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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

Medicine Buddha

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.