Tashi Mannox

I note that Tashi Mannox now has a blog which goes into some of the background to his very excellent Tibetan calligraphy. The address is inkessential.blogspot.com. Some very interesting material there already!

White Tārā

I've recently updated the notes on the White Tārā mantra in accordance with a new understanding of Sanskrit. Not all ambiguities are able to be resolved, but at least it is now clear what is ambiguous and in what way. I've changed the way I present the variations on the mantra. My previous efforts were too dependent on books, and have again benefited from my Sanskrit studies.

Much remains to be done in this vein, although it is important to recall that mantras are not entirely translatable and that this kind of approach is limited. The White Tārā mantra is somewhat unusual in containing grammatical sensible phrases.

Words

I've updated the words section, replacing the relatively scruffy miscellaneous collection of calligraphy with a more consistent style, and add a number of new words.


I haven't had any requests in this section for a while, so if there is something you would like me to add, please say so.

Kālacakra

kalacakra1
Originally uploaded by jayarava

Saw an interesting version of the Kālacakra monogram in Tibetan script on Flickr and decided to have a go at a Siddhaṃ version. I think the result is quite pleasing, and it is as far as I know unique. The syllables included are: haṃ kṣaḥ ma la va ra ya.

More info on the Kālacakra Monogram

live long and prosper

live long and prosper
Originally uploaded by jayarava

I've been doing some calligraphy again. See my Flickr site for more.

Heart Sūtra Mantra

A keen tattoo enthusiast noticed an error in my Siddhaṃ Heart Sūtra Mantra, and so I've updated it, and replaced the appalling Tibetan with a pic of it done with a font (Tibetan Machine Uni if you're interested). So far rendering Tibetan in browsers is a bit hit and miss, so I'll stick to images. Georg Fisher of Indian Scripts in Tibet says he's going to make his gorgeous Lantsa fonts available so eventually I might have some decent Lantsa mantras here as well.

Also since I've just covered past-participles in Sanskrit I've updated my Heart Sūtra mantra notes on the mess that is exegesis of the word 'gate'. I wrote something related on my blog recently as well: Words in Mantras that End in -e.

Dumb Tattoos

I sometimes cop some flak for saying that I think tattoos are dumb. I'm mainly referring to people who want tattoos of mantras/words/syllables they don't understand the significance of, in scripts they don't read, in languages they don't speak. Some of the consequences of this approach to body adornment can be seen on this blog: Hanzi Smatter - "dedicated", the subtitle reads, "to the misuse of Chinese characters in Western culture". Tattoos feature highly on this site. One man's tattoo doesn't mean "Dragon Soul" as he thinks, but simply "foreigner". A model for AussieBum underwear seems to have inadvertently tattooed himself with "determined to cut down something big", etc. Need I say more?

Kurukullā

I've added a new page for the first time in a while. This one is for the Tantric figure Kurukullā, who is associated with the Red Rite, or the Rite of Fascination. She resembles a ḍakiṇī in form and is distinguished by the fact that she is drawing back a bow with an arrow fitted - both of which are covered in flowers.

A couple of stray mantras

Of the thirteen principle Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of the Shingon school I have pages for eleven. The two that are missing are Mahāsthāmaprāpta and Samantabhadra, neither of whom have the same popularity (at least in these forms) in the West as they do in Japan. In some schools of Tibetan Buddhism Samantabhadra becomes the Adibuddha, that is he takes Mahāvairocana's role.

In anycase until I get around to creating pages for these two, here are their mantras in siddhaṃ with Roman, Devanāgarī, and, as an experiment, Tibetan (note the Tibetan is Unicode but you might need to find a Tibetan font as the Tibetan range isn't often included in standard fonts. I use Tibetan Machine Uni)


Mahāsthāmaprāpta (Seishi Bosatsu) महास्थामप्राप्त







oṃ saṃ jaṃ jaṃ saḥ svāhā
ओं सं जं जं सः स्वाहा

ཨོཾ་སཾ་ཇཾ་ཇཾ་སཿ་སྭཱ༌ཧཱ།

Note: Her bīja is saḥ सः སཿ


Samantabhadra (Fugen Bosatsu) समन्तभद्र









oṃ sa ma ya stvaṃ i.e. oṃ samayas tvaṃ
ओं समयस्त्वं

ཨོཾ་ས་མ་ཡ་སྠྭཾ།

Note:
samaya is an agreement or contract, the nominative singular is samayaḥ which changes to samayas when followed by the t of tvaṃ meaning you, also nom. sg. So that part means "you are bound", or "there is an agreement or contract with you". It probably refers to the tantric vows one takes before abhiṣeka.

Samantabhadra's bīja is aṃ अं ཨཾ

Do let me know how the Tibetan looks as I want to start using it more extensively.

Seed Syllable: Stryi

Sanskrit
Originally uploaded by Woesinger

This seed-syllable often seen carved onto stūpas in Japan is associated with the Karaṇḍamudrā or Casket Seal dhāraṇī. This texts begins:

namastryadhvikānāṁ sarva tathāgatānāṁ
homage to all the Tathāgatas of the three times.

Broken down into syllables for writing this becomes:

na ma strya dhvi kā nāṁ

For more information see the stryi bīja page on visiblemantra.org