Tonight, Bill Porter, who publishes under the name Red Pine, visited the Zen Center and participated in a discussion after our evening service. Bill is a poet, scholar and translator, and has published excellent translations of, among other scriptures, The Diamond Sutra and The Heart Sutra.

Bill explained his approach to translation as being like a dance. Instead of taking the original text literally, be it a Buddhist scripture or a contemporary commentary, Bill instead discern it's meaning and the way it conveys the meaning, and then tries to use the English language to move in rhythm to the original text and convey the same meaning, without worrying too much about an exact word-for-word transcription. "If you put both feet down on a dancer, it hurts the dancer and ends the dance," Bill explained. It's better to be graceful and open, and read the movement of the original text and then accompany that dance as best as one's language skills allow.

The key to this approach is meditation, Bill said. When one translates with only a scholarly approach, the result is dry and academic - the words are correct, but the truth is not in the words. But instead Bill will read the words in Chinese, meditate with the passage, and then express its essence in English.

As Bob Myers, another Buddhist translator commented in this blog, "My translation may seem a bit 'loose,' not sticking very closely to the original. But the very concept of 'sticking closely to' anything written 750 years ago in a vastly different culture seems questionable to begin with."

The tragedy of Christianity, in my opinion, is that it adopted a position that its scripture was "sacred" and must be read literally, often resulting in discrepancies as society and science advance over the years (the conflict between creationism and evolution being just one example). The Buddha, however, encouraged his followers not to rely on his words, "nothing I've ever said is true," for all words are products of the thinking mind, and true wisdom arises from the non-thinking mind.

Bill also reported that Buddhism, especially Chan (Chinese Zen), is currently undergoing a renaissance in China. Many of the student radicals became disillusioned by politics following the tragedy in Tiannimen Square, and have taken up Buddhist study. Temples and meditation centers are springing up all over China, Bill said, and populated by very young practioners. It's not uncommon to see monks in their 20s being led by abbotts in their 30s. This rediscovery of Buddhism is partly fueled by Chinese patriotism, since Chan is a Chinese product, and is not only not being repressed by the government, but actively supported (Taoist movements, like Falun Gong for example, are being harassed and very closely watched however, as the Chinese leaders are aware that every revolutionary movement in the history of China has had Taoist leaders).

Bill's next project, to be published in March 2006, will be a translation and commentary on The Platform Sutra of Hui Neng. He has also been working for several years on a much interrupted translation of the Lankavatara Sutra. Please consider buying and reading his books, both for your practice and to support his.