Cautionary tale for rank beginner Likhita Japa writers (like me) out there. Don't daydream listening to whatever music you have playing whilst holding the loaded Rapidograph pen, tip pointing down. Don't, without doing a few test strokes on a piece of scrap paper, put nib to paper after you've drifted off for a time othewise you end up with a blob OM. No Good.
Following is the musical culprit. Happened around the 5:00 minute mark.
Vedic / English OM's
Rapidograph .5, .3, .25
..is the vibration of the universe..
Original done with .30 Rapidograph in .25” grids.
Processed with PSE 8.0
From Buddhism Today:
Anicca. The law of impermanence asserts that all phenomena are subject to constant change, to rise and fall, and no permanent states, either physical or animate, exists. The dynamic nature of phenomena is today a commonplace of science. But until quite recently many physical features of the universe were considered immutable, and in the human plane the belief in enduring states or characteristics is still an article of faith in many religious systems. The law of anicca establishes impermanence as the basic universal law.
And what of Anicca itself? Will it eventually run out of steam? Is impermanence – impermanent?
Boods – help me out on this one.
Sanskrit, Vedic, English OM's
Rapidograph .30 pen
(tomorrow I figure out how to clean the pen.. too late now)
I finally got off my butt today and purchased a few more required tools for Likhita Japa practice. The Rapidograph pens that I got a few weeks ago (still untouched..) need to be cleaned out pretty carefully after use otherwise the very delicate nibs will clog with dried ink. I also needed a compass, a desk liner so that the pointy end of the compass doesn't destroy my wood desk, a drafting eraser and a couple other do-dads. Pretty scary – I'm officially out of excuses now for why I haven't broken out the Rapidograph pens and laid out a more involved mandala.. (Yikes!)
I tried out the compass a bit this afternoon and did some concentric rings (above) with Vedic, English, and Sanskrit OM's. The eraser did a good job of getting rid of the guide lines.
I have to do a lot lot lot lot more of this. I have to get to the point where I'm not so tense about making the characters correctly. Unless I get past that tension – my characters will continue to have that “seismographic” quality to them. This has to be come ordinary, I think. And the only way it will become ordinary is to do ton's more… I must say one thing though – despite the attendant nerves, this is quite a bit of fun to do.. even practicing the characters in the Moleskine notebook is fun… perhaps it's because it's so new to me – who knows.
On a separate, but related note – in an effort to not be a complete dilettante with this stuff, I am trying to learn more about Hinduism. I'm re-reading the Bhagavad Gita (translated by Stephen Mitchell). I also got a copy of The Upanishads (translated by Eknath Easwaran) and am reading that now as well – currently on the Katha Upanishad.
Hoping for more of an overview of this vast tradition, I just downloaded “Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction” to the Kindle. If any readers have other book suggestions about the Hindu tradition, I would be most appreciative.
Many will recognize the post title as the punchline to the joke “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” Obviously Likhita Japa won't likely be a spectator event, but for me the “Carnegie Hall” moment will be when I can write and arrange these symbols with the ease and grace evident in others' works. For now, it's practice, practice, practice. Trace, trace, trace, freehand, freehand, freehand. Rinse and repeat. To provide myself with more variety in practice sheets, I've combined the Vedic and Sanskrit OM's into a single grid, so I can switch between characters when I do tracing practice in my japa journal. I've included the new sheets below as PDF files for those interested.
File Attachment: SANSKRIT AND VEDIC OM JAPA PRACTICE TRACING SQUARES.pdf (103 KB)
…where these words come from and where they go…
I'm feeling pretty comfortable with the Vedic OM character now and thought it would be good to start practicing the Sanskrit OM as well. As with the beginning Vedic OM practice, I made a couple of aids, a copying sheet with light grey OM's on it that I can write over with my black Sharpie (above), and a tracing sheet that I can place in back of the thin pages of the Moleskine notebook that I am using as a Japa Journal.
I made these sheets the same way I made the prior ones. I started with JQ's excellent Youtube video on the Sanskrit OM. I did a screen capture on the OM and placed it in a grid in an MSWord document. I'm posting both PDF and MSWord format files below. If they can be of help to other beginner Mantra Writers out on the interweb – please download them.
It's interesting to “watch” myself doing this practice. Oftentimes when I start, I am so nervous and self-conscious about making nice characters that my hand shakes and the characters come out all awkward and crabbed. Usually – about halfway down a page I tend to relax a bit and the lines get less jittery..
One thing about this practice that just blows my mind is the thought that when an intricate Likhita Japa like this one or this one is drawn, one false move, one stray pen mark – and you're done. All done.
Mind-bending..
Here are the files:
Copying Sheets:
File Attachment: Sanskrit OM JAPA PRACTICE LIGHT GRAY COPYING SQUARES LARGE FORMAT.docx (532 KB)File Attachment: Sanskrit OM JAPA PRACTICE LIGHT GRAY COPYING SQUARES LARGE FORMAT.pdf (92 KB)
Tracing Sheets:
File Attachment: SANSKRIT OM JAPA PRACTICE TRACING SQUARES.docx (747 KB)
File Attachment: SANSKRIT OM JAPA PRACTICE TRACING SQUARES.pdf (103 KB)
My sincere thanks to JQ for lending your kind support, great information on Likhita Japa,
and for sharing your beautiful work with everyone.
To Mr Ligon whose stunning work is now in the Whitney Museum of American Art.
My favorite pieces were his panels with
repeated phrases
repeated phrases
repeated phrases
repeated phrases
on them
that
fade
to black
at
the bottom
of the
piece
(image from the Glenn Ligon entry in Wikipedia)
I don't know if today's experiment qualifies as true Likhita Japa. I started with a large Vedic OM, a bit bigger than the one above, drawn in pencil and then “inked” with a Sharpie black fine point. The image was scanned and filtered a bit in PSE 8.0. This became the atomic element for future configurations.
The next iteration was a “Orb molecule” built out of the Vedic OM atom created above.
This was done in PSE 8.0
Then, a lattice of molecules was constructed from single Orb molecules.
Finally, the original atomic element was overlaid on the lattice, bold black over a field of reflections,
like a tiny piece of Lord Indra's Net..
The reason I said that I don't know if this is really and truly Likhita Japa is that except for the initial element which was drawn, the rest of the images were built “with help.” I think for the images to be legit LJ – I'd have to do them all freehand.. (which – I don't think I'm ready for yet…) This exercise though (whatever it was) allowed me to make a large by-hand OM, play a little bit with patterns, and build a multi-step image… It gave me more ideas for more elaborate layouts….
Tomorrow – it's back to the LJ practice journal.. and one of these days, maybe even soon – I'll work up the courage to open and use my new Rapidgograph pens!
Done on graph paper with Micron .20 and .35 pens. Brought into Photoshop Elements. Took steps to minimize the grid lines, which partially took away some of the lighter pen lines (unfortunately). Cloned circular element, reduced its size, and placed them at the corners. This would have worked better if I'd laid out a pencil grid on plain paper, erased it when done, and scanned the image instead of photographing it.
Lastly – after several weeks of doing this I've come to the conclusion that I need stronger reading glasses..
The tracing sheets I made a few days ago have served their purpose. I'm comfortable enough with the OM to do it freehand. Now I just just use the empty grid behind the blank page to keep things neat. Speaking of neat, I've tried taking a page out of JQ's book and have cleaned up my work area. Never has my desk looked so orderly in all the years I've had it. I even wash my hands before sitting down. Imagine.
Sister Antoinette no longer troubles me since the tracing sheets are a thing of the past. Go with God Sister. Go with God.
JQ chants while doing Likhita Japa. I am not at that point yet. First of all I need all my concentration just to make the shapes correctly. Even so, my OM's have nowhere near the ease and grace of JQ's (maybe they never will…). Secondly I don't really know any Hindu chants. The closest I've come to any sort of accompaniment while doing this is playing an iTunes selection of OM chanting….
Those tracing sheets? Even though I won't be using them, they were put to most excellent use this past Sunday. JQ used them at a Balavihar (I believe this is Hindu “Sunday School”) Kindergarten class. I can't tell you how pumped I was to learn of this. JQ also posted them on two other sites that are both concerned with arts and crafts for the Balavihar classroom.
Very very cool.
When I learned to make Korean (Hangul) characters, I don't think I spent very much time at all (if any) tracing them. Spending time tracing these Vedic OM's has allowed ghosts to visit me as I do it. Ghostly memories is probably more to the point.
The only time I can remember tracing characters was St Patrick's in Lynn. Penmanship was a huge deal in Catholic school. Back then, there was a whole posture one had to assume when writing cursive. One had to hold the pen so loosely that it could be taken from your hand easily by the good Sister as she patrolled the classroom. Holding the pen too tight would get you yelled at “Not so tight Goodwin!” Repeated offenses would get you hit on the hand with a wooden yardstick. Yelling and hitting children to get them to relax their hands always puzzled me… still does.
The ghostly memory that visits me most often as I do these tracing sheets is Sister Antoinette. She taught me in 3rd grade. She loved hitting and yelling at and shoving children. As I do these sheets I can hear her say to me “Sit up Goodwin! Look at that paper – it's a mess. What did I tell you? Hold the pen LOOSER and write with your whole arm not just your hand and wrist!”
I think I have the basic hang of the shape and stroke order for this character now. I think that I'll probably dispense with the whole tracing path and freehand it from now on. Then maybe Sister Antoinette can busy herself with someone else…
In the First Grade post I mentioned that when I was a wee lad in St Patrick's in Lynn, the good Sisters would give us “letter papers” to trace and copy in order to learn how to make printed and cursive letters. I made my own with a screen shot of the final frame of JQ's Vedic OM tutorial, and MS Word.
I created two types of sheets, one that can be placed underneath some thin paper so that you can trace the OM's and one, larger format where you just write right over the light grey OM's. The files are attached to this post, just below these pictures. The files, saved in MS Word compatibility mode should be able to be opened by many versions of Word as well as Open Office.
Feel free to download and modify to suit your individual needs.
(Thanks to JQ for the idea about making them!)
File Attachment: JAPA PRACTICE LIGHT GRAY COPYING SQUARES LARGE FORMAT.doc (470 KB)
File Attachment: JAPA PRACTICE TRACING SQUARES.doc (1007 KB)
Practicing this relatively simple character (is it a character? is it a pictogram? I have to find out.) reminds me of when I first started learning how to render Korean (Hangul) characters. I spent hours painstakingly practicing the characters, writing them over and over and over again in my homework journal. I would take my journals to Gahk So Sunim who was trying his best to teach me something about the language. In the beginning, he would look at my meager efforts and suck in his breath through his front teeth. “Very bad student!” he would playfully tell me, “Maybe first or second grade!” Then he would burst out laughing. After some months went by, he assessed my penmanship as “Middle school maybe..”
It takes me forever to do a few pages of Om's. Plus, as you can see, they all run uphill and get smaller as I go across the page. I think it's because my hand got tighter and tighter as it headed for the end of the line and just wanted to get things over with. Also – I've yet to make even one Om that is close to the graceful one shown in the youtube video.
I have learned a bit about the two types of pens I've been using for this practicing.. I don't particularly like either one of them. The extra fine point Sharpie seems not fine enough and bleeds into the Moleskine paper if I give it half a chance. The Uni-Ball Vision fine point skips a lot, especially at the beginning of a stroke. This, as you can imagine is aggravating because you have to go back and patch things up. Things don't look the same when they're patched. JQ uses Rapidograph pens. Maybe at some point, I'll get off my butt and get a set.
I fixed the the characters running uphill in all different sizes by making a thick grid of 1/2” squares that I just slip behind the Moleskine page. The faint bounding box visible through the thin journal paper made it immediately easier to render the Om. I didn't have to worry about size or positioning etc. I'm pretty sure we used paper with square boxes on it when we were learning our cursive penmanship at St Patrick's in Lynn.
One thing I know we used at St Patricks was a tracing sheet. In first and second grade when we were learning our printed and cursive letters, we had special worksheets that had the characters in faint dotted lines. Our job was to trace the characters – I guess to build up muscle memory about how the characters were supposed to look. Even in some of my early Korean workbooks, there were tracing pages. I've poked around using the Google and cannot find a anything like that for Vedic Om's.
Try not.
Do or do not.
There is no try.
~ Yoda ~
I decided to begin making Vedic Om's today. I really like the character. When I first saw it, I was reminded of a person sitting in meditation. In fact – I thought I was looking at lots and lots of tiny meditators the first time I saw JQ's mandalas. I'll have to try and find out if there's any symbolism behind the character..
I have an empty Moleskine notebook that I'll be using for practice. Boy – it's a humbling experience. I did about two small pages of them and my hand was all crampy. I am so tentative at making the characters they come out kind of lumpy, tilty, and clumsy. I'm so concerned with making the Om correctly with the correct stroke sequence, that the result is much less than graceful. Also, I think it might help if I did them in some sort of grid so I could practice making them all the same size… On an unlined page, they tended to get smaller and run uphill as I made more of them.
Thanks to JQ for the youtube tutorials.
