New Mantra

Caught up with Tashi Mannox on a recent visit to London which was cool. He gave me a calligraphy of a mantra I hadn't come across before. It is used in the conclusion of Tibetan sadhanas.

oṃ supratiṣṭhavajraye svāhā

So after doing some research and consulting him about the Tibetan writing and pronunciation I've added the first new page to visiblemantra.org for some time. I'm calling it the supratiṣṭha mantra for want of a better name. The page has Siddhaṃ, Uchen and Devanāgarī.

Tattoos

Every now and then I get a fun request for a tattoo and this mornings effort is a gem of the genre.

"I was wondering if you guys could translate the Seven Deadly sins and the Seven Holy Virtues into Buddhist Sanskrit for me. I want to tattoo it on my back."

Given that he won't be able to read the result - what would you write on his back? Must be in lots of seven!

I'll start the bidding with: बष्वुल्, डक्, डौपी, ग्रंपी, हप्पी, स्लीपी, स्नीसी

Sword with Fudō Bīja and a mystery

Richard sent me this pic of a Japanese sword asking if the symbols are Siddhaṃ. They are, but there is a bit of a mystery. The top two symbols are hāṃ and maṃ which are both associated with Fudō Myōō.

The bottom syllable looks like Siddhaṃ as well but it is so stylised that I can't read it. Taking a guess I think it might be some variation on 'a' because that would fit what I know about Fudō and his association with Mahāvairocana of whom the 'a' is the bīja. My guess is that it is āṃḥ - the elaborate variation that includes a, ā, aṃ, and aḥ symbolising the four stages of the spiritual path in the Mahāvairocana Abhisaṃbodhi Tantra.

If you know for sure what it is please let me know and I'll pass it on. The original photo is here.

aṃ

'GBH' asked on the blog about this form of the seed syllable aṃ which is an image in the Japanese Wikipedia commons. The text accompanying it is in Japanese but it appears the the image was scanned from a book called 悉曇章の研究 (and is therefore a breach of copyright!)

This is simply a variety Siddhaṃ. It looks like it was either done with a Chinese Calligraphy brush or is designed to look that way. Note that even contemporary Siddhaṃ calligraphy can vary quite widely in style.


Compare with my pen style 'a' (left, and here) - the shape is the same: a shape like a number 3 linked by a mid-height line to a vertical stroke on the right. The contemporary a in Devanāgarī is similar as well: अं. The dot above the aṃ is the basic anusvāra which indicates nasalisation of the vowel. Anusvāra (anu + svāra) means after-sound, or following sound. Often with bīja mantras the anusvāra is exchanged for the chandra-bindu (moon and dot) which has the same phonetic effect, but which involves a more elaborate symbollism.

Readers' Work

Seishin recently sent me an example of his work - inspired by visiblemantra.org. This is a fine piece of work on many levels. The flame effects are hand-made marbled paper, while the calligraphy is done with a specially ground pen and a flat brush - for the hāṃ. This is the bīja and mantra of Acala Vidyarāja or Fudō Myōō as he is known in Japanese.

This is a stunning setting for the mantra and an interesting combination of East and West. As I wrote to Seishin - the cool blue of the hāṃ amidst the hot yellow and red flames invokes one of the fundamental Buddhist metaphors: the coolness of nirvāṇa

I'm more than happy to see, and to showcase other people's work if anyone wants to send any in.

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.