Five Colour Hum

The main character hūṃ is coloured in relation to the five Buddha families. This particular system is in accordance to the teachings of Chogyam Trungpa on hūṃ.

1. bindu head ‘m’, red in colour, Buddha of all accomplishing wisdom.
2. crescent moon, green in colour, Buddha of all encompassing wisdom.
3. ‘ha’ body, white in colour, Buddha of mirror-like wisdom.
4. small ‘a’, yellow in colour, wisdom Buddha of equality.
5. ‘u’ vowel, blue in colour, Buddha of discriminating wisdom*

The surrounding petsug calligraphy is gilded in Dutch gold leaf, these verses are from another manuscript on the hūṃ syllable called:

‘The prayer for the realisation of hūṃ’.

This reads:

‘Although the enlightened awareness of all the Buddhas of the three times without exception is innately pure, spontaneously established, and beyond description, imagination or expression, the unimpeded union of luminosity and utter lucidity within the Hum, within the self-radiance of the five poisons, uninterrupted pristine cognisance.
Through the power of training in the stages of Creation and completion, the immersion into basic unity, may the four Kayas be ripened within the five primordial wisdoms, and thus may the Vajra of enlightened mind be accomplished in this lifetime!’

Applying a heavy black ink background with the syllable hūṃ first created in a resist.

Adding colours to each respective element of the syllable hūṃ

*Extracted from Chogyam Trungpa’s collected works: Approach to Mantra, Vol 5