Padmasambhava
2022 Jan 29
start 2022-01-14
Stone cut and collected. Design transferred. sessions #1 & #2 - work begins.
Some background on Padmasambhava
His mantra is ‘om ah hum benza guru pema siddhi hum’.
༄༅༎ༀ༌ཨཱཿ ཧཱུྃ༌བཛྲ༌གུ༌རུ༌པདྨ༌སིདྡྷི༌ཧཱུྃ༔
session #3 2022-01-15
First time of doing one of these decorative motifs. I’ve often admired them in printed texts. Also new to me are the punctuation ’tsek’ dots between letters. Whatever the rules are about whether a letter gets a tsek or not elludes me! We’ll have a ༔ repeat mark at the end too :) I have done those ones before.
session #4 2022-01-16
The second letter ‘ah’ has the same radical as the ‘om’ before it but has a subscript vowel mark too. Not sure why it needs that as radicals have an integral ‘ah’ sound. More strange is it has two dots after it. I have asked about them and apparently it’s something to do with transcribing from Sanskrit! I used to think they were a kind of repeat mark but not so. I’ve put some time into learning the alphabet but can’t claim to read or speak Tibetan. I could get by in Ladakhi for a summer, but that was long ago now.
session #5 2026-01-17
About 2/3rds of the way through the initial pass. It looks like it will need at least 3 passes. I’m going to guess that we’ll have a count of about 25 sessions by the end.
The central bar of the ‘dzra’ ཛྲ disintegrated the moment I went near it! There are pockets of unstable powder and also lumps of much harder and whiter crystalline stuff to negotiate. I was worried that this much bigger stone would be too heavy to work with in the way I’ve learned but it’s proving just about do-able.
The ME situation is that there is usually a ‘post exertional malaise’ after activity. Today’s recovery from the session was unusually long - zonked for around 2 hours. Might have to shorten the sessions to sustain the work.
session #6 2026-01-18
session #7 2026-01-19
session #8 2026-01-20
Started the second pass which is to define the main parts of the letters, leaving the fine detail for now, and getting down to near the final depth. Making the base all the same depth and flat is nearly as hard as the letters themselves. It is very pleasing to see the characters get near their final shapes and stand out this way, especially the shadows they cast.
session #9 2026-01-21
Slowly, slowly..
session #10 2026-01-22
Nearing the half-way point.
session #11 2026-01-23
Not such a good photo at the end of the session. It was an overcast day so the natural light was low. It’s hard to see but the letters done today were ‘gu ru’ and a bit of ‘pa’.
session #12 2026-01-24
End of the second pass.
Give it its ’eyes’.
session #14 2026-01-25
Session 13 was on a ‘Chan’ symbol. Start of final pass. It’s hard to see from the photo but the stone was washed off after last session. The Bath stone goes very pale when it’s been worked on but then goes back to its honey colour after being washed. This makes it easier to make decisions on how best to complete it. The initial motif should now be in its final shape.
session #15 2026-01-26
Nearly there. Presentation cloth in red has been ordered.
session #16 2026-01-27
End of ‘dzra’ and ‘gu ru’ done today in the central section. Bad Post Exertional Malaise (pem) over the last few sessions. Can’t quit now!
session #17 2026-01-28
session #18 2026-01-29
Complete! 18kg, 75cm x 25cm x 5cm, bath stone, Guru Rimpoche/Padmasambhava mantra, 18 sessions of around an hour each. Rockin :)
A youtube putting together stills, video and music about the mantra.