The Devotion of Matthieu Ricard: Trailer

Here’s a trailer for the new documentary about lotsawa, photographer, humanitarian, monk, and happiest man alive, Matthieu Ricard. The film recently had its UK premiere in London, at the International Buddhist Film Festival.

Translating the Words of the Buddha: Participants and Links

I have just returned to Nepal from the Translating the Words of the Buddha conference in Bir, India. The proceedings were well documented and posted on the conference’s Facebook page and here. There was also a report in the Bhutanese media, here on Kuensel Online.

In the coming days and weeks, I will be posting some links and bits & pieces here on this site, especially those falling in the category of ‘tools and resources’, but let’s begin the process by adding the list of participants, with links to their affiliated sites and homepages:

Alexander Berzin: Berzin Archives

John Canti: Padmakara Translation Group

Ane Kunga Chodron: George Washington University / Tsechen Kunchab Ling

Joshua W.C. Cutler: Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center

Cortland J. Dahl: Rime Foundation / Tergar Institute / Dharmachakra Translation

Catherine Dalton: Rangjung Yeshe Institute / Dharmachakra Translation

Jake Dalton: University of California, Berkeley / International Dunhuang Project

Tyler Dewar: Nalandabodhi / Nitartha

Lama Doboom Tulku: Tibet House (India)

Andreas Doctor: Rangjung Yeshe Institute / Dharmachakra Translation

Gyurme Dorje

John Dunne: Emory University / Mind & Life Institute

Wulstan Fletcher: Padmakara Translation Group

Jessie Friedman: Light of Bertosana

Steven Goodman: California Institute of Integral Studies

Khenpo Kalsang Gyaltsen: Tsechen Kunchab Ling

Ani Jinba Palmo (Eugenie De Jong): Shechen Monastery / Khampagar Monastery

Gavin Kilty: Institute of Tibetan Classics

David Kittelstrom: Wisdom Publications

Anne Carolyn Klein: Rice University / Dawn Mountain

Derek Kolleeny: TBRC / Nalanda Translation Committee

Gwenola Le Serrec: Padmakara Translation Group

Jakob Leschly: Siddhartha’s Intent / Khyentse Foundation

Jules Levinson: Light of Berotsana

David Lunsford: Bodhi Foundation

John McRae: Numata Center

Larry Mermelstein: Nalanda Translation Committee / Shambhala Publications

Michele Martin: TBRC / Shambhala Publications

Elizabeth Napper: Tibetan Nuns Project

Joan Nicell: FPMT

Paldor: Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center

Ani Lodro Palmo: Yeshe Nyingpo East

Adam Pearcey: Rigpa Shedra / Lotsawa House

Matthieu Ricard: Shechen Monastery / Padmakara / Homepage

Marcia B. Schmidt: Rangjung Yeshe Publications

Peter Skilling: Fragile Palm Leaves Foundation

Gene Smith: Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center

D. Phillip Stanley: Naropa University / Nitartha Institute / Tibetan and Himalayan Library /  The Tibetan Buddhist Canonical Collections Catalog Project

Robert Thurman: Tibet House / Columbia University / American Institute of Buddhist Studies / Homepage

Martijn van Beek: University of Aarhus

Jeff Watt: Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation / Sakya Resource Guide

Christian K. Wedemeyer: University of Chicago Divinity School / Homepage

Scott Wellenbach: Nalanda Translation Committee / Nitartha Institute

Thomas Yarnall: Columbia University / American Institute of Buddhist Studies

Blessings / Inspiration

Via Pensum (aka Michael Tweed) over at Blazing Splendor, here is a link to Alexander Berzin’s  interesting and rather long article on the term byin rlabs and how to translate it.

New Tibet Center at University of Virginia

Via Rev. Danny Fisher, comes the news that the University of Virginia has formally launched their new Tibet Center, which according to the press release, “consolidates, integrates and significantly expands the University’s world-renowned Tibet-related resources and programs.” As Danny points out, the release has also  a brief history of Tibetan Studies at UVA, beginning with the mighty Jeffrey Hopkins. The Center’s new website features an rss feed, so you can keep up-to-date with all the goings-on at this thriving hub of Tibetan studies. The first guest speaker, following the  launch, was Lodi Gyari Rinpoche.

Methodology Guidelines from Padmakara Translation Group

In this season of lotsawa conferences (Light of Berotsana’s last September, Khyentse Foundation’s coming up in March), there is a lot of reflection and discussion about how lotsawas do their thing, all of it tying in quite neatly with the purpose of this site. In the spirit of this atmosphere of introspection, here is a set of guidelines laid out by the excellent Padmakara Translation Group here on their burgeoning new site:

• Starting by receiving transmission and explanation of the text from a qualified teacher
• Careful, painstaking translation of the meaning, with extensive research and study where necessary
• Submission of difficult points and doubts to competent teachers with a good knowledge of the text
• Double-checking of the draft translation by at least one other translator
• Careful editing and rewriting to produce a clear, readable style
• Final text proof-read and approved by a person who knows the subject and has a good command of the final language

This is clearly the methodology of a group of translators–and highlights the advantages of working together, as well as the central role of the teacher(s). What also comes through from reading these points is the group’s well-known emphasis on the importance of fluent, readable translations, requiring translators and editors alike to have, as they put it, “a good command of the final language.” This latter point is worth reiterating because there seems to be a common misconception these days that anyone is capable of becoming a translator, and that little or no literary training in the target language is required, as if everyone is somehow gifted with fluency in their native tongue and the automatic ability to produce lucid prose.

TBRC Has New Blog

I don’t know how this escaped our attention for a full six days, but here is a link to the new blog from the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center (TBRC) and E. Gene Smith. Get over there and add it to your feed readers this very instant. And if you are on Facebook, here is the TBRC page and here the page for Digital Dharma, the upcoming documentary that people are calling “Gene Smith: The Movie”.

Sakya Resource Guide

I have just added a link to the excellent Sakya Resource Guide blog, which is maintained by Jeff Watt. The School recommends that all its visitors subscribe to the feed. As a small sample, here is a note concerning the book mentioned in our very last post.

Outrageously Large Numbers

I have recently been reading the new translation of Mipham Rinpoche’s byang chub sems dpa’ chen po nye ba’i sras brgyad kyi rtogs brjod nor bu’i phreng ba by Lama Yeshe Gyamtso (A Garland of Jewels, Woodstock: KTD Publications, 2008). As the (Tibetan) name suggests, the text offers accounts of the lives and careers of the eight great bodhisattvas, also known as the ‘eight close sons’, compiled from canonical sources, mainly the sūtras. Not surprisingly perhaps, Mipham devotes considerably more space to Mañjuśrī than he does to the other bodhisattvas.

One of the things that struck me most about the book-which incidentally is very readable-was how the translator has dealt with the large numbers that often appear in the sūtras cited by Mipham Rinpoche. The Mahāyāna sūtras, as Yeshe Gyamtso tells us in his introduction, contain episodes “outrageous in their transgression of what we regard as laws of nature.” (p.x) One of the methods employed to convey this outrageous transcendence of mundane reality is the use of numbers so impossibly gargantuan as to border on the hyperbolical. In translating these figures into English, it is tempting to plump for vague expressions like “millions and millions” or “billions and billions” – and, in fact, this is precisely what Gyamtso does on p. 66, where he renders sangs rgyas kyi zhing bye ba khrag khrig brgya stong mang po simply as “billions and billions of buddha realms”.

Elsewhere though, he has adopted the terms of “the U.S. and…international scientific community” and so we encounter such potentially unfamiliar terms as quadrillion (10¹⁵), quintillion (10¹⁸), sextillion (10²¹), decillion (10³³), tredecillion (10⁴²), novemdecillion (10⁶⁰), and vigintillion (10⁶³). Gyamtso hasn’t given the Tibetan for these terms, and perhaps because the book is intended for a general readership, it doesn’t include a glossary of terms. Nevertheless, my curiosity getting the better of me, I went in search of the original, and I can offer here some of these numbers as they appear in the Tibetan and in Lama Gyamtso’s translation:

• sum khri three myriad*
• bye ba phrag bcu ten million
• bye ba phrag ‘bum one hundred billion
• bye ba stong phrag brgyad khri bzhi stong eighty-four trillion
• bye ba khrag khrig ‘bum phrag brgyad cu rtsa bzhi eighty-four sextillion
• bskal pa bye ba khrag khrig ‘bum phrag du ma septillions of kalpas
• grangs med pa brgya stong phrag bdun seven hundred thousand decillion
• bye ba khrag khrig phrag ‘bum ‘phrag grangs ma mchis pa ten tredecillion
• grangs med pa phrag gsum three novemdecillion
• bye ba khrag khrig ‘bum phrag dpag tu med pa grangs med pa dag vigintillions
• ‘krigs phrag bye ba khrag khrig ‘bum phrag dpag tu med grangs med bsam gyis mi khyab pa innumerable vigintillions
• grangs med pa stong phrag brgyad brgya eight hundred vigintillion
• bye ba khrag khrig ‘bum  phrag tshad med grangs med pa infinite sextillion decillion
• bye ba khrag khrig brgya stong tshad med pa sextillion novemdecillion

*the original meaning of the Greek muriori, from which myriad derives, is 10,000

It’s interesting to observe that million, rather than the standard ten million, has been used for bye ba. The Mahāvyutpatti, in its list of 60 numbers from the Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra (Tib. sdong po bkod pa), has bye ba as the equivalent of the Sanskrit koṭi, which is usually said to be the equivalent of ten million (one crore). Yet it is true that there is little unanimity or consistency on the use of these numbers beyond a certain point. sa ya, which is the common Tibetan word for ‘million’, does not seem to appear frequently in the classical language.

One final note: this approach also offers translators the possibility of referring to bskal pa grangs med gsum, i.e., the time taken by Buddha Śākyamuni to accumulate merit and wisdom on the bodhisattva path, not as ‘three countless aeons’, which is the current expression of choice, but as three novemdecillion kalpas, or even three novemdecillion aeons-let’s see if it catches on.

TBRC & ACIP Join Forces

Read the news here.

Light of Berotsana Conference – Videos Now Online

Videos of the talks by Alak Zenkar Rinpoche, Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, and Jeffrey Hopkins are now online here.