Samding Dorje Phagmo
93-679: Chöd ( Tibetan : གཅོད , Wylie : gcod lit. 'to sever') is a spiritual practice found primarily in the Yundrung Bön tradition as well as in the Nyingma and Kagyu schools of Tibetan Buddhism (where it is classed as Anuttarayoga Tantra in Kagyu and Anuyoga in Nyingma). Also known as "cutting through the ego," the practices are based on the Prajñāpāramitā or "Perfection of Wisdom" sutras, which expound
186-584: A mantra into its design. It is considered to represent the abode of the deity. Each yantra is unique and calls the deity into the presence of the practitioner through the elaborate symbolic geometric designs. According to one scholar, "Yantras function as revelatory symbols of cosmic truths and as instructional charts of the spiritual aspect of human experience" Many situate yantras as central focus points for Hindu tantric practice. Yantras are not representations, but are lived, experiential, nondual realities. As Khanna describes: Despite its cosmic meanings
279-588: A silk tapestry from the Yuan dynasty that serves as a diagram of the Tibetan cosmology, which was given to China from Nepal and Tibet. In the mandala, the outer circle of fire usually symbolises wisdom. The ring of eight charnel grounds represents the Buddhist exhortation to be always mindful of death, and the impermanence with which samsara is suffused: "such locations were utilized in order to confront and to realize
372-567: A tantric feast in order to put their understanding of emptiness to the ultimate test. Tibetan : གཅོད་སྒྲུབ་ཐབས་ , Wylie : gcod sgrub thabs and Sanskrit chedasādhanā both literally mean "cutting practice". In Standard Tibetan (the prestige dialect associated with Buddhism that is based on the speech of Lhasa ), the pronunciation of gcod is IPA / tɕøː /. Chöd literally means "cutting through". It cuts through hindrances and obscurations , sometimes called 'demons' or 'gods'. Examples of demons are ignorance , anger and, in particular,
465-545: A yantra is a reality lived. Because of the relationship that exists in the Tantras between the outer world (the macrocosm) and man's inner world (the microcosm), every symbol in a yantra is ambivalently resonant in inner–outer synthesis, and is associated with the subtle body and aspects of human consciousness. The term 'mandala' appears in the Rigveda as the name of the sections of the work, and Vedic rituals use mandalas such as
558-538: A French adventurer who lived in Tibet. Her travelogue Magic and Mystery in Tibet, published in 1932, contains an account. Walter Evans-Wentz published the first translation of a chöd liturgy in his 1935 book Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines . Anila Rinchen Palmo translated several essays about chöd in the 1987 collection Cutting Through Ego-Clinging: Commentary on the Practice of Tchod . Since then, Chöd has emerged more into
651-459: A clear and vivid visualized image. With every mandala comes what Tucci calls "its associated liturgy ... contained in texts known as tantras ", instructing practitioners on how the mandala should be drawn, built and visualised, and indicating the mantras to be recited during its ritual use. By visualizing "pure lands", one learns to understand experience itself as pure, and as the abode of enlightenment. The protection that we need, in this view,
744-418: A kartika to separate the bodymind from the mindstream in ritual. Kartika imagery in chöd rituals provides the practitioner with an opportunity to realize Buddhist doctrine: The kartika (Skt.) or curved knife symbolizes the cutting of conventional wisdom by the ultimate insight into emptiness . It is usually present as a pair, together with the skullcup , filled with wisdom nectar. On a more simple level,
837-537: A monastery. These sand mandalas are made to be destroyed to symbolize impermanence, the Buddhist belief that death is not the end, and that one's essence will always return to the elements. It is also related to the belief that one should not become attached to anything. To create these mandalas, the monks first create a sketch, then take colorful sand traditionally made from powdered stones and gems into copper funnels called Cornetts and gently tap sand out of them to create
930-455: A notebook a small circular drawing, [...] which seemed to correspond to my inner situation at the time. [...] Only gradually did I discover what the mandala really is: [...] the Self, the wholeness of the personality, which if all goes well is harmonious. When I began drawing the mandalas, however, I saw that everything, all the paths I had been following, all the steps I had taken, were leading back to
1023-584: A number of his works in Tibetan on chöd. Among others, the works include redactions, outlines and commentaries. Rang byung was renowned as a systematizer of the Gcod teachings developed by Ma gcig lab sgron. His texts on Gcod include the Gcod kyi khrid yig ; the Gcod bka ' tshoms chen mo ' i sa bcad which consists of a topical outline of and commentary on Ma gcig lab sgron's Shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa zab mo gcod kyi man ngag gi gzhung bka ' tshoms chen mo ;
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#17330855507101116-414: A particularly respected type of mad saint, feared and/or held in awe due to their roles as denizens of the charnel ground . According to tibetologist Jérôme Édou, chod practitioners were often associated with the role of shaman and exorcist . The Chö[d]pa's very lifestyle on the fringe of society - dwelling in the solitude of burial grounds and haunted places, added to the mad behavior and contact with
1209-494: A result, in all modern Tibetan dialects and in particular in the Standard Tibetan of Lhasa , there is a great divergence between current spelling, which still reflects the 9th-century spoken Tibetan, and current pronunciation. This divergence is the basis of an argument in favour of spelling reform , to write Tibetan as it is pronounced ; for example, writing Kagyu instead of Bka'-rgyud . The nomadic Amdo Tibetan and
1302-527: A single point—namely, to the mid-point. It became increasingly plain to me that the mandala is the center. It is the exponent of all paths. It is the path to the center, to individuation....I saw that here the goal had been revealed. One could not go beyond the center. The center is the goal, and everything is directed toward that center. Through this dream I understood that the self is the principle and archetype of orientation and meaning. Therein lies its healing function. For me, this insight signified an approach to
1395-625: A territorially defined state with fixed borders and a bureaucratic apparatus, but they diverged considerably in the opposite direction: the polity was defined by its centre rather than its boundaries, and it could be composed of numerous other tributary polities without undergoing administrative integration. Empires such as Bagan , Ayutthaya , Champa , Khmer , Srivijaya and Majapahit are known as "mandala" in this sense. Fashion designer Mandali Mendrilla designed an interactive art installation called Mandala of Desires (Blue Lotus Wish Tree) made in peace silk and eco friendly textile ink, displayed at
1488-478: A version of the chöd sādhanā of Jigme Lingpa from the Longchen Nyingthig , five ritual knives are employed to demarcate the maṇḍala of the offering and to affix the five wisdoms . Key to the iconography of chöd is the kartikā ( Tibetan : གྲི་གུ,་སྐྱི་གྲི , Wylie : gri gu, skyi gri ), a half-moon blade knife for skinning an animal and for scraping hides . The practitioner symbolically uses
1581-606: A way to create easily accessible objects of reverence for the lower-classes of Japanese society. Shinran designed a mandala using a hanging scroll, and the words of the nembutsu ( 念仏 ) written vertically. This style of mandala is still used by some Jodo Shinshu Buddhists in home altars, or butsudan . Bodhimaṇḍala is a term in Buddhism that means "circle of awakening ". Sand mandalas are colorful mandalas made from sand that are ritualistically destroyed. They originated in India in
1674-464: Is Vajrabhairava mandala a silk tapestry woven with gilded paper depicting lavish elements like crowns and jewelry, which gives a three-dimensional effect to the piece. A mandala can also represent the entire universe, which is traditionally depicted with Mount Meru as the axis mundi in the center, surrounded by the continents. One example is the Cosmological Mandala with Mount Meru ,
1767-453: Is a geometric configuration of symbols. In various spiritual traditions, mandalas may be employed for focusing attention of practitioners and adepts, as a spiritual guidance tool, for establishing a sacred space and as an aid to meditation and trance induction. In the Eastern religions of Hinduism , Buddhism , Jainism and Shinto it is used as a map representing deities, or especially in
1860-400: Is a symbolic offering of the entire universe. Every intricate detail of these mandalas is fixed in the tradition and has specific symbolic meanings, often on more than one level. Whereas the above mandala represents the pure surroundings of a Buddha, this mandala represents the universe. This type of mandala is used for the mandala-offerings, during which one symbolically offers the universe to
1953-576: Is called uchen script while the hand-written cursive form used in everyday writing is called umê script . This writing system is used across the Himalayas and Tibet . The script is closely linked to a broad ethnic Tibetan identity, spanning across areas in India , Nepal , Bhutan and Tibet. The Tibetan script is of Brahmic origin from the Gupta script and is ancestral to scripts such as Lepcha , Marchen and
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#17330855507102046-504: Is concerned. In particular, there is no greater devil than this present ego-clinging, and because of this all the devils will rear their ugly heads as long as one has not severed this clinging to ego. Dzogchen forms of chöd enable the practitioner to maintain rigpa , primordial awareness free from fear. Here, the chöd ritual essentialises elements of phowa , gaṇacakra , pāramitā , lojong , pure illusory body , mandala , brahmavihāra , luminous mind , and tonglen . In most versions of
2139-634: Is designed as a simple means for inputting Dzongkha text on computers. This keyboard layout was standardized by the Dzongkha Development Commission (DDC) and the Department of Information Technology (DIT) of the Royal Government of Bhutan in 2000. It was updated in 2009 to accommodate additional characters added to the Unicode & ISO 10646 standards since the initial version. Since
2232-403: Is from our own minds, as much as from external sources of confusion. In many tantric mandalas, this aspect of separation and protection from the outer samsaric world is depicted by "the four outer circles: the purifying fire of wisdom, the vajra circle, the circle with the eight tombs, the lotus circle". The ring of vajras forms a connected fence-like arrangement running around the perimeter of
2325-633: Is in the middle of the consonant and vowel, it is added as a subscript. On the other hand, when the ར /ra/ comes before the consonant and vowel, it is added as a superscript. ར /ra/ actually changes form when it is above most other consonants, thus རྐ rka. However, an exception to this is the cluster རྙ /ɲa/. Similarly, the consonants ར /ra/, and ཡ /ja/ change form when they are beneath other consonants, thus ཀྲ /ʈ ~ ʈʂa/; ཀྱ /ca/. Besides being written as subscripts and superscripts, some consonants can also be placed in prescript, postscript, or post-postscript positions. For instance,
2418-483: Is now protected and announced as historical monument and site by the government of Manipur in the same year. The site is situated 12 km aerial distance from Kangla with the GPS coordinates of 24° 48' N and 93° 49' E. It covers a total area of around 224,161.45 square meters. This square mandala has four similar protruding rectangular ‘gates’ in the cardinal directions guarded each by similar but smaller rectangular ‘gates’ on
2511-528: Is simply read as it usually is and has no effect on the pronunciation of the consonant to which it is subjoined, for example ཀ་ཝ་ཟུར་ཀྭ (IPA: /ka.wa.suː.ka/). The vowels used in the alphabet are ཨ /a/, ཨི /i/, ཨུ /u/, ཨེ /e/, and ཨོ /o/. While the vowel /a/ is included in each consonant, the other vowels are indicated by marks; thus ཀ /ka/, ཀི /ki/, ཀུ /ku/, ཀེ /ke/, ཀོ /ko/. The vowels ཨི /i/, ཨེ /e/, and ཨོ /o/ are placed above consonants as diacritics, while
2604-560: Is solely for the consonants ད /tʰa/ and ས /sa/. The head ( མགོ in Tibetan, Wylie: mgo ) letter, or superscript, position above a radical is reserved for the consonants ར /ra/, ལ /la/, and ས /sa/. The subscript position under a radical can only be occupied by the consonants ཡ /ja/, ར /ra/, ལ /la/, and ཝ /wa/. In this position they are described as བཏགས (Wylie: btags , IPA: /taʔ/), in Tibetan meaning "hung on/affixed/appended", for example བ་ཡ་བཏགས་བྱ (IPA: /pʰa.ja.taʔ.t͡ʃʰa/), except for ཝ , which
2697-737: Is the Taima mandala , dated to about 763 CE. The Taima mandala is based on the Contemplation Sutra , but other similar mandalas have been made subsequently. Unlike mandalas used in Vajrayana Buddhism, it is not used as an object of meditation or for esoteric ritual. Instead, it provides a visual representation of the Pure Land texts, and is used as a teaching aid. Also in Jodo Shinshu Buddhism, Shinran and his descendant, Rennyo , sought
2790-688: Is the 9th century Borobudur in Central Java, Indonesia. It is built as a large stupa surrounded by smaller ones arranged on terraces formed as a stepped pyramid , and when viewed from above, takes the form of a giant tantric Buddhist mandala, simultaneously representing the Buddhist cosmology and the nature of mind. Other temples from the same period that also have mandala plans include Sewu , Plaosan and Prambanan . Similar mandala designs are also observable in Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar. Circular diagrams are often used in phylogenetics , especially for
2883-564: Is undesirable, throwing oneself defiantly into unpleasant circumstances, realising that gods and demons are one’s own mind, and ruthlessly severing self-centered arrogance through an understanding of the sameness of self and others." According to Machig Labdrön , the main goal of chöd is cutting through ego clinging: What we call devils are not materially existing individuals . . . . A devil means anything which hinders us in our achievement of liberation. Consequently, even kind and loving friends and companions may become devils as far as liberation
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2976-833: The Tshogs las yon tan kun ' byung ; the lengthy Gcod kyi tshogs las rin po che ' i phren ba ' don bsgrigs bltas chog tu bdod pa gcod kyi lugs sor bzhag ; the Ma lab sgron la gsol ba ' deb pa ' i mgur ma ; the Zab mo bdud kyi gcod yil kyi khrid yig , and finally the Gcod kyi nyams len . Historicically, chöd was mostly practised outside the Tibetan monastery system by chödpas, who were yogis , yogiṇīs and ngagpas rather than bhikṣus and bhikṣuṇīs . Because of this, material on chöd has been less widely available to Western readers than some other tantric Buddhist practices. The first Western reports of chöd came from Alexandra David-Néel ,
3069-572: The Five Wisdom Kings , this forms the Mandala of the Two Realms . Mandalas are commonly used by tantric Buddhists as an aid to meditation. The mandala is "a support for the meditating person", something to be repeatedly contemplated to the point of saturation, such that the image of the mandala becomes fully internalised in even the minutest detail and can then be summoned and contemplated at will as
3162-880: The Latin script . Multiple Romanization and transliteration systems have been created in recent years, but do not fully represent the true phonetic sound. While the Wylie transliteration system is widely used to Romanize Standard Tibetan , others include the Library of Congress system and the IPA-based transliteration (Jacques 2012). Below is a table with Tibetan letters and different Romanization and transliteration system for each letter, listed below systems are: Wylie transliteration (W), Tibetan pinyin (TP), Dzongkha phonetic (DP), ALA-LC Romanization (A) and THL Simplified Phonetic Transcription (THL). The first version of Microsoft Windows to support
3255-582: The Mandala of the Womb Realm and the Mandala of the Diamond Realm . These two mandalas are engaged in the abhiseka initiation rituals for new Shingon students, more commonly known as the Kechien Kanjō ( 結縁灌頂 ). A common feature of this ritual is to blindfold the new initiate and to have them throw a flower upon either mandala. Where the flower lands assists in the determination of which tutelary deity
3348-507: The Navagraha mandala to this day. In Vajrayana Buddhism, mandalas have been developed also into sandpainting . They are also a key part of Anuttarayoga Tantra meditation practices. The man mandala can be shown to represent in visual form the core essence of the Vajrayana teachings. The mandala represents the nature of the Pure Land, Enlightened mind. An example of this type of mandala
3441-515: The Pabonka Hermitage . This occurred c. 620 , towards the beginning of the king's reign. There were 21 Sutra texts held by the King which were afterward translated. In the first half of the 7th century, the Tibetan script was used for the codification of these sacred Buddhist texts, for written civil laws, and for a Tibetan Constitution. A contemporary academic suggests that the script
3534-421: The dualism of perceiving the self as inherently meaningful, contrary to the Buddhist doctrine of anatta (non-self). This is done in a powerful meditative ritual which includes "a stunning array of visualizations, song, music, and prayer, it engages every aspect of one’s being and effects a powerful transformation of the interior landscape." According to Jamgön Kongtrül , chöd involves "accepting willingly what
3627-629: The invocation that believers chant, are written down the center of all Nichiren-sect Gohonzons , whose appearance may otherwise vary depending on the particular school and other factors. Mandalas have sometimes been used in Pure Land Buddhism to graphically represent Pure Lands , based on descriptions found in the Larger Sutra and the Contemplation Sutra . The most famous mandala in Japan
3720-526: The sādhanā , the mindstream precipitates into a Saṃbhogakāya simulacrum of Vajrayoginī . In saṃbhogakāya attained through visualization, the sādhaka offers a gaṇachakra of their own physical body to the "four" guests: the Three Jewels , dakinis , dharmapalas and beings of the bhavachakra , the ever-present lokapala and the pretas . The rite may be protracted with separate offerings to each maṇḍala of guests, or significantly abridged. Many versions of
3813-428: The " emptiness " concept of Buddhist philosophy . According to Mahayana Buddhists, emptiness is the ultimate wisdom of understanding that all things lack inherent existence. Chöd combines prajñāpāramitā philosophy with specific meditation methods and tantric ritual. The chod practitioner seeks to tap the power of fear through activities such as rituals set in graveyards, and visualisation of offering their bodies in
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3906-539: The "Five Buddhas", archetypal Buddha forms embodying various aspects of enlightenment. Such Buddhas are depicted depending on the school of Buddhism , and even the specific purpose of the mandala. A common mandala of this type is that of the Five Wisdom Buddhas (a.k.a. Five Jinas ), the Buddhas Vairocana , Aksobhya , Ratnasambhava , Amitabha and Amoghasiddhi . When paired with another mandala depicting
3999-581: The "Mother" and "Father" lineages. Dampa Sangye is known as the "Father of Chöd" and Machig Labdrön , founder of the Mahamudra chöd lineages , as the "Mother of Chöd". Bön traces the origin of chöd to the Secret Mother Tantra , the seventh of the Nine Vehicles of Bön practice. There are four distinct styles of chöd practice. Chöd developed outside the monastic system. It was subsequently adopted by
4092-402: The "sudden" route to enlightenment or his "gradual" route, Kamalaśīla used the technique of phowa to transfer his mindstream to animate a corpse polluted with contagion in order to safely move the hazard it presented. As the mindstream of Kamalaśīla was otherwise engaged, a mahasiddha by the name of Dampa Sangye came across the vacant kuten ('physical basis') of Kamalaśīla. Padampa Sangye,
4185-534: The 8th–12th century but are now practiced in Tibetan Buddhism. Each mandala is dedicated to specific deities. In Buddhism Deities represent states of the mind to be obtained on the path to enlightenment, the mandala itself is representative of the deity's palace which also represents the mind of the deity. Each mandala is a pictorial representation of a tantra . for the process of making Sand mandalas they are created by monks who have trained for three–five years in
4278-667: The Buddhas or to one's teacher. Within Vajrayana practice, 100,000 of these mandala offerings (to create merit) can be part of the preliminary practices before a student even begins actual tantric practices. This mandala is generally structured according to the model of the universe as taught in a Buddhist classic text the Abhidharma-kośa , with Mount Meru at the centre, surrounded by the continents, oceans and mountains, etc. Various Mandalas are described in many Pali Buddhist texts . Some of
4371-461: The Indian form of chöd which contributed to the Mahamudra chöd of Machig Labdrön. The mindstream of Kamalaśīla was unable to return to his own body and so was forced to enter the vacant body of Padampa Sangye. Chöd was a marginal and peripheral practice, and the chödpas who engaged in it were from outside traditional Tibetan Buddhist and Indian monastic institutions, with a contraindication against all but
4464-461: The Indian subcontinent state that the classical orthography should not be altered even when used for lay purposes. This became an obstacle for many modern Tibetic languages wishing to modernize or to introduce a written tradition. Amdo Tibetan was one of a few examples where Buddhist practitioners initiated a spelling reform. A spelling reform of the Ladakhi language was controversial in part because it
4557-720: The Tibetan keyboard layout is MS Windows Vista . The layout has been available in Linux since September 2007. In Ubuntu 12.04, one can install Tibetan language support through Dash / Language Support / Install/Remove Languages, the input method can be turned on from Dash / Keyboard Layout, adding Tibetan keyboard layout. The layout applies the similar layout as in Microsoft Windows. Mac OS -X introduced Tibetan Unicode support with OS-X version 10.5 and later, now with three different keyboard layouts available: Tibetan-Wylie, Tibetan QWERTY and Tibetan-Otani. The Dzongkha keyboard layout scheme
4650-410: The Tibetan script is that the consonants can be written either as radicals or they can be written in other forms, such as subscript and superscript forming consonant clusters . To understand how this works, one can look at the radical ཀ /ka/ and see what happens when it becomes ཀྲ /kra/ or རྐ /rka/ (pronounced /ka/). In both cases, the symbol for ཀ /ka/ is used, but when the ར /ra/
4743-401: The Tibetan script it is /a/. The letter ཨ is also the base for dependent vowel marks. Although some Tibetan dialects are tonal , the language had no tone at the time of the script's invention, and there are no dedicated symbols for tone. However, since tones developed from segmental features, they can usually be correctly predicted by the archaic spelling of Tibetan words. One aspect of
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#17330855507104836-452: The adept symbolically offers the flesh of their body in a form of gaṇacakra or tantric feast. Iconographically , the skin of the practitioner's body may represent surface reality or maya . It is cut from bones that represent the true reality of the mindstream . Commentators have pointed out the similarities between the chöd ritual and the prototypical initiation of a shaman , although one writer identifies an essential difference between
4929-500: The arrangement of keys essentially follows the usual order of the Dzongkha and Tibetan alphabet, the layout can be quickly learned by anyone familiar with this alphabet. Subjoined (combining) consonants are entered using the Shift key. The Dzongkha (dz) keyboard layout is included in Microsoft Windows, Android, and most distributions of Linux as part of XFree86 . Tibetan was originally one of
5022-407: The basic Tibetan alphabet to represent different sounds. In addition to the use of supplementary graphemes, the rules for constructing consonant clusters are amended, allowing any character to occupy the superscript or subscript position, negating the need for the prescript and postscript positions. Romanization and transliteration of the Tibetan script is the representation of the Tibetan script in
5115-415: The c. 620 date of development of the original Tibetan script. Three orthographic standardisations were developed. The most important, an official orthography aimed to facilitate the translation of Buddhist scriptures emerged during the early 9th century. Standard orthography has not been altered since then, while the spoken language has changed by, for example, losing complex consonant clusters . As
5208-513: The case of Shinto, paradises, kami or actual shrines. In Hinduism, a basic mandala, also called a yantra , takes the form of a square with four gates containing a circle with a center point . Each gate is in the general shape of a T. Mandalas often have radial balance . A yantra is similar to a mandala, usually smaller and using a more limited colour palette. It may be a two- or three-dimensional geometric composition used in sadhanas , puja or meditative rituals, and may incorporate
5301-445: The center and therefore to the goal. Jung claimed that the urge to make mandalas emerges during moments of intense personal growth. He further hypothesized their appearance indicated a "profound re-balancing process" is underway in the psyche; the result of the process would be a more complex and better integrated personality. The mandala serves a conservative purpose – namely, to restore a previously existing order. But it also serves
5394-406: The chod sādhana still exist. Chöd, like all tantric systems, has outer, inner and secret aspects. They are described in an evocation sung to Nyama Paldabum by Milarepa : External chod is to wander in fearful places where there are deities and demons. Internal chod is to offer one's own body as food to the deities and demons. Ultimate chod is to realize the true nature of the mind and cut through
5487-462: The common appearance of a circle motif across religions and cultures. He hypothesized that the circle drawings reflected the mind's inner state at the moment of creation and were a kind of symbolic archetype in the collective unconscious. Familiarity with the philosophical writings of India prompted Jung to adopt the word "mandala" to describe these drawings created by himself and his patients. In his autobiography, Jung wrote: I sketched every morning in
5580-418: The consonants ག /kʰa/, ད /tʰa/, བ /pʰa/, མ /ma/ and འ /a/ can be used in the prescript position to the left of other radicals, while the position after a radical (the postscript position), can be held by the ten consonants ག /kʰa/, ན /na/, བ /pʰa/, ད /tʰa/, མ /ma/, འ /a/, ར /ra/, ང /ŋa/, ས /sa/, and ལ /la/. The third position, the post-postscript position
5673-477: The creative purpose of giving expression and form to something that does not yet exist, something new and unique. [...] The process is that of the ascending spiral, which grows upward while simultaneously returning again and again to the same point. American art therapist Joan Kellogg later created the MARI card test, a free response measure , based on Jung's work. Transpersonal psychologist David Fontana proposed that
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#17330855507105766-619: The examples of the Theravada Buddhist Mandalas are: In Sigālovāda Sutta , Buddha describes the relationships of a common lay persons in Mandala style. One Japanese branch of Mahayana Buddhism – Shingon Buddhism – makes frequent use of mandalas in its rituals as well, though the actual mandalas differ. When Shingon's founder, Kūkai , returned from his training in China, he brought back two mandalas that became central to Shingon ritual:
5859-524: The fine strand of hair of subtle ignorance. I am the yogi who has these three kinds of chod practice. Vajrayogini is a key figure in the advanced practice of chöd, where she appears in her Kālikā ( Wylie : khros ma nag mo ) or Vajravārāhī ( Wylie : rdo rje phag mo ) forms. The practices of Tröma Nagmo "Extremely Wrathful Black Mother" associated with the Dakini Tröma Nagmo (the black form of Vajrayogini) were also propagated by Machig Labdrön. One of
5952-511: The form of the mandala, the sacred enclosure consisting of concentric squares and circles drawn on the ground and representing that adamant plane of being on which the aspirant to Buddha hood wishes to establish himself. The unfolding of the tantric ritual depends on the mandala; and where a material mandala is not employed, the adept proceeds to construct one mentally in the course of his meditation." A "mandala offering" in Tibetan Buddhism
6045-644: The forms of this style of chöd can be found in the Dudjom Tersar lineage. Chöd is now a staple of the advanced sādhana of Tibetan Buddhism. It is practiced worldwide following dissemination by the Tibetan diaspora . A form of chöd was practiced in India by Buddhist mahāsiddhas prior to the 10th century. The two practices of chöd in Buddhism and in Bön are distinct lineages. There are two main chöd traditions within Buddhism,
6138-421: The founder of this branch of Japanese Buddhism , during the late 13th Century. The Gohonzon is the primary object of veneration in some Nichiren schools and the only one in others, which consider it to be the supreme object of worship as the embodiment of the supreme Dharma and Nichiren's inner enlightenment. The seven characters Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō , considered to be the name of the supreme Dharma, as well as
6231-406: The fringe of society kept the chödpas aloof from the wealthy monastic institutions and printing houses. As a result, the original chöd texts and commentaries, often copied by hand, never enjoyed any wide circulation, and many have been lost forever." Rangjung Dorje, 3rd Karmapa Lama , (1284–1339) was an important systematizer of chöd teachings and significantly assisted in their promulgation within
6324-518: The graphical representation of phylogenetic relationships. Evolutionary trees often encompass numerous species that are conveniently shown on a circular tree, with images of the species shown on the periphery of a tree. Such diagrams have been called phylogenetic mandalas. Mandala as an art form first appeared in Buddhist art that were produced in India during the first century B.C.E. These can also be seen in Rangoli designs in Indian households. One of
6417-572: The initiate should follow. The mandala in Nichiren Buddhism is a moji-mandala ( 文字曼陀羅 ), which is a paper hanging scroll or wooden tablet whose inscription consists of Chinese characters and medieval-Sanskrit script representing elements of the Buddha's enlightenment , protective Buddhist deities, and certain Buddhist concepts. Called the Gohonzon , it was originally inscribed by Nichiren ,
6510-455: The king's state. In historical, social and political sense, the term "mandala" is also employed to denote traditional Southeast Asian political formations (such as federation of kingdoms or vassalized states). It was adopted by 20th century Western historians from ancient Indian political discourse as a means of avoiding the term 'state' in the conventional sense. Not only did Southeast Asian polities not conform to Chinese and European views of
6603-438: The left and right. Within the square there is an eight petalled flower or rayed-star, recently called as Maklang ‘Star fort’ by the locals, in the centre covering a total area of around 50,836.66 square meters. The discovery of other five giant mandalas in the valley of Manipur is also made with Google Earth. The five giant mandalas, viz., Sekmai mandala, Heikakmapal mandala, Phurju twin mandalas and Sangolmang mandala are located on
6696-457: The literary and practice lineages of the Kagyu, Nyingma, and particularly Dzogchen. It is in this transition from the charnel grounds to the monastic institutions of Tibetan Buddhism that the rite of chöd became an inner practice; the charnel ground became an internal imaginal environment. Schaeffer conveys that the Third Karmapa was a systematizer of the chöd developed by Machig Labdrön and lists
6789-671: The mainstream of both western scholarly and academic writings. Tibetan script The Tibetan script is a segmental writing system, or abugida , derived from Brahmic scripts and Gupta script , and used to write certain Tibetic languages , including Tibetan , Dzongkha , Sikkimese , Ladakhi , Jirel and Balti . It was originally developed c. 620 by Tibetan minister Thonmi Sambhota for King Songtsen Gampo . The Tibetan script has also been used for some non-Tibetic languages in close cultural contact with Tibet, such as Thakali , Nepali and Old Turkic . The printed form
6882-463: The monastic lineages. As an internalization of an outer ritual, chöd involves a form of self-sacrifice: the practitioner visualizes their own body as the offering at a ganachakra . These two qualities are represented iconographically by the victory banner and the ritual knife . The banner symbolizes overcoming obstacles and the knife symbolizes cutting through the ego. The practitioner may cultivate imaginary fearful or painful situations since they help
6975-427: The most advanced practitioners to go to the charnel grounds to practice. Texts concerning chöd were both exclusive and rare in the early tradition school. Indeed, due to the itinerant and nomadic lifestyles of practitioners, they could carry few texts. Hence they were also known as kusulu or kusulupa , that is, studying texts rarely whilst focusing on meditation and praxis : "The nonconventional attitude of living on
7068-625: The most intense archaeological discoveries in recent years that could redefine the history of eastern thought and tradition of mandala is the discovery of five giant mandalas in the valley of Manipur , India, made with Google Earth imagery. Located in the paddy field in the west of Imphal , the capital of Manipur, the Maklang geoglyph is perhaps the world's largest mandala built entirely of mud. The site wasn't discovered until 2013 as its whole structure could only be visible via Google Earth satellite imagery. The whole paddy field, locally known as Bihu Loukon ,
7161-402: The multilingual ʼPhags-pa script , and is also closely related to Meitei . According to Tibetan historiography, the Tibetan script was developed during the reign of King Songtsen Gampo by his minister Thonmi Sambhota , who was sent to India with 16 other students to study Buddhism along with Sanskrit and written languages. They developed the Tibetan script from the Gupta script while at
7254-570: The outer mandala circle. As a meditation on impermanence (a central teaching of Buddhism ), after days or weeks of creating the intricate pattern of a sand mandala , the sand is brushed together into a pile and spilled into a body of running water to spread the blessings of the mandala. Kværne in his extended discussion of sahaja , discusses the relationship of sadhana interiority and exteriority in relation to mandala thus: ...external ritual and internal sadhana form an indistinguishable whole, and this unity finds its most pregnant expression in
7347-524: The practitioner's work of cutting through attachment to the self. Machig Labdrön said, "To consider adversity as a friend is the instruction of Chöd". Sarat Chandra Das , writing at the turn of the 20th century, equated the chöd practitioner ( Tibetan : གཅོད་པ , Wylie : gcod pa ) with the Indian avadhūta , or "mad saint". Avadhūtas , called nyönpa in Tibetan Buddhism, are renowned for expressing their spiritual understanding through " crazy wisdom " inexplicable to ordinary people. Chöd practitioners are
7440-426: The sand mandala. Each color represents attributes of deities. While making the mandalas the monks will pray and meditate, each grain of sand represents a blessing. Monks will travel to demonstrate this art form to people, often in museums. The re-introduction of mandalas into modern Western thought is largely credited to psychologist Carl Gustav Jung . In his exploration of the unconscious through art, Jung observed
7533-838: The scripts in the first version of the Unicode Standard in 1991, in the Unicode block U+1000–U+104F. However, in 1993, in version 1.1, it was removed (the code points it took up would later be used for the Burmese script in version 3.0). The Tibetan script was re-added in July, 1996 with the release of version 2.0. The Unicode block for Tibetan is U+0F00–U+0FFF. It includes letters, digits and various punctuation marks and special symbols used in religious texts: Mandala A mandala ( Sanskrit : मण्डल , romanized : maṇḍala , lit. 'circle', [ˈmɐɳɖɐlɐ] )
7626-502: The skull is a reminder of (our) impermanence . Between the knife and the handle is a makara -head, a mythical monster. Some sources have described Machig Labdrön as the founder of the practice of chöd. This is accurate in that she is the founder of the Tibetan Buddhist Mahamudrā chöd lineages . Machig Labdrön is credited with providing the name "chöd" and developing unique approaches to the practice. Biographies suggest it
7719-452: The symbolic nature of a mandala may help one "to access progressively deeper levels of the unconscious, ultimately assisting the meditator to experience a mystical sense of oneness with the ultimate unity from which the cosmos in all its manifold forms arises." Buddhist architecture often applied mandala as the blueprint or plan to design Buddhist structures, including temple complex and stupas. A notable example of mandala in architecture
7812-412: The transient nature of life". Described elsewhere: "within a flaming rainbow nimbus and encircled by a black ring of dorjes , the major outer ring depicts the eight great charnel grounds, to emphasize the dangerous nature of human life". Inside these rings lie the walls of the mandala palace itself, specifically a place populated by deities and Buddhas . One well-known type of mandala is the mandala of
7905-436: The two in that the shaman's initiation is involuntary while a chodpa chooses to undertake the ritual death of a chod ceremony. Traditionally, chöd is regarded as challenging, potentially dangerous and inappropriate for some practitioners. Practitioners of the chöd ritual, chödpa, use a kangling or human thighbone trumpet, and a chöd drum, a hand drum similar to but larger than the ḍamaru commonly used in Tibetan ritual. In
7998-507: The vowel ཨུ /u/ is placed underneath consonants. Old Tibetan included a reversed form of the mark for /i/, the gigu 'verso', of uncertain meaning. There is no distinction between long and short vowels in written Tibetan, except in loanwords , especially transcribed from the Sanskrit . The Tibetan alphabet, when used to write other languages such as Balti , Chinese and Sanskrit , often has additional and/or modified graphemes taken from
8091-644: The western bank of the Iril River. Another two fairly large mandala shaped geoglyph at Nongren and Keinou are also reported from Manipur valley, India, in 2019. They are named as Nongren mandala and Keinou mandala. The Rajamandala (or Raja-mandala ; circle of states) was formulated by the Indian author Kautilya in his work on politics, the Arthashastra (written between 4th century BCE and 2nd century BCE). It describes circles of friendly and enemy states surrounding
8184-572: The western dialects of the Ladakhi language , as well as the Balti language , come very close to the Old Tibetan spellings. Despite that, the grammar of these dialectical varieties has considerably changed. To write the modern varieties according to the orthography and grammar of Classical Tibetan would be similar to writing Italian according to Latin orthography, or to writing Hindi according to Sanskrit orthogrophy. However, modern Buddhist practitioners in
8277-449: The world of darkness and mystery - was enough for credulous people to view the chödpa in a role usually attributed to shamans and other exorcists, an assimilation which also happened to medieval European shepherds. Only someone who has visited one of Tibet's charnel fields and witnessed the offering of a corpse to the vultures may be able to understand the full impact of what the chöd tradition refers to as places that inspire terror. In chöd,
8370-467: Was first initiated by Christian missionaries. In the Tibetan script, the syllables are written from left to right. Syllables are separated by a tsek (་); since many Tibetan words are monosyllabic, this mark often functions almost as a space. Spaces are not used to divide words. The Tibetan alphabet has thirty basic letters, sometimes known as "radicals", for consonants. As in other Indic scripts , each consonant letter assumes an inherent vowel ; in
8463-428: Was instead developed in the second half of the 11th century. New research and writings also suggest that there were one or more Tibetan scripts in use prior to the introduction of the script by Songtsen Gampo and Thonmi Sambhota . The incomplete Dunhuang manuscripts are their key evidence for their hypothesis, while the few discovered and recorded Old Tibetan Annals manuscripts date from 650 and therefore post-date
8556-562: Was not karmically blessed with an aesthetic corporeal form, and upon finding the very handsome and healthy empty body of Kamalaśīla, which he assumed to be a newly dead fresh corpse, used phowa to transfer his own mindstream into Kamalaśīla's body. Padampa Sangye's mindstream in Kamalaśīla's body continued the ascent to the Himalaya and thereby transmitted the Pacification of Suffering teachings and
8649-641: Was transmitted to her via sources of the mahāsiddha and tantric traditions. She did not found the Dzogchen lineages, although they do recognize her, and she does not appear at all in the Bön chöd lineages. Among the formative influences on Mahamudrā chöd was Dampa Sangye 's Pacification of Suffering ( Wylie : zhi byed ). There are several hagiographic accounts of how chöd came to Tibet. One namtar (spiritual biography) asserts that shortly after Kamalaśīla won his famous debate with Moheyan as to whether Tibet should adopt
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