Mystery Amulet

Nigel sent in this image of his amulet and asked about the mantra on it. The mantra is in the Tibetan Uchen (dbu-can) script. In the centre is the seed-syllable (bījākṣara) oṃ. The mantra starts at 6 c'clock and goes clockwise. It reads

oṃ sarvatathāgatoṣṇīṣasitātapatre hūṃ phaṭ hūṃ mama hūṃ ni svāhā

If we break the sandhi and add dashes for compounds it reads:

oṃ sarva-tathāgataḥ
uṣṇīṣa-sita-ātapatre hūṃ phaṭ hūṃ mama hūṃ ni svāhā

So now it becomes clear that this is a mantra for Uṣṇīṣa-sitātapatra (also spelt Uṣṇīṣa-sitātapattra) a Tantric goddess with 1000 heads, 1000 arms, and 1000 legs! Her name means something like 'crowned with a white parasol'. Her iconography is very complex, though apart from her multiple limbs she does carry a white (sita) umbrella/parasol (ātapatra) or sometimes a Tibetan victory banner. Robert Thurman tells us that she is a special form of Tārā and a counter part to the 100o armed form of Avalokiteśvara (The Sacred Art of Tibet p.319-321).

Here's the mantra written out in dbu-can.

Try here for an image of Uṣṇīṣa-sitātapatra.

Nigel made a generous donation for receiving this information - thanks again!

Avalokiteśvara and the bīja sa

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.

Tattoo ultimatim...

I thought I'd share this as it gave me a laugh this morning:

Hi,

Is your writing of OM AH HUM in Siddham writing accurate?

I am getting at tattoo of it tomorrow at 4pm UK time.

Thank you very much

Chris

Never heard from Chris before. Probably never hear from him again. However since my calligraphy is quite distinctive I'll know it's him if we ever meet. I'm always tempted at this point to make a correction so that the Siddhaṃ reads something amusing... perhaps ahaṃ mantraṃ corayāmi sma?

Name this syllable...

A reader recently sent in this image:

I'm a reiki master and found that the origins of the reiki symbols come from sanskrit. I managed to discover the correspondent syllables from two symbols but can't find for one of them. Can I please ask your assistance for that, please? Could you give me the name and the letter for that symbol?

The syllable is vai written in Chinese brush style Siddhaṃ. In Reiki it apparently symbolises 'light'. This is presumably because it is related to the seed syllable of Vairocana - "the illuminator".

Essay on Calligraphy

The Flow of Ink by Jill Bell is about the experience of doing calligraphy, and worth a read. She includes this image of calligraphy by John Stevens but doesn't say what the bija is. Anyone know what it is?

Update 23 Sept:
Thanks to Dekishitai (see comments below) who has identified this bija as dhiḥmma, with some stylistic flourishes. Although the visarga is aligned with the top of the mma, it refers to the dhi - the stem of the first ma has been extended upwards to come between the dhi and the visarga. The curved bit at the bottom seems to just be decorative - especially when compared with the hammaṃ syllables in the links Dekishitai supplies. It does give the character some solidity and balance to write it this way.

John Stevens describes dhiḥmma as: dhiḥ, the syllable of perfect wisdom; combined with mma which stands for Mañjuśrī (although we would expect maṃ here).

I haven't commented on it anywhere else, but the Japanese seem to have adopted the short i for writing dhiḥ. I am fairly sure that it should be dhīḥ with a long ī. Perhaps it was an aesthetic decision as dhiḥ is, I think, more pleasing to the eye, with the body of the syllable balanced by the diacritic marks on either side.

Anyway it just goes to show that you can only learn so much from books and websites - I have been thinking for some time that I would like to go to Japan to study Siddhaṃ.

A further update:
I have received a reply, via Jill Bell, from the great man himself:

The siddham is the seed-syllable for the Heart Sutra (see p.62 in SACRED CALLIGRAPHY OF THE EAST). The kanji on the right are MA KA HAN NYA HA RA MI TA SHIN GYO, Maka Hannya-haramita Shingyo, the title of the sutra. My signature DO SEN HAI SHO, "Respectfully written by Dosen" [Dosen is my pen name] is on the left.

JS

So yes the bija is definitely dhiḥmma. The Maka Hannya-haramita Shingyo is the Mahā Prajñāpāramita Heart Sutra.

Bonji Tattoo

This image was sent in today by Jose. He asks "is it a name or is it a listing of different Gods?" I thought it was interesting enough to answer at length.

This is two seed-syllables, or perhaps three depending on how you read it. The top bit is hāmmāṃ - the seed syllable of Fudō Myōō (Acala Vidyārāja). It is written as one syllable, but if you consult the Shingon Buddhist International Fudō webpage you will see that the mantra of Fudō is:

namaḥ samanta-vajrāṇāṃ caṇḍa mahāroṣaṇa sphoṭaya hūṃ traṭ hāṃ māṃ

hāmmāṃ is a combination of hāṃ + māṃ but written, as I say, as one syllable.

At the bottom is the short a syllable. It is in contact with the hāmmāṃ but must be a separate syllable. A is of course the mother of all syllables, and the syllable of Vairocana. John Stevens describes Fudō as an "incarnation and messenger of Vairocana" so it makes sense to have the two syllables together.

A fascinating case. I don't have a page for Fudō but perhaps will add one in the future. One of our order, and a friend of mine, is named Acala.

Mystery Syllable

The image on the left was sent in by Terence from Singapore who thought it was Siddhaṃ but was unsure what letter or word it was. It is being used in a Japanese Movie called "Aragami - raging god of battle" which seems a bit of an unfortunate association but such is life.

The character in red seems to quite clearly be khaṃ - based on kha (right). I'm not sure but I suspect that the white represents a styalized kanji or Chinese character (let me know if you recognise it). In my reply to Terence's email I explained the traditional associations with this syllable khaṃ:

Khaṃ is what is known as a seed syllable, it is a kind of mantra. There is a Sanskrit word kha which does just mean space. Sanskrit is an inflected language which means that the word ending changes depending on the case of the noun. The ending 'ṃ' is probably a nominative. So it just means space.

However you need to take into account that mantras are esoteric sounds and what the word means in a dictionary may have nothing to do with how it functions as a mantra. Many mantras do not make sense in the ordinary way we use that word. Mantras are sound symbols of something which transcends words. It is common to see khaṃ in the context of discussions of the elements (earth, water, fire, wind, space) - in the Upaniṣads, or the early Buddhist tantras for instance - where it is always associated with the element space. Khaṃ as a mantra, and space itself as a symbol, stand for, amongst other things, the emptiness and vastness of consciousness in it's primordial state. It is effectively equivalent to śunyata.

We could further note that the syllable kha occurs in the mantra of Mahavairocana