A prayer wheel is a cylindrical wheel on a spindle made from metal, wood, stone, leather, or coarse cotton, widely used in Tibet and areas where Tibetan culture is predominant.
A mantra or mantram is a sacred utterance, a numinous sound, a syllable, word or phonemes, or group of words believed by practitioners to have religious, magical or spiritual powers. Some mantras have a syntactic structure and literal meaning, while others do not.
In Buddhism, Avalokiteśvara, also known as Lokeśvara and Chenrezig, is a tenth-level bodhisattva associated with great compassion (mahakaruṇā). He is often associated with Amitabha Buddha. Avalokiteśvara has numerous manifestations and is depicted in various forms and styles. In some texts, he is even considered to be the source of all Hindu deities.
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ is the six-syllabled Sanskrit mantra particularly associated with the four-armed Shadakshari form of Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion. It first appeared in the Mahayana Kāraṇḍavyūhasūtra, where it is also referred to as the sadaksara and the paramahrdaya, or “innermost heart” of Avalokiteshvara. In this text, the mantra is seen as the condensed form of all Buddhist teachings.
The Rañjanā script (Lantsa) is an abugida writing system which developed in the 11th century and until the mid-20th century was used in an area from Nepal to Tibet by the Newar people, the historic inhabitants of the Kathmandu Valley, to write Sanskrit and Newar. Nowadays it is also used in Buddhist monasteries in India; China, especially in the Tibetan Buddhist areas within the Tibet Autonomous Region, Sichuan, Yunnan, Qinghai and Gansu; Mongolia, and Japan. It is normally written from left to right but the Kutakshar form is written from top to bottom. It is also considered to be the standard Nepali calligraphic script.
A Tibetan prayer flag is a colorful rectangular cloth, often found strung along trails and peaks high in the Himalayas. They are used to bless the surrounding countryside and for other purposes.
Vajrasattva is a bodhisattva in the Mahayana, Mantrayana/Vajrayana Buddhist traditions. In Chinese Buddhism and the Japanese Shingon tradition, Vajrasattva is the esoteric aspect of the bodhisattva Samantabhadra and is commonly associated with the student practitioner who through the master's teachings, attains an ever-enriching subtle and rarefied grounding in their esoteric practice. In Tibetan Buddhism, Vajrasattva is associated with the sambhogakāya and purification practice.
Cintāmaṇi, also spelled as Chintamani, is a wish-fulfilling jewel within both Hindu and Buddhist traditions, said by some to be the equivalent of the philosopher's stone in Western alchemy. It is one of several Mani Jewel images found in Buddhist scripture.
Tsozong Gongba Monastery is a small Tibetan Buddhism monastery in eastern Tibet. The monastery, founded in 1400, practices the Nyingma tradition. Tsozong Gongba is located on Tashi Island in the middle of Pagsum Lake in the Nyenchen Tanglha Mountains, part of Gongbo'gyamda County in Nyingchi Prefecture, Tibet Autonomous Region. Tsozong Gongba means "castle in the lake" in Tibetan. The monastery has four buildings situated around a small yard.
Khorzhak Monastery is a Buddhist monastery in Khorzhak town, Burang county, Ngari Prefecture in western Tibet. It is located not far to the southeast of Burang and just northeast of the Indian border. The town and temple are known as Kojanath in Hindi. The village is situated on a beautiful spot at a bend of the Karnali River from where one can see the large red wall of the temple facing the river with a huge inscription on it of the six-syllable mantra, "Om Mani Padme Hum".
The Kāraṇḍavyūha Sūtra is a Mantrayāna sūtra which extols the virtues and powers of Avalokiteśvara, who is presented here as a primordial cosmic overlord and as the source of numerous Indian deities.
Tashiding Monastery is a Buddhist monastery of the Nyingma sect of Tibetan Buddhism in Western Sikkim, northeastern India, which is the most sacred and holiest monasteries in Sikkim. It is described as the "Heart of Sikkim/Denzong", citing to its importance of religious sacredness. It is located on top of the hill rising between the Rathong chu and the Rangeet River, 40 kilometres (25 mi) from Gyalshing and 19 kilometres (12 mi) to the south east of Yuksam. The annual festival of Bumchu, meaning ~Holy water~ takes place on the 14th and 15th of the 1st month of Tibetan lunar calendar, often around the months of February and March. The festival is believed to predict the upcoming forecasts and events for Sikkim in the coming year. Undoubtedly, one of the most important and holiest festivals for all the Buddhists in Sikkim and around, it also provides for a perfect platform for all those Non-Buddhists who seek a deeper insight into Buddhism and its religious customs, beliefs and rituals. History of the Festival- Somewhere between 755 and 804 CE in Tibet under the reign of King Trisong Deutsen. It was under his rule that Guru Padmasambhava when invited to Tibet performed a holy sadhana and consecrated the land with water from his SACRED VASE, which was then later concealed as a hidden treasure in his most blessed place, the Tashiding Monastery in Sikkim. Somewhere around 17th century, the vase was again discovered by one of the reincarnations of Padmasambhava and it is since that time, this festival again resumed with all its glory and splendour in the hidden and blessed land of Sikkim/Beyul Demozong. Tashiding is the nearest town to the Tashiding Monastery (Gompa)
The Stele of Sulaiman is a Yuan dynasty stele that was erected in 1348 to commemorate the benefactors and donors to a Buddhist temple at the Mogao Caves southeast of Dunhuang in Gansu, China. The principal benefactor is named as Sulaiman, Prince of Xining. The stele, which is now held at the Dunhuang Academy, is renowned for an inscription of the Buddhist mantraOm mani padme hum in six different scripts. Another stele, commemorating the restoration of the Huangqing Temple in 1351 by Sulaiman was found at the same location as the 1348 stele.
The Yongning Temple Stele is a stele erected by the Chinese Ming dynasty in 1413 with a trilingual inscription to commemorate the founding of the Yongning Temple (永寧寺) in the Nurgan outpost, near the mouth of the Amur River, by the eunuch Yishiha. The location of the temple is the village of Tyr near Nikolayevsk-on-Amur in Russia. This stele is renowned both as the latest known example of a monumental inscription in the Jurchen script, and also for the inscription of the Buddhist mantra Om mani padme hum in four different scripts on its sides. A stele with a monolingual Chinese inscription, commemorating the repair of the temple by Yishiha, was erected in 1433. Both monuments are now held at the Arsenyev Museum in Vladivostok.
The Cloud Platform at Juyongguan is a mid-14th-century architectural feature situated in the Guangou Valley at the Juyongguan Pass of the Great Wall of China, in the Changping District of Beijing Municipality, about 60 kilometres (37 mi) northwest of central Beijing. Although the structure looks like a gateway, it was originally the base for three white dagobas or stupas, with a passage through it, a type of structure known as a "crossing street tower". The platform is renowned for its Buddhist carvings and for its Buddhist inscriptions in six languages. The Cloud Platform was the 98th site included in the first batch of 180 Major Historical and Cultural Sites Protected at the National Level as designated by the State Council of China in April 1961.
The Pratītyasamutpāda-gāthā, also referred to as the Pratītyasamutpāda-dhāraṇī or ye dharmā hetu, is a verse (gāthā) and a dhāraṇī widely used by Buddhists in ancient times which was held to have the function of a mantra or sacred spell. It was often found carved on chaityas, stupas, images, or placed within chaityas.
The Tangut dharani pillars are two stone dharani pillars, with the text of a dhāraṇī-sutra inscribed on them in the Tangut script, which were found in Baoding, Hebei, China in 1962. The dharani pillars were erected during the middle of the Ming dynasty, in 1502, and they are the latest known examples of the use of the Tangut script. They are also very rare examples of Tangut monumental inscriptions outside of the territories ruled by the Western Xia dynasty. The only other known example of an inscription in the Tangut script that has been found in north China is on the 14th-century Cloud Platform at Juyongguan in Beijing. These pillars indicate that there was a vibrant Tangut community living in Baoding, far from the Tangut homeland in modern Ningxia and Gansu, during the early 16th century, nearly 300 years after the Western Xia was conquered by the Mongol Empire.
The Ta'er Temple is the modern name of a ruined Buddhist temple outside of the walls of Suoyang City in Guazhou County, Gansu, China. It has been tentatively identified with the King Ashoka Temple recorded in historical documents, which was first built in the Northern Zhou dynasty (557–581) at the latest. The extant ruins, including the main adobe pagoda and eleven smaller ones, mostly date to the Western Xia dynasty (1038–1227).
Petroglyphs of Tamgaly Tas – "open-air temple" with rock paintings of Tibetan iconography and inscriptions dated to the second half of the 17th century. Cave paintings were created by the Oirat and Tibetan masters with the active participation of Galdan-Huntaydzhi. In 1677, Galdan created the first "iconostasis" of the figure of Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara-Shadakshari in the image of a deity with four hands, sitting in a diamond pose on a Lotus throne. In the next 5 years, he and his assistants supplemented the images and Tibetan mantras of the Tamgaly-Tas rock. The Dzungarian ruler Galdan-Boshohtu Khan was a fanatically religious man with a deep knowledge of Buddhist symbolism, Tibetan painting and its techniques, and Tibetan iconographic canons. This is confirmed by the image of Avalokiteshvara-Shadakshari in the form of a one-faced deity with four hands, who was the patron of the lords of Tibet. After the expulsion of the Dzungarian khanate from the Kazakh lands, the former temple received a new name from the Kazakhs – Tamga or Tamgaly-Tas (Tamgaly-Tash).
The Eyes of Buddha is a symbol used in Buddhist art. The symbol depicts two half-closed eyes, a style sometimes referred to as the Adamantine View. In between and slightly above the eyes is a circle or spiral which represents the urna, one of the thirty-two characteristics of a great man in Buddhism. Directly below the urna is a curly symbol stylized as १, which represents the number one in Devanagari numerals. The curly symbol, which represents either a nose or a divine fire emanating from the urna above, symbolizes unity.
