Vajrayogini Practice Support

Double Tetrahedron

What is the 'Tetrahedral Reality Source'?

The double tetrahedron, often referred as (double) dharmakara, also dharmodaya
or chö-jung (CHOS 'BYUNG) is central to the Vajrayogini practice. I refer to the respective sadhanas and commentaries.

Here is a short overview:

Visualization:

E-E (Lantsa)

In the visualization the dharmakara comes from two letters E (in Lantsa - an old Indo-Tibetan script) which somewhat resemble a triangle. The first letter is written as usual and faces forward the second E stands above the first and faces to the back. The two letters are standing vertically one above the other.

Double Tetrahedron w/ Mantra

From a transformation of the two E letters are two red dharmakaras, three-sided, joined; each E letter produces a tetrahedron with the points facing down and the broad flat side up. The two tetrahedrons are merged to produce one object with the point down and the flat top appearing like a star with six points as seen from above. The outside is usually described as white (with a red tinge) and the inside red.

Meaning:

The dharmakara represents the source of nature or reality, phenomena source, the source of all things. The three sides represent the Three Doors to Liberation (wishlessness, signlessness and emptiness itself). Wishlessness is not anticipating the future; signlessness is not grasping at whatever appears in the present and emptiness is not grasping after the past. The dharmakara also takes the place of the Celestial Palace as found in other practices.

Comments (4)

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written by a guest, July 23, 2007

While contemplating upon the "odd" passage in the Vajrayogini sadhana where the two syllables "E" turn into the Dharmodaya (which takes a lot of fantasy to imagine), it came to me that the two letters being referred to are actually BRAHMI letters. This is easy to see for oneself (e.g. here: http://acharya.iitm.ac.in/lang_scripts/brahmi.gif). The Brahmi "E" is triangular in shape, so pairing two of them together makes a perfect Dharmodaya.
Though being the origin for devanagari, Tibetan and most of the other Indic alphabets, Brahmi itself went out of use early, but it seems that the lineage tradition kept the memory of it in the visualization.
As not all practitioners are interested in ancient scripts I thought this information could be at least interesting, and maybe useful.
Perhaps it would be worth it to "transliterate" more of the visualizations back to Brahmi? Seemingly this do sometimes have real visual meaning.
When studying Brahmi letter charts one should keep in mind that there were many different varieties, and that e.g. the "V" sometimes do have an upper line.

P.S. According to theories of connections between Brahmi and Semitic scripts the Brahmi "E" corresponds to the letter that developed into Latin "O" (Arabic 'ain). D.S.

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written by a guest, June 28, 2007

Dear LTW,

There are four sides to each of the two superimposed dharma source figures. One on top, and three sides.
So the six sided figure also has two sides superimposed on top!!!
ciao, Urgyen

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written by Lisa Frost, June 28, 2007

Dear LTW,

It is a double tetrahedron. When bisected, there are two tetrahedral-four sided pyramids. In this illustration the apex is over elongated distorting your perception. It is also stereo metric, as all elemental metal geometries are derived variations from the five planar solid geometries of Pythagoras/Euclid which all possess the tetrahedron as a base unit. And Sakya Trizin, also calls the double dharmakara figure Tetrahedral.
All the best, Urgyen

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written by Lama thubwang mo, April 30, 2007

Dear vajrayogini.com What a lovely drawing of the dharma kara,
When translating between Tibetan- English and Dutch I found that there was a probleem with the word 'double tetrahedron'. Tetra means Four, and in stereometrics it is used for discribing a four-sided piramidical object However there is some unclear discription added as regards the etymologie of this word in the Oxford dictionary. But Tetrahedral refers to Tetra-four and Hedral -pyramidical. Also the Sankrit and the Tibetan word Dharmakara or Cho-jung are not of a stereometric nature and do not refer to a stereometric nature. During translating the extensive saddhana i have replaced this word for either the tibetan version, the sanskrit or a possible suitable Dutch version. I believe that in stereometrics to use the word 'double tetrahedron'here would be in correct, as we see that the dharmakara is composed from two three sided pyramidical shapes slided into each other both with the apex pointed downwards and with the basis facing upwards if we visualise the Dharmakara. If one imagen a hexagonal grid around it, this shows us a six sided figure.
Thank you for the lovely web site I will pass the site on to other vajra yogini practicioners.May many find a good teaching on this site, LTW

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