A Commentary on "Mantras for Specific Occasions"
The Power of Mantras Comes from Faith
The great translator Lotsawa Paltseg wrote a short book about how to read Sanskrit. Many Tibetan lamas follow it and pronounce mantras according to it. This book says that Sanskrit mantras should be recited very correctly, as otherwise one creates much negative karma. However, the benefits of reciting mantras are not dependent on correct pronunciation; they come from faith.
His Holiness Zong Rinpoche’s previous incarnation told a story about this during a Dharma Celebration. A monk went to see a lama and asked him for teachings. The lama, who was very busy and didn’t have much time, said to the monk, “Your nose is like rudraksha.” The monk must have had a big, rough nose like the big, rough beads of the rosaries that sadhus wear, which are made from rudraksha seeds. The monk, who didn’t understand what the lama said, thought that he had received a mantra and faithfully recited every day, “Your nose is like rudraksha. Your nose is like rudraksha.” Eventually he became able to heal many people by reciting this “mantra.”
Some years later when the lama had an infection in his throat, his attendant told him that there was a famous healer in the area, one who had helped many people, and the lama agreed to see him. When the monk came to see the lama, he recited, “Your nose is like rudraksha.” Remembering what he had said in the past, the lama laughed so much that the infection burst and the pus came out, due to which he got better.
That the monk became a famous healer by reciting, “Your nose is like rudraksha,” shows that his power to heal people mainly depended on his faith. It came from believing he had received a mantra from the lama, even though the lama had just said that to him as a joke.
There is a similar story about a woman who used to recite OṂ BALE BULE BUNDE SOHA to cook and eat stones. One day her son, a novice monk with thirty-six vows, overheard his mother reciting the mantra and told her that the correct way to pronounce it was OṂ TSALE TSULE TSUNDE SVĀHĀ. However, when his mother recited the mantra correctly she could no longer cook stones, but she could do that when she again recited OṂ BALE BULE BUNDE SOHA. This story also shows that the power of mantra recitation mainly depends on faith, not on the mantra being recited correctly.
Of course, if you don’t study how to recite mantras in Sanskrit, you won’t know how to pronounce them correctly. Instead many words will come out deformed, like someone without a nose, arms, legs, or head. There are many details that need to be learned in order for the pronunciation to be correct. Because it wasn’t very common in Tibet to learn Sanskrit, most Tibetans read mantras in the same way that they would read normal Tibetan letters. However, as I already mentioned, the benefits of reciting mantras don’t depend on reciting them correctly; they depend on faith. If there is no faith, there won’t be much result, although, of course, reciting mantras leaves a positive imprint on the mind that will in the future cause one to learn Dharma, actualize the path, cease the gross and subtle defilements, and achieve full enlightenment. This is because all mantras have the long-term effect of bringing one to enlightenment.