Onmyoji 3 & 4

The Manga Onmyoji 4 has just been published in French translation by Patrick Honnore. You may recall that I was helping Patrick transliterate the mantras used in the comic which are written in the Siddhaṃ script. I also worked on Onmyoji 3.

The mantras in the comic are used by tantric wizards, often to subdue demons. So if you read French and like mangas check it out.

Sometime back on this blog I asked for info about some obscure mantras but never heard anything. In Onmyoji 3 the Fudo mantra is featured - which is what made me create a Fudo page for visiblemantra.org.

wheel-of-letters

wheel-of-letters
Originally uploaded by jayarava

Someone asked me what the wheel of Sanskrit letters sometimes found in Buddhist visualisations practices would look like. So here's something I knocked up with Word using Devanāgarī.

The inner circle is the vowels, middle is the consonants (including kṣa) and the outer circle is the famous phrase: ye dharmā hetuprabhava hetuṃ teṣaṃ tathāgataḥ hyavadat, teṣaṃ ca yo nirodha - evaṃ vādī mahāśramaṇaḥ. The latter is often included in the visualisation practices. All start at 12 o'clock.

I think however that the vowels and consonants should be going in different directions - so this is just to give you an idea and is not definitive. I plan to do a definitive version in Siddhaṃ at some point.

Updates

I've updated the calligraphy for Vajrasattva and the Heart Sūtra. Also updated the notes on the Heart Sūtra and linked to my synopsis of Jan Nattier's article on where the sūtra was composed (China rather than India almost certainly). I added the Uchen script the Śuddha mantra (aka the Śunyata Mantra) - using an image of the font Tibetan Machine Uni which I have resorted to instead of calligraphy.

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?