Seed-syllable for flame

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Palzang Jangchub
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Seed-syllable for flame

Post by Palzang Jangchub »

In commentaries on the Kusali accumulation for the Longchen Nyingt'hik ngöndro, mention is made of visualizing a flame emanating from "the [vertical] stroke of an A syllable," which then makes the contents of the skullcup boil.

What is meant by the "stroke" or "vertical stroke of an A"? In the Tibetan they appear to be referring to an ཨ་ (like in the Dzogchen Community logo), but since Tibetans are known to misspell often, should it actually be an Ā (ཨཱ་) or an ĀH (ཨཱཿ) instead?

Does anyone know why one of these syllables would be associated with generating flames, rather than RAM (རྃ་) from the fire mandala, or the BAM (བྃ་) seed-syllable of Vajrayogini? Same goes for Tummo practice.
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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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