10T10:25:00.002+01:00

Visible Mantra: Visualising and Writing Buddhist Mantras (the book of this website) is making progress. I have given it to a proof reader (for the English parts). I've mentioned to my friend who can read Sanskrit in various scripts, as well as Tibetan and Chinese that I'm hoping he'll proof read the mantras for me. And finally I've commissioned an artist friend, who has often done work which incorporated syllables and mantras, to design the cover.

I have some difficult decisions regarding copyright material. I use quotes on the website, and though I'm always careful to cite my sources and link to them, this is not sufficient for a book I intend to sell. I will either need to pay for the use of copyright material, and I'm uncertain of the cost; or I will have to find a way of getting that information across that is not an obvious breach of the law (mainly to ensue that I'm not sued!).

Work always progresses more slowly than I imagine it might, but I want to have the book definitely finished for the Triratna Buddhist Order Convention in August, 2011. I plan to have a book stall at the convention with three books for sale.

My other publishing project - Nāmapada: a guide to names in the Triratna Buddhist Order - is going through another fiddly proofing/editing cycle, but should be finished by the end of October.

Hundred Syllable Vajrasattva Mantra

2010-10-06T08:06:00.003+01:00

My article the Hundred Syllable Vajrasattva Mantra has been published in the Western Buddhist Review, Vol.5. This article draws together some of the ideas which can be found on the Visible Mantra Vajrasattva page, but goes further to consider why the received version in the Tibetan tradition is different from the Sanskrit version in the Triratna Community Pūja Book, and to consider issues of authority in Buddhism.

My Teacher Sangharakshita received the mantra from Dudjom Rinpoche and part of the reason for writing the article was a brief dialogue we had about the version of the mantra to chant. Sangharakshita was very keen that we pronounce the mantra as he received it.

The Sanskrit version was an intriguing reconstruction created by Dr Andrew Skilton in 1990 (who was at the time a member of the Order). From a mantra which seemed like the usual collect of mantra words, arranged with no regard for grammar he managed to find a series of well-formed Sanskrit sentences. His main procedure was to place word breaks differently.

Far too late to affect the article I discovered the mantra in the Sarvatathāgata-Tattvasaṃgraha and with my friend Maitiu O'Ceileachair established that it was the earliest version of the mantra in the Chinese Canon, which makes it likely to be the earliest version full stop. We compared the Chinese versions, with two Tibetan, and two Sanskrit manuscripts, and realised that Skilton's reconstructed version was largely accurate. So I have identified a problem of authority. Clearly for many Buddhists it is more important to recite a mantra as it was given by a teacher; while for others it is important to recite it as it originally appears in the texts. A third group are concerned with having accurate Sanskrit above other conditions, and are happy to correct both teachers and texts where obvious errors exist. The Hundred Syllable Mantra offers scope for all three groups.

In addition I make some observations about the types of changes that can be observed in the Tibetan. I was somewhat surprised to realise that the most plausible explanation was that at some point a Tibetan misread a Sanskrit manuscript, as opposed to mishearing, or simply mispronouncing the mantra. This point is related to how Sanskrit is written and in particular how sandhi affects word breaks. I recognised the mistakes as one's that I often make as a neophyte Sanskritist.

I avoid coming to any firm conclusion regards authority - rather than trying to prescribe, I am trying to describe the present situation and set out the arguments for both sides. I do have an opinion, but I wanted mainly to make clear what the issues are as a way to stimulate discussion within the Triratna Order.

candra-bindu

2010-10-04T10:17:00.007+01:00

candra-bindu
Originally uploaded by jayarava

The anusvāra or 'after-sound' is prosaically added to an Indic syllable to indicate the vowel is nasalised. In Roman script it is written ṃ or ṁ (either is correct). This form, the candra-bindu (moon & drop), also called anunāsika 'from the nose', is added to Devanāgarī semivowels - ya ra la va - when they are nasalised: यँ रँ लँ वँ. However in practice only laṃ is found in Sanskrit. Hindi employs the candra-bindu routinely unless the letter has a vowel marker which extends above the line: हँ हाँ हिं हीं हुँ हूँ हृँ हें हैं हों हौं. Hindi also has the candra on its own हॉ.

However the sign has esoteric connotations, and is routinely added to seed-syllables (bījākṣara). The anusvāra is called kūten (空点)*, the ‘void point’ in Japanese esoteric Buddhism (Chinese 空點). Kū (空) here meaning śūnyatā or emptiness (i.e. the quality of lacking svabhāva or own-being). ten (点) just means mark, point or dot.

Adding anusvāra to a syllable indicates that the syllable never quite ends, but fades into a nasal hum, and by analogy the concept conveyed by the syllable merges into emptiness.

* Adrian Snodgrass as kūden in his book on the Diamond and Matrix maṇḍalas. Thanks to Maitiu O'Ceileachair for pointing out an error with the Kanji!

Seal

2010-10-03T19:06:00.007+01:00

Watching Tashi's video (see below) I was inspired to create a seal design for my name. This uses the script known as phags-pha. The Bablestone website tells us that this is an old Uighur script. The Uighers are a Turkic speaking people who live in the steps north of China, especially in the Xinjiang province.

The geometric forms of the letters makes them suitable for inscriptions (carved in stone for instance) and seals (which are in fact often carved in soft stone.

Here is ja ya ra va surmounted by anunāsika or the more elaborate form of the anusvāra with chanda/bindu.

Short Film on Tashi Mannox

2010-10-03T14:55:00.000+01:00

Tashi Mannox - Tibetan Calligrapher from Planetary Productions on Vimeo.

Magic Tattoos

2010-10-02T14:21:00.011+01:00

Today's Independent has a feature on Cambodian 'magic' tattoos:

The Girl with the Magic Tattoo.
Even with Angelina Jolie's approval, Cambodia's mystical body artists are struggling to survive.

These tattoos often feature texts in Pāli, written in the Cambodian script (aka Khmer) which itself ultimately derives from the Indian Brahmī script.

This is the one Buddhist culture I know of which has a tradition of tattoo. Although the story suggests that the art is dying out in Cambodia, it is alive and well in the rest of the world - as an internet search will reveal - partly because of celebrities getting this kind of tattoo.

Hūṃ on bodhi leaf.

2010-09-27T18:50:00.002+01:00

bodhi-hum
Originally uploaded by jayarava

I have been mucking about with a Chinese calligraphy brush lately. This is a hūṃ in the Tibetan dbu-can (Uchen) script. It is painted on a bodhi tree leaf, from my own bodhi tree which I grew from a seed collected in Bodhgaya under The Bodhi Tree.

Article on the Origins of Alphabet

2010-09-17T15:35:00.002+01:00

Rollston, Christopher. The Probable Inventors of the First Alphabet: Semites Functioning as rather High Status Personnel in a Component of the Egyptian Apparatus. American Schools of Oriental research (ASOR) Blog, featured article.

ISBNs

2010-09-16T08:00:00.000+01:00

My block of International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN) numbers arrived today. The publisher prefix for Visible Mantra Press is: 978-0-9566929. This is a global unique identifier and means that Visible Mantra Press has been registered internationally as a publisher. Another milestone for the creation of my publishing empire!

Our first book will be Nāmapada: a guide to names in the Triratna Buddhist Order (ISBN 978-0-9566929-0-0 ) which I am working on in parallel to Visible Mantra (the book) while I wait for my proof copy to arrive and then my proof readers to finish their work. Visible Mantra will be second, and then I'll be considering what to do next. I have a lot of mantra material, but would also love to write something about Kūkai. I would also like to produce an edition of Plato's Cratylus with an introductory essay on sound symbolism (or phonosemantics as it is sometimes called) and the relationship to mantra. There are one or two people I'd like to contact about producing paperback editions of hard to find, or expensive books as well. I need to look into distribution deals and the like, but only once I have something to show people.

While I'm not quite ready to accept submissions, I hope to solicit manuscripts once my own major projects are in print - realistically this will be in 2012.

Cundi

2010-09-15T16:43:00.004+01:00

Stumbled on an excellent webpage for the Cundi mantra today while answering a question for the Omniglot blog. Lots of background info and links to other info.

Cundi is a form of Avalokiteśvara. The Cundi site thinks she may be a Buddhist form of the goddess Caṇḍī, a non-vedic tribal goddess from Bengal. There are other non-vedic goddesses as well particularly (Pāli) Siri, (Sanskrit) Śrī, who becomes Lakṣmī - a goddess of luck.

Book Progress

2010-09-10T12:38:00.002+01:00

I have just completed rebuilding the book and sent it off to get a proof copy printed. This is such a relief as I was at this stage almost a year ago when the Word file I was working with broke. There will still be quite a lot of proof reading to do - and because of the plethora of scripts this is no mean feat. So far we have: Siddhaṃ, Lantsa/Ranjana, dbu-can, dbu-med, Devanāgarī, Kanji/Hanzi, and Sinhala. Also minor use of Kharoṣṭhī and Brahmī. In addition there are the fun mantras in Klingon and Elvish. In terms of languages there are words in English, Sanskrit, Pāli, Japanese, Chinese, and Tibetan. And to think the Triratna in-house publisher Windhorse Publications turned down this book! Fortunately I have a friend who can read all of the above and I think I can induce him to check everything for me.

Still. Progress is steady now and I expect to see the book through to completion by early 2011.

My while waiting for the proof of Visible Mantra to arrive I plan to put the finishing touches on another little book called 'Nāmapada: a guide to names in the Triratna Buddhist Order' which is a glossary of terms used in our names, with etymologies and cognates from other European languages, and a brief guide to constructing Sanskrit compounds. This is aimed at the Triratna movement obviously.

I finished my Pilgrimage Diary some time back. So Visible Mantra Press is now airworthy and getting ready to fly. If you have a book length project related to mantra and would like to get it published I would be interested to take on such work in the future - I'd like to build up a catalogue of niche publications on mantra, utilising print-on-demand to get around the problem of the smallness of the market.

Photography Exhibition

2010-09-09T12:54:00.005+01:00

Cheryl includes images of Tibetan calligraphy (some from Visible Mantra) in her art work. If you are in New York, Oct 7-29 do check it out at the Pratt Manhatten CCPS Gallery! Also see her website www.stockshotstudio.com.

Book Progress

2010-08-29T10:01:00.003+01:00

I've started posting images of Lansta script mantras on the Visible Mantra Facebook page as I create them for the book. As I am using a font for them I feel they are not proprietary and I'm happy to just give them away. The book follows the order of the website Mantras page which will give you an idea of where I'm up to.

Breakthrough

2010-08-24T11:05:00.005+01:00

I've finally figured out that the CBETA Lantsa font is what has been causing technical difficulties with turning visiblemantra.org into a book. For some reason it breaks the pdf creator and leaves me unable to create the files I need to publish. So I'm now in the process of turning all those mantras and bījas into images.

It's been two years since I made the decision to create the book. Each mantra will have four scripts: Siddhaṃ, Tibetan, Lantsa, and Devanāgarī. I had been using fonts for Lantsa as the calligraphy is too difficult for me. I have created all new calligraphy for it, of much higher quality than what is on the website.

It will take a few months to create all the new images and reconfigure the book. But this is the first progress I've made for some time. There is now a good prospect of getting the book out next year. Once the book is finished I will need to bring the website up to the same standard though I imagine it will be a long process.

In the meantime if you are interested my Pilgrimage Diary is available via Lulu.com.

Missing Websites

2010-08-24T09:59:00.001+01:00

The Mật Tông Vietnamese Esoteric Buddhism - website (mattong.wordpress.com) seems to have disappeared which is a shame. Although the main language was Vietnamese there were some very fine examples of Siddhaṃ and Lantsa caligraphy on the site.

Also the SiddhaṃKey site seems to have shrunk to almost nothing as well with only the front page and an image of the word Siddhaṃ left. I never used their Siddhaṃ keyboard as I don't like the CBETA font, but I did find the Lantsa keyboard useful.

cont...

I've been in touch with Khai who created both of these sites and he just says he removed them "for personal reasons". There is a possibility of having new sites so, hopefully

I've uploaded the CBETA Siddham font to my site. You can download it from there. It has some limitations and I don't personally use it, but it would be a shame if it disappeared completely. I note it has been used extensively on the Wikipedia Siddhaṃ page.

Jayarava Inteviewed for Buddhist Geeks

2010-07-30T15:35:00.001+01:00

A while back I was approached to do an email interview on the subject of Buddhist Calligraphy for the Buddhist Geeks blog. The interview, entitled Mantra, Tantra and the Art of Beautiful Writing has now appeared on the Buddhist Geeks website, which I suppose confirms my status as a Buddhist geek! Hopefully more people will give some thought to taking up this fascinating and beautiful art.

The Master at Work

2010-07-05T14:53:00.005+01:00

Tashi Mannox has just posted another YouTube video of himself doing some calligraphy of the letters ཡག་གཟུགས་དམ་པ - yag gzugsa dma pa meaning 'sacred calligraphy'. It's great to be able to watch a really skilled calligrapher at work.

Sacred calligraphy in Sanskrit would be āryakalyāṇalekhā (आर्यकल्याणलेखा) - ārya 'noble, sacred'; kalyāṇa 'beautiful, excellent, noble, auspicious' is cognate with the Greek καλλι (calli-) 'beautiful'; and writing is lekhā, from √likh 'to scratch'.

Uṣnīṣa-vijaya Dhāraṇī

2010-07-01T22:34:00.002+01:00

I recently found the online "Annual Report of The International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology at Soka University" and have been working through some of the articles. One which might interest readers of this blog is:

Akira Yuyama 'An Uṣṇīṣa-Vijayā Dhāraṇī Text from Nepal' ARIRIAB. (pdf) p.165-175

As the author points out the manuscript was very poorly copied, but he does reconstruct the text and this gives a complete dhāraṇī which is rather too long to quote here (plus the pdf is an image and not text)

New Book

2010-06-30T13:58:00.004+01:00

My copy of 梵字必携―書写と解読 has just arrived. I bought it off Ebay which is the first success I've had with that website! (though the cover is much plainer than this Amazon image) The Google translation of the title is: "Sanskrit manual - inscription and decryption". Having seen the monumental Bonji Taikan ( 梵字大鑑) one can see that this is simply a cut down version of that book - more or less identical but less elaborate. This makes it perfect for me as I don't read Japanese anyway and I'm more interested in the pictures of Siddhaṃ characters.

I'd recommend this to the serious student - it has a complete syllabary, lots of conjuncts, some complex bīja, mantras, and a complete Heart Sūtra with a calligraphic commentary showing alternate letter forms.

Aother Siddhaṃ Manuscript of the Heart Sūtra

2010-06-24T08:17:00.006+01:00

Vinod alerted me to another Siddhaṃ manuscript of the Heart Sūtra on Wikimedia (a sister site to Wikipedia for uploading out of copyright images). He thinks it may be Sogdian. We don't know much about it as the source simply uploaded it and cannot say much about it's provenance.

The hand is quite rough and inconsistent - not very beautiful. There is a great deal of variability between letters. I'm not sure whether to criticise the wavey lines as they may have been induced by the medium - birchbark does this I think. Reading through the text there are a number of corruptions and omissions. But we should not be surprised by this as it is common. And given that the scribe was a sloppy writer it is not a stretch to think they were a sloppy copyist as well. There is what looks like an explanation of the mantra (perhaps pronunciation instructions?) in another script which I cannot identify at the end.

One of the features of the writing is that the pen is held close to vertical. This gives the syllables a 'blocky' feel with heavy horizontal lines. Another distinctive feature is that words are separated by a dot - this is not quite like the Tibetan tsheg which separates syllables, but not an Indian practice either.

The akṣara heads are simply a horizontal line which is typical of manuscript Siddhaṃ - the elaborate wavy lines on Japanese Siddhaṃ appear to be an Asian innovation.

A long ā diacritic moves diagonally up and and away from the head, rather than either vertically or curving downwards. (see image right)

If you are used to contemporary Asian Siddhaṃ then some of the letter forms might appear unusual. I've cut out some of the interesting akṣara and labelled them. The ca is similar to Tibetan forms (which are more closely related to their progenitors than either Siddhaṃ or Devanāgarī). The ṇa is like nothing I've seen before and I only know it from the context. Ta (here with the ā diacritic) is more like a modern bha, whereas the bha is closer to the Lantsa bha (again I think this is an earlier form preserved). Note that sa and śa are very similar. In fact sa looks like a Devanāgarī bha and śa like a Devanāgarī sa.

I think this text demonstrates how difficult it can be to move from the clean lines and tidy arrangement of contemporary Siddhaṃ calligraphy to the manuscript tradition. I can more or less read this text as long as I have a Sanskrit Heart Sūtra handy to fill in the gaps. But I have seen a lot worse than this!

If anyone has more information about this manuscript - such as where and when it is from then I would love to hear from you.

Green Tārā Mantra

2010-06-17T20:38:00.002+01:00

I've been recording the Tārā mantra for someone recently and took this screen shot. The original is on my Flickr page.

Korean Siddhaṃ

2010-06-13T14:32:00.001+01:00

Someone sent in this inscription transcribed from a Korean bell - (14-15th C?) at the Jogye-sa Temple, Seoul. The bell also had It also had 'namo Amitabha' in Chinese on it.

The question is what do these lines say? They are clearly a Brahmi derived script - related to Siddhaṃ or Ranjana. I've come across one or two other similar Korean inscriptions but have yet to find a definitive guide to help me read them.

One useful source is found in: Tatsuon Maruyama. Sanskrit-Japanese dictionary of dharanis: The Darani-jiten (Sata-pitaka series : Indo-Asian literatures) International Academy of Indian Culture, 1981. This has a Korean syllabary (P.48 f) but it is not identical to the kinds of inscriptions I've seen. So I cannot confidently read this inscription. I'll give my guesses but I would very much like to here from anyone who can read this!

The first character in both lines is oṃ. Actually I think this is the only example I have seen of auṃ in a Buddhist inscription. The other characters all look to be single syllables rather than conjuncts which makes it easier.

So line 1 character 1 (1.1) is oṃ. 1.2-4 are repeated at 2.6-8. 1.2 looks most like bha, but I would hold open the possibility of ha. 1.3 looks like ta. 1.4 could be ka, but I think it is na. In some early forms of Siddhaṃ one sees this style of na which was the template for the Tibetan na. This gives us oṃ bha ta na, or ha ta na (with bha ta ka as an outside possibility). My correspondent (who is very familiar with Sanskrit) thought the marks on the top left of some characters are 'e' diacritics. It's a bit inconsistent to be sure. The obviously problem with this reading is that none of the possibilities are Sanskrit or anything like Sanskrit. So I've got it completely wrong, or this is not Sanskrit. Certainly Siddhaṃ is used to write Japanese in contemporary Japan, but usually only as a novelty item.

On line two we begin with oṃ again. 2.2 I read 'na' (as above). 2.3 seems very likely to be va or ba. 2.4 looks like ca. 2.5 offers some possibilities. Ya might be an obvious guess, but going by the Dictionary of Dhāraṇīs I would expect the ya to be more like the Ranjana ya - less rounded. From the same source both pa and gha appear similar. 2.6-8 as I say are as above. Again this is either completely wrong or not Sanskrit.

oṃ bha ta ne
oṃ na va ca pa bha ta na

If anyone can do better than this I would be delighted to hear from you!

My friend Maitiu has written to me about this:

My first thought was that it looked like the Bhujimol script of Nepal. I thought the second syllable (1.2) was a da (if you look at the related modern Bengali script you can see the similarity) but I'm not sure the mantra makes any sense if you do that. The 1.3 looks like a Bhujimol ra and 1.4 looks like an unusual ka. 2.3 looks like a va or ba but 2.4 is ca which suggests vaca. If 2.2 is ka that would give kavaca, armour, war-drum, amulet, especially a charm inscribed with a bīja. Kavaca is a classic piece of Tantric terminology.

2.5 could be a pa or a ya, they're hard to tell apart in Bhujimol, but it looks more like a ya and that would probably make more sense. Going back to 1.2 it doesn't look exactly like a Bhujimol bha but it's close enough to be possible. I'm assuming that the mark on the head bar of this syllable is an e diacritic and then 1.2-3 would give bhera, a kettle-drum, from the root bhī. Bheraka isn't in the dictionary but bhīraka, bhīruka meaning fearful, formidable derived from the same root. Anyway that's my best guess at trying to decipher the mantra. It's a shame we can't see the original. The script doesn't seem to be exactly Siddhaṃ or Bhujimol but another intermediate form of the Eastern Devanagari script.

I've noticed in looking Siddhaṃ mantras in the Taisho Tripitaka that vowels can be shifted inadvertently - perhaps a shift from bhī > bhe may be understandable (I've seen speculation that this might be due to the accents of some of the intermediaries). So the mantras here might also be:

oṃ bheraka
oṃ kavaca bheraka

This is certainly more plausible, though I can't find this mantra or a mantra of which this is a fragment.

14.6.10

My informant tells me that there are similar inscriptions on the Yonboksa Bell.

The last Indian Acārya to visit Korea was Chikong (Dhyānabhadra). He arrived in Korea in the 1340s and established the Juniper Rock Monastery on the pattern of the Nalanda University. Its foundations can be seen near Seoul. He wrote Sanskrit dhāraṇī-mantras on the gigantic Yonboksa Bell for the liberation and peace of the Korean People from Mongol dominatio [Lokesh Chandra. 'Interface of India with other Asian Lands.' Dialogue July - September, 2003 , Volume 5 No. - online www.asthabharati.org]

Also in: Robinson, David M. Empire's Twilight: Northeast Asia Under the Mongols (p.122)

Google Books.

48VUPQ3F2G2W

Siddhaṃ Manuscript

2010-06-11T21:43:00.002+01:00

I was looking at the Siddhaṃ article on Wikipedia tonight and noticed some new edits including a picture of a manuscript described as "A replica of siddhaṃ manuscript on palm-leaf in 609 CE." I was casually looking at it and saw the Heart Sūtra mantra - gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā - and then sure enough the entire Heart Sūtra, followed by the beginning of another text I have yet to identify. I've emailed the uploader (who seems to have copied it from a book) but as yet know nothing more about it.

The original manuscript was published in Buddhist Texts from Japan. (Anecdota Oxoniensia, Aryan series), 1881. (now out of copy-right), online: www.archive.org ; and reproduced in 'Buddhist Mantras of Sanskrit Siddhaṃ': www.wisdombox.org [pdf]

The Sūtra starts at the beginning of the first page, and ends at the end of line one of the second page. I'll try to find the time to transcribe the whole thing, but in the mean time here is the mantra section which begins slightly to the right of halfway along the first line of the second page:

tadythā gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā *

The Heart Sūtra is followed by the Uṣnīṣavijaya Dhāraṇī.

The last line is a syllabary. It begins with a flourish and then the word "siddhaṃ" then the Sanskrit alphabet in the usual order ending with "...llaṃ kṣa."

Tattoos

2010-06-04T12:08:00.000+01:00

Seems like it's time to restate my thinking on tattoos because too many people are getting offended by my response to requests for help with tattoos. When someone asks me for a tattoo design I look for some things:

Does the person understand the thing they want tattooed? If someone is saying "I want this Buddhist symbol (often a seed syllable) tattooed on me, what does it mean?" then I start to switch off. If you don't know what it means, why are you looking to get a tattoo of it?

Is the person a Buddhist practitioner? Some people just want something that looks good. End of discussion, I'm not interested.

Does the person have a context? Sometimes people who are Buddhists will find a mantra on the internet and have no idea of what it means or the context for it's application but they think it is cool. It isn't. If you have no one around to explain a practice, if you are relying on a book or (worse) the internet, then don't do the practice. I'd make an exception for doing an online meditation course like that offered by wildmind.org, but that is carefully thought out and provides a lot of support and guidance - you get contact with real people. I usually want to know what kind of Buddhism you practice and who your teacher is, if only for interest's sake. If you say "so and so gave me this mantra and I'm looking for help visualising it" then I will do what I can to help.

Has the person done their own research? Of course some things are secret or not much written about and so it can be difficult to find out about them. See the point above. But if someone wants the Medicine Buddha mantra then I expect them to have read and studied the relevant material, and to have developed a genuine connection with the mantra. This usually shows when a person writes to me. And again I will do what I can to help.

Finally, and this is me being a bit grumpy and capricious, Sanskrit is a language and not a script. If you don't know the difference then I'm less likely to help. I can write Sanskrit in several scripts - Devanāgarī, dbu-can, Siddhaṃ, Lantsa (a bit). Be clear about what you want, else you don't come across as serious.

Actually one more thing. I've studied this stuff for years, and worked on improving my skills. Doing calligraphy takes time and costs money. Be prepared to offer me something for my work up front, don't wait for me to ask. It need not be much, whatever you can afford - or maybe you have a skill you can trade with me (I need proof reading done for instance). But show me that you value my work. So many people fail to even say thanks when I've spent time doing calligraphy for them.

Don't expect me to get excited about tattoos. I don't see the point. I have a few friends with them, and I've done designs for some, but only when someone has ticked all the boxes above. My advice is don't get a tattoo: go on retreat, or do a meditation course, or go see your teacher, or start learning a relevant language, or learn calligraphy yourself. Calligraphy is a wonderful art that few people consider taking up - but if you can write then you can do calligraphy.

A common question

2010-05-28T16:20:00.000+01:00

I've lost count of the number of times I've been asked about one particular bīja or akṣara. In Roman it is: āṃḥ. It seems that one particular version of this has captured the imagination of people browsing the web (see left). I'm not clear where the original came from, but it may be attributable to tattoo artist Andy Shou.

In my opinion this letter is not particularly well done, the lines are somewhat skewed - it is probably a design rather than calligraphy and therefore lacks the proper proportions and the connectedness that comes from a practised hand.

I have some basic info on this figure on my letter 'a' page.

The story is that in the Mahāvairocana Abhisaṃbodhi Tantra, one of two centrally important Tantric Texts for the Japanese Shingon School of Buddhism, the four basic variations on the letter a (ie a ā aṃ aḥ) are linked to the four stages of practice: bodhi, carya, saṃbodhi, nirvaṇa. The combined elements of all four letters give the figure in question and represent the culmination of Buddhist practice. It also stands for Mahāvairocana, the Dharmakāya Buddha as he appears in the Garbhadhātu Maṇḍala.

I've done a fresh calligraphy in my current style for this blog entry.

Calligraphy Article

2010-05-26T10:47:00.000+01:00

Smashing Magazine has published an article called "The Beauty Of Typography: Writing Systems And Calligraphy Of The World" that includes a section on Devanāgarī and Tibetan writing and uses an image from visiblemantra.org to illustrate the Tibetan script (it's actually the Tibetan Machine Uni font, but I laid it out, and typed it).

Thanks to Samudradaka of circular cube webdesign who alerted me to this. And to Vitaly at Smashing Magazine for creating a link to visiblemantra.org when I pointed out the image had been taken without permission or credit.

Random Mantras on the Internet

2010-05-20T14:23:00.000+01:00

I get a lot of questions about mantras. They fall into a few different categories. One is the person who wants a "translation" of a mantra so they can understand what it "means", with the implication that they want to take up, or have already taken up, the practice of chanting the mantra without a teacher or guide.

In my opinion a mantra on its own is not much good. A magic spell has 'power' whether you understand it or not. I don't think mantras are like this. Just finding a mantra on the internet and chanting it is of doubtful benefit. If you absolutely must do it, then go for something simple with lot's written about it by a range of well known and well qualified people. You are not so special, or in such a unique situation, that the oṃ maṇipadme hūṃ mantra won't suit you fine.

If you don't feel you understand a mantra then don't use it. If there is no one you can ask about it, face to face, then it's probably not the practice for you. Translating a mantra often just trivialises it, and misses the point. Find a teacher. If there are no Buddhists in your area then try http://www.wildmind.org/.

My website is a resource for practitioners and I don't recommend using it as a sweet shop for collecting mantras, or for choosing mantras at random. I think all Buddhist practices require regular contact with more experienced practitioners.

Don't cheat yourself.

Mantras are not magic spells.

Find a teacher.

This is my advice.

The Om Team

2010-05-04T08:00:00.000+01:00

I came across this report on the physics of oṃ in the Guardian, written by Mark Abrahams who is also the editor of the annals of improbable research. Apparently these guys are getting their papers into peer reviewed journals. The surprise goes further when one reads the paper and discovers that the editor allowed it through without correcting the English! I never get such an easy ride! Perhaps in computing they don't care so much about grammar? Having looked through their paper I think it is fair to conclude that several days practice chanting leads to more regular articulation of mantras. This is what their results show, though their conclusions go somewhat beyond this.

Virtual Vinod

2010-05-02T11:15:00.001+01:00

There are only a few people in the world able to spot the mistakes I make and Vinod is one of them! He regularly writes in to point out typos.

I have been using his script converter for a year or so now and find it incredibly useful. Vinod has just upgraded his website and added almost a dozen scripts to his converter. This means that we can input in any 19 Indic scripts (including several versions of Romanisation) and output any of the others.

In addition there are a wealth of other resources - essays, translations and calligraphy.

The main website is here: http://www.virtualvinodh.com/
The script converter is here: http://www.virtualvinodh.com/aksharamukha

evaṃ

2010-04-28T08:23:00.000+01:00

Last year Tashi Mannox featured the word evaṃ on his calligraphy blog. His calligraphy is always attractive and adept, but I was fascinated by this particular character. Buddhists will know that one of the identifying marks of a sutta/sūtra is that it begins: evaṃ me sutaṃ/evaṃ mayā śrutaṃ. Tantras also begin with this phrase. The word evaṃ means 'so, thus, in this way'. The phrase is a passive construction, literally "thus / by me / it was heard", and attempts by contemporary scholars to override the Victorian rendering "thus have I heard" have not yet succeeded in dislodging it from the English speaking Buddhist psyche.

However in the Hevajra Tantra (ca. late 8th century) this first word takes on esoteric significance. I think this is largely related to the shape of the Siddhaṃ script letter 'e' which is an inverted triangle which in the Hevajra becomes a yoni symbol - i.e. because it looks like the female pudenda it represents the feminine principle. To my eye vaṃ is not particularly phallic, but it comes to represent the masculine principle. Perhaps the most significant correspondence is that of wisdom and compassion. So evaṃ, by combining the two principles, symbolises the union of opposites which is one of the ways in which the Buddhist goal is conceived of in Tantric Buddhism. This is my understanding, though Tashi has more information on his website.

For some time I have pondered how to represent this in the Siddhaṃ script, and I think I have finally found a way of doing it which is aesthetically pleasing.

image top-left: from the top - evaṃ bīja; evaṃ in Siddhaṃ, Lantsa, Tibetan, Devanāgarī.
image right: evaṃ bīja

Tibetan Cymbal Symbols

2010-02-25T13:53:00.000Z

A friend recently wrote to me:

Please could you tell me what my cymbals say?

I've been taking these cymbals into prison for over 15 years, to ding meditation stages. Occasionally, someone asks me what the symbols mean. I confidently reply that it is the Avalokiteshvara mantra.

Only, last week a bright spark asked if it says "om mani padme hum" how come there are seven symbols rather than six?

The answer is quite simple. It is the Avalokiteśvara mantra written in a Tibetan script called dbu-can (pronounced uchen) - the main formal script they use for texts and printing. The extra symbol is a paragraph marker, known as a 'shed' in Tibetan. It's more often a simple vertical stroke, but sometimes a colon-like thing as you have here.

oṃ ma ṇi pad me hūṃ :

I've added the letters onto your image so you can see which is which. While we're on the subject there is no word break in maṇipadme - it is a single compound word meaning, most likely "in the jewelled lotus" (but clearly not "the jewel in the lotus" as Sanskrit grammar does not allow this meaning, despite it's popularity). I've written about this on my blog post "The Meaning of oṃ maṇipadme hūṃ".

Note the Tibetans write "pa dme" as "pad me" because it looks more Tibetan. In the image below the top line is what is on your bells, and the bottom line is the proper Sanskrit, but still using the same script.

One also sees the mantra on these kinds of bells written in the Lantsa script (below).

My compliments to the bright spark who spotted that there were seven symbols!

Manuscript of Early Vajrasattva Mantra

2010-01-11T19:59:00.000Z

stts-ms contract enhanced
Originally uploaded by jayarava

This is a page from the Sarvatathāgata-tattvasaṅgraha (STTS), a 7th century Buddhist text concerning Tantric rituals. The STTS is classed as a Yoga Tantra by Tibetan Buddhists. Here we have the verso of the 15th palm leaf in the mantra containing what became the Hundred Syllable Vajrasattva Mantra. This is the oldest occurrence of the Vajrasattva Mantra (as far as the Chinese Canon is concerned).

This image is modified from the facsimile edition of a 10th century Nepalese palm-leaf manuscript using the Siddhaṃ script, published by Candra and Snellgrove. You will note that the Siddhaṃ script is significantly different from contemporary Siddhaṃ calligraphy (and much more difficult to read!)

If you want to have a go at reading it - note that you read from left to right right across the leaf (i.e. ignore the columns). The transliteration shows subtle differences from the well known 100 syllable mantra.

oṁ vajra sattvasamayamanupālaya vajrasattvatvenopatiṣṭha dṛḍho me bhava sutoṣyo me bhavānurakto me bhava supoṣyo me bhava sarvasiddhiñca me prayaccha sarvakarmasu ca me cittaśreyaḥ kuru hūṁ ha ha ha ha hoḥ bhagavan sarvatathāgatavajra mā me muṁca vajrībhava mahāsamayasatva āḥ||

To see where the mantra is look at the version with the mantra highlihghted
See the text inverted as well - this sometimes improves readability