Kana seed-syllables/mantras?

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Palzang Jangchub
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Kana seed-syllables/mantras?

Post by Palzang Jangchub »

Is there a form of Japanese Esoteric Buddhism (Vajrayana) that uses one of the Kana scripts for seed-syllables and mantras, or are these always written in Siddhaṃ script?

For someone who has studied Japanese, using one of the already known syllabaries like Katakana or Hiragana for this purpose would obviously be easier than starting anew with Siddhaṃ or even the Tibetan Uchen...
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"The Sutras, Tantras, and Philosophical Scriptures are great in number. However life is short, and intelligence is limited, so it's hard to cover them completely. You may know a lot, but if you don't put it into practice, it's like dying of thirst on the shore of a great lake. Likewise, a common corpse is found in the bed of a great scholar." ~ Karma Chagme

དྲིན་ཆེན་རྩ་བའི་བླ་མ་སྐྱབས་རྗེ་མགར་ཆེན་ཁྲི་སྤྲུལ་རིན་པོ་ཆེ་ཁྱེད་མཁྱེན་ནོ།།
རྗེ་བཙུན་བླ་མ་མཁས་གྲུབ་ཀརྨ་ཆགས་མེད་མཁྱེན་ནོ། ཀརྨ་པ་མཁྱེན་ནོཿ
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eijo
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Re: Kana seed-syllables/mantras?

Post by eijo »

Karma Jinpa wrote:Is there a form of Japanese Esoteric Buddhism (Vajrayana) that uses one of the Kana scripts for seed-syllables and mantras, or are these always written in Siddhaṃ script?
Only Siddham letters are used for visualizations in Shingon.
crazy-man
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Re: Kana seed-syllables/mantras?

Post by crazy-man »

Siddham in China and Japan
http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/s ... _japan.pdf

Die Siddhaṃ in der japanischen Kunst in Ritualen der Heilung
http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/voll ... -Hosak.pdf

Kuden: The Oral Hermeneutics of Tendai Tantric Buddhism
https://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/nfile/2357

Sanskrit Beyond Text: The Use of Bonji (Siddham) in Mandala and Other Imagery in Ancient and Medieval Japan
https://digital.lib.washington.edu/rese ... sequence=1
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