Aum

Aum
Originally uploaded by parhessiastes

Om made to look like a Korean character. I have found some more of these in a book showing an 18th century Chinese manuscript. The characters are made to look a bit like Chinese Seal script. I will do some for Visible Mantra.

This is a nice example of the style and shows that it is a current practice. Good for scaring off ghosts apparently

17/2/2008 - I'm updating this entry to make it clear that the image shows a Korean Style character. My version is on the om page.

Tibetan stuff

One blog leads to another... found Jinajik today which lead to...

It's a bit peripheral to Visible Mantra but Early Tibet blog, by Sam Van Schaik, is quite interesting, and has an essay in multiple parts on the Avalokiteśvara mantra.

It has a link to Reading Tibetan Manuscripts which is by the same person and is much more on-topic. A bit of a gold mine for people interested in Tibetan orthography. Which lead to...

In texts, through thoughts, with pleasure which looks intriguing, especially if you like Buddhist logic and epistemology.

What was I looking for again?

Outstanding Tibetan Calligraphy

compassion 2
Originally uploaded by Nathanael.Archer

I stumbled on this amazing collection of Tibetan calligraphy some time back. What I'm trying to do is present the basics, but Nathanael gives you some idea of what where you can take this art if you want to. Innovative and creative, combining calligraphy and stamps or seals.

Siddham on Flickr

Found a few Siddham syllables on Flickr today - account is called Stone Mirror. Clearly Stone Mirror's style is different from my own. Interesting to see how someone else does it though and there's so little Siddham on the web.

There are one or two other Buddhist calligraphy images on Flickr.

image is from Stone Mirror of Flickr.

Buddhist Calligraphy Online

I've been looking into getting some images of traditional Buddhist calligraphy for the site. The British Library charges are very expensive indeed especially considering they looted the images in the first place. They were suggesting several hundred pounds to use one image, which is out of my league! The BL Images Online collection is free to view though and has some great examples of Buddhist calligraphy.

The Schoyen Collection also has some fine examples of Buddhist calligraphy - waiting to hear back from them about using images.

British Library / University of Washington Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project is pretty exciting if you are interested in kharosthi.

Another gold mine is the The International Dunhuang Project which is digitizing all of the manuscripts looted from the vast Dunhuang repository.

A few more updates

The page on hūṃ has been expanded with information from Kūkai' Ungi gi and a new calligraphy which demonstrates the elements which make up the seed syallbale.

There is a new calligraphy section which has links to projects which go beyond the basics. There are a couple of projects there already and I'll add more as I can.

Another new section is words which has some common Buddhist terms in the Siddhaṃ script.

The shop now has two sections: you can buy books, calligraphy equipment, and incense from Amazon; and clothing and giftware with selected Visible Mantra designs. I'm open to suggestion about adding design to the shop.

Updates

I've made some more additions to the site.

I've added a shop which beefs up my Amazon Associate relationship. In the last 12 months links to Amazon have generated the enormous sum of £9 (with a payout threshold of £25). Hopefully the new shop will boost that a little. There are some Japanese Siddham books I'd like to get which are rather expensive!

I've added Siddham calligraphy of the Refuge formula - the three refuges.

Also some Lantsa bijas.

Kukai Mantra

I've added a page on Kūkai and his mantra. The mantra is in Japanese but can be written in Siddhaṃ without difficulty. Kūkai was responsible for introducing Siddhaṃ to Japan, which subsequently gave rise to the Kana scripts.

namu daishi henjō kongō

南 無 大 師 遍 照 金 剛

The Causation Mantra - Ye dharma hetu prabhava

Added a page for Assaji's summary of the Buddhadhamma which gave Sariputta his breakthrough to stream-entry. This has gone onto be one of the most famous sayings in Buddhism and appears in many tantric sadhanas - including White Tara. The verse in Sanskrit goes:

Ye dharmā hetu prabhavā
hetuṃ teṣāṃ tathāgataḥ hyavadat
teṣāṃ ca yo nirodha
evaṃ vādī mahāśramaṇaḥ

And translates as

Of those things that arise from a cause,
The Tathāgata has told the cause,
And also what their cessation is:
This is the doctrine of the Great Recluse

Mantra of Light

I've added the mantra of light (kōmyō shingon (光明真言) to the Vairocana page. This is an important Shingon mantra, but so far as I know not used in Tibet. There is a short Wikipedia article (see Mantra of Light) on it, but the best source of information is Mark Unno's book Shingon Refractions.

Tibetan Calligraphy on YouTube

I stumbled on these rather wonderful videos of someone doing Tibetan Calligraphy recently. They appear to be using a felt-tipped calligraphy pen similar to the Eddings 1255 5.0mm calligraphy pen that I sometimes use. I'm intrigued by the technique and will be having a go at something similar. Personally I have found that I have to turn the pen in order to get the letter forms to look right. The result is very attractive I think, and being able to see the process is very informative. I must look into some video for Visible Mantra.

Tara mantra
Avalokiteshvara mantra

The scribe has a website Calligraphie Tibetain (in French).

Synthetic Mantra

Adam Hayward found a mantra etched onto the circuit board of his Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 synthesizer.

It's clearly the Avalokiteshvara mantra plus the seed syllable hrih, in the Tibetan Uchen script.

Networking

Creating a Technorati Profile

Search

I've added a Google search facility. This searches only Visible Mantra so should come in handy (if only for me trying to remember where I've put things!

Mantras carved into a frozen Lake

In an unmapped region of Eastern Tibet someone(s) have carved the Avalokiteshvara mantra into the surface of a frozen lake. You can see it on Google Maps. The tallest letters are close to 50m high!

The coordinates are: 32°54'35.38"N 97°02'47.29"E

The longer line includes the mantra twice and ends with the seed syllable hrih.

Of course Google updates it's satellite photos periodically - hopefully it will last a while though. (viewed 4 July 2007)