Dear Marko,
there is a difference in the way many words in mantras are pronounced - according to who is pronouncing them! While the Tibetans created a standard ...
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Dear Marko,
there is a difference in the way many words in mantras are pronounced - according to who is pronouncing them! While the Tibetans created a standard transliteration for Sanskrit, many Tibetans (most Tibetans, even geshes, do not study Sanskrit) do not know that it is to be read differently from normal Tibetan and so they pronounce the words of mantras as they would normally be read in Tibetan. They have been doing this (in theory, mispronouncing mantras) for centuries and yet have they produced many realized beings, so in the end it seems more about faith than accuracy.
There is also an standard way of transcribing Sanskrit mantras using the Roman alphabet (IAST). You can find some information here. While it is standard, there is no way to know whether it corresponds to how Sanskrit was actually pronounced as this would have changed in time and from one place to another (languages are very changeable phenomena!). The advantage in having a standard form of transliteration is that it the transliteration can be used to correctly write out the mantra in the original Sanskrit.
While it is true that Lama Zopa Rinpoche is stressing the need to pronounce mantras correctly, Rinpoche believes that the IAST is not 100% correct. For example, Rinpoche says that words that are written with CA and CHA and JA in IAST should be written as they are in Tibetan, which is TSA and TSHA and DZA. So Rinpoche pronounces some words in mantras differently from how uneducated Tibetans pronounce them but also not necessarily as they are written in IAST. For example, as you point out, Tibetans say SOHA instead of SVAHA, but Rinpoche says it should be SWAHA!
So what to do? I really don't know. The whole topic is very complex and there are many different opinions. In the end think the best thing to do is to pronounce a mantra the way the teacher, whoever it is that gives us the oral transmission, says it. And then, on top of that, to have faith that the mantra has the power to help us change our deluded minds into enlightened minds. Joan
PS Please use the DB forum for questions like this as the DB elders can often answer and a question like this is not really a technical issue to do with our Online Learning Center.
