Nun of Your Business

In a recent class, we were learning the Vajrasattva mantra. During the break, somebody asked how the Sanskrit word vajra  becomes benza  in Tibetan pronunciation. I typed these notes on the screen. Notes about Vajra > Benza Vajra in Tibetan script, i.e., Badzra. Va jra – V is not really V. It’s usually a W or a B. Nepalese and Tibetan people understand it to be a B in this context. Ba jra – J is not really J. In the Tibetan alphabet there is a Ch row and a Ts row of consonants. This Sanskrit J is spelled with the Tibetan letter that we write (in Roman letters) as DZ (which is in the TS row – TS TSH DZ NY). Ba dzra – so, badzra is a completely legitimate spelling

I have uploaded onto Archive.org a recording of some of the mantras that Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche has advised us to do in the morning. These are traditional practices in our lineage, that is, the tradition of Lama Tsongkhapa, Mahayana Buddhism, Vajrayana Buddhism. These mantras can be found in the beginning of the FPMT prayer book, Essential Buddhist Prayers, Volume 1 . I asked a well-educated Indian friend to pronounce these mantras for me, since mantras are preserved in the classical language of India, Sanskrit. She in turn asked her mother to record them, saying that her mother has better pronunciation. The speaker in these recordings is a woman from South India, who grew up in the State of Kerala but whose family ancestry comes from Goa. She has a Masters Degree, speaks five languages, and currently lives in the United States. She is not Buddhist, so these wouldn't be mantras that she does as part of her personal practice. She was reading from a print-out of the man...