Visible Mantra Blog

Tattoos

2009-06-25T07:32:00.004Z

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

2009-06-24T06:19:00.002Z

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

2009-06-16T05:47:00.004Z

'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

2009-06-01T05:40:00.003Z

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.

Fix

2009-05-21T07:39:00.000Z

This blog is generated using blogger.com and there were problems with links back into the site (which is written in notepad if anyone is interested). This is now fixed.

Onmyoji 3 & 4

2009-05-21T07:19:00.002Z

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

2009-04-22T09:42:00.001Z

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

2009-04-16T07:37:00.002Z

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

2009-04-13T10:54:00.001Z

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

2009-04-10T15:12:00.002Z

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

2009-03-28T17:09:00.002Z

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

2009-03-26T15:27:00.001Z

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

2009-03-24T09:30:00.001Z

live long and prosper
Originally uploaded by jayarava

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

Heart Sūtra Mantra

2009-03-17T20:04:00.002Z

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.

Forum

2009-03-15T18:00:00.003Z

A couple of people have asked about the possibility of a forum for discussing mantra and the visiblemantra.org website. So I've set up a Yahoo group:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/visiblemantra/

It's open so may get swamped in spam, but if it seems useful I may put some effort into moderating it - unless someone else wants to. Let's see.

Dumb Tattoos

2009-03-07T07:19:00.004Z

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?

Facebook

2009-02-17T07:22:00.001Z

I have removed all of my Visible Mantra content from Facebook due to the change in the terms of service.

Kurukullā

2009-02-15T20:19:00.003Z

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

2009-02-08T11:24:00.007Z

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

2009-02-06T16:24:00.004Z

Sanskrit
Originally uploaded by Woesinger

After a bit of research and some help from friendly Sanskritists I have sorted this out. It's associated with the Karaṇḍa-mudrā-dhāraṇī. This texts begins:

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

namastryadhvikānāṁ breaks down into namas tryadhvikānāṁ. Namaḥ meaning homage, and swapping ḥ for s due to Sanskrit sandhi rules. Tradhvikānāṁ = tri + adhvan + -ika + -nāṃ. When followed by a vowel, i becomes y, so tri > try.

tri (three)
adhvan (times)
-ika (belonging to)
-nāṃ (genitive plural case ending)

Adhvan + ika > adhvika is a taddhita compound, although we would usually expect the initial vowel of the base to lengthen (ādhvika) in cases like this. The grammar in dhāraṇī's is often not what you might expect from Classical Sanskrit - most likely because they were not composed in Classical Sanskrit but one of the vernaculars. Now broken into syllables for writing in an Indic script (such as Siddhaṃ or Devanāgarī) you get:

न म स्त्र्य ध्वि का नां
na ma strya dhvi kā nāṁ

It's not clear why strya becomes stryi. However as the first syllable following the namaḥ (homage) it comes, by metonymy, to stand for the whole dhāraṇi.

The whole thing in Sanskrit reads:

namas tryadhvikānāṁ sarva tathāgatānāṁ | oṁ bhuvi-bhavana-vare vacana-vacati | suru suru dhara dhara | sarva tathāgata dhātu dhare padmaṁ bhavati | jaya vare mudre | smara tathāgata dharma-cakra pravartana vajre bodhimaṇḍa-alaṅkāra-alaṅkṛte | sarva tathāgata-adhiṣṭhite | bodhaya bodhaya bodhi bodhi budhya budhya | saṁbodhani saṁbodhaya | cala cala calantu sarva-āvaraṇāni | sarva pāpa vigate | huru huru sarva śoka vigate | sarva tathāgata hṛdaya vajriṇi | saṁbhāra saṁbhāra | sarva tathāgata guhya dhāraṇī mudre | bhūte subhūte | sarva tathāgata-adhiṣṭhita dhātu garbhe svāhā | samaya-adhiṣṭhite svāhā | sarva tathāgata hṛdaya dhātu mudre svāhā | supratiṣṭhita stūpe tathāgata-adhiṣṭhite huru huru hūṁ hūṁ svāhā | oṁ sarva tathāgatoṣṇīṣa dhātu mudrāṇi sarva tathāgata sadhātu vibhūṣita-adhiṣṭhite hūṁ hūṁ svāhā ||

Sanskrti text from Buddhist Sūtras Mantras

Thanks to Richard Nance and Stephen Hodge from Buddha-L for sorting out the grammar for me.

Medicine Buddha

2009-02-05T14:50:00.004Z

Spurred on by the new Wildmind Bhaiṣajyaguru mantra page I have updated the Visiblemantra Bhaiṣajyaguru page. I've improved the Tibetan script (by using a font!) and added a Devanāgarī script transliteration. In the Sūtra of the Medicine Buddha (Taisho XIV, 450) there is a Sanskrit introduction to the mantra which I have written out in Siddhaṃ. Note that Bodhipakṣa says this is a long form of the mantra, but the sūtra notes say the mantra starts at "oṃ...". I see the extra bit as an introduction to the mantra per se, but it could be chanted along with the mantra I suppose, as it is a praise to Bhaiṣajyaguru. The new part goes:

namo bhagavate bhaiṣajyaguru vaiḍūryaprabharājāya tathāgatāya arhate samyaksambuddhāya tadyathā: oṃ bhaiṣajye bhaiṣajye mahābhaiṣajya-samudgate svāhā
नमो भगवते भैषज्यगुरु वैडूर्यप्रभराजाय तथागताय अर्हते सम्यक्सम्बुद्धाय तद्यथा । ओं भैषज्ये भैषज्ये महाभैषज्यसमुदगते स्वाहा ॥

The praise says: homage to the blessed medicinal teacher, to the king of jewel-like radiance, to the one who is like that, to the worthy, fully awakened one, thus:

Note that as வினோத் ராஜன் comments below the word vaiḍūrya can mean Lapis Lazuli. It can also mean jewel or anything excellent of it's kind (according to Monier-Williams). Since Lapis doesn't actually radiate (prabha) I've gone with "jewel" and take vaiḍūryaprabharāja to mean "jewel-radiance-king" or king who has the radiance of a jewel.

Video - Avalokiteśvara Mantra in Siddhaṃ

2009-01-24T23:15:00.002Z

I'm starting to muck about with making vids of Siddhaṃ calligraphy. Lo fi, but you can see how it works which is the point.

Avalokiteśvara and the bīja sa

2009-01-15T16:57:00.003Z

Doug wrote recently to ask about the association of the bīja sa (left) with the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. He had taken a photo of a Tendai altar dedicated to Avalokiteśvara which showed a Siddhaṃ sa. I should mention that in the Tibetan tradition, and on the Visiblemantra.org Avalokiteśvara page the bīja is hrīḥ.

I looked around for more info on this, but couldn't find much. Shingon sources all seem to make the association, but it's not clear why. I did find this in Lokesh Candra's Dictionary of Buddhist Iconography:

Sa, for all forms of Kwannon specially for Shō-Kwannon (ie Ārya Avalokiteśvara). Sa means 1. to see the spiritual lotus in sentient beings; 2. purity of the spiritual lotus; 3. attainment of nirvāṇa. The source of this remark is cited as the Asaba-shō by Shōchō (AD 1205-1282). [v.2, p.463]

This doesn't really explain why sa. Often the syllable relates to the Bodhisattva's name, or a prominent quality, but sa doesn't seem to fit this pattern. If anyone has any thoughts please either leave a comment or email Jayarava.

Outage

2009-01-13T17:41:00.002Z

The site was down for a few hours today. Sorry about that, events beyond my control. JR