Well,
Tousled Crow's rewriting of it is perfect: the original text is indeed a very strange way of spelling
Nam(u) Myô Hô Renge Kyô
å—無妙法蓮è¯çµŒ
This is a mantra used by the Nichiren sect of Buddhism here in Japan (I have a friend, a Nichiren monk, living very close to me). They chant this mantra over and over, often accompanying themselves on
(small or big) drums.
It literally means:
Hail to
(/Homage to/Honour to) the Sutra (called) "The Lotus of the Wonderful Teaching (of Buddha)."
In Sanskrit, this mantra is:
Namo Saddharma-pundarika-sutra
Which means:
Hail to the Sutra of the Lotus of the True Teaching.
(The Nichiren Sect has their own name for this sutra, because it's so important to them.)
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I must say, however, that I think
Tousled Crow's "translation" is instead a
very loose interpretation of this mantra.
This is perhaps one
interpretation of the
meaning of the mantra
(and perhaps not the most important meaning?), but I don't think we can call this a true
translation, when there are ways to say this in English
much closer to the original meaning in Sanskrit-Japanese...
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I think we should instead put the
simple translation in the Translation field, and then perhaps put her notes about the
meaning of the source text below, in the Remarks field.
Favorite translations
This translation request is "Meaning only".
