Baishui Zen

In this post we’re continuing to read Outline of Practice. We’ll follow the same format as before, discussing the difference between Red Pine’s translation of the text and my own amateur one, from the original Chinese included. Stuff in my translation that is arguably missing from Red Pine is in blue. Stuff that Red Pine writes that disagrees with my translation is in red. Nothing is meant by the color coding, it’s just selected to stand out.

First we have

The Text

報冤行。謂修道行人若受苦時。當自念言。我往昔無數劫中棄本從末流浪諸有。多起冤憎違害無限。今雖無犯。是我宿殃惡業果熟。非天非人所能見與。甘心甘受都無冤訴。經云。逢苦不憂。何以故。識達故。此心生時與。理相應。體冤進道。故說言報冤行。

My translation:

The practice of karmic injustice: When practitioners of the way encounter periods of hardship, they should reflect to themselves (as follows). For innumerable eons, I have abandoned the root for the leaves, drifting aimlessly through all manners of existence, committing wrong-doings, and spreading hatred and malice without limit. Now, though there are no (further) offenses, my previous misdeeds and evil works bear fruit. Neither heaven nor man may see when it will come back to us. A willing heart willingly accepts all without complaint of injustice. The sutras say: “When you suffer, do not be anxious, because it is reasonable (to suffer).” Recognizing and understanding why, when this mind arises, it is in alignment with reason. The embodiment of these injustices advances one on the path. This is what is called, “karmic injustice.”

I remark that the things I’ve put in parentheses are not present in the literal Chinese, I have added them for what is hopefully additional clarity.

Now we have Red Pine’s translation.

First, suffering injustice. When those who search for the path encounter adversity, they should think to themselves, “In countless ages gone by, I’ve turned from the essential to the trivial, and wandered through all manner of existence, often angry without cause, and guilty of numberless transgressions. Now, though I do no wrong, I’m punished by my past. Neither gods nor men can foresee when an evil deed will bear its fruit. I accept it with an open heart and without complaint of injustice.” The sutras say, “When you meet with adversity, don’t be upset, because it makes sense.” With such understanding you’re in harmony with reasons. And by suffering injustice, you enter the path.

Analysis

We’re going through the four practices that Bodhidharma listed in the first paragraph one by one, basically a high school essay. We recall that “karmic injustice” is an idiosyncratic translation of the hanzi 報冤, the first of which means literally “to repay in kind,” and is a common symbol for karma, and the latter means “grievance” or “injustice” and the like. Red Pine interprets it as “suffering,” presumably not in the sense of feeling the suffering and wallowing in it, but in the sense of experiencing the injustice and going through it. This is the same sentiment, to my eye. I’ve chosen this translation because I want to make it clear that the express purpose is to “burn off” bad karma by willingly accepting it, and make contrast from the view that just having things be bad in life and full of suffering is somehow entering the path. It’s not about experiencing bad things, it’s how you experience those things and make them into part of your practice.

In the next sentence, the hanzi 念 is quite interesting. It can have many meanings, all centered on contemplation. For example, it can be to study, to read, to think, to recall or remind one’s self, to say aloud, and so on. Soothill and Hodous give another definition for Buddhist contexts: A kṣaṇa, or thought; a concentration of mind (both the short duration of time and the content of the thought), as well as 念 smrti-saṃbodhyaṇga, power of remembering the various states passed through in contemplation; remembrance, or unforgetfulness. I think this is insightful, because these are not mere states of remembrance, they are mindfulness meditations. On the other hand, I think the interpretation of out loud repetition is wrong. The following phrasing does not really seem to fit as any sort of repetition. It’s long and bulky, and doesn’t really fit into any pattern of stress, tone or rhyme that I can find. On the other hand, there’s a reasonable connotation of repetition in the idea of meditation itself. If you dwell on something repeatedly, your mind naturally picks up habits around it, and this “habit-energy” stays with us regardless.

Let’s talk about this saying itself, mantra or not. First, passing contact with Buddhism tells us that “eons” should really be “kalpas,” in the relevant Sanskrit. These are the innumerably long periods of time that span the existences of worlds. Bodhidharma is referring to our endless stream of past lives, spanning all sorts of existences. Then he says 棄本從末, which I really like. I’ve left it literal, while Red Pine has explained what it means. They are literally the hanzi for “abandon root follow leaf,” and it’s essentially the same metaphor as “to miss the forest for the trees,” but the English metaphor is up one level of abstraction – missing the big picture important stuff for the individual minutia. Here we’re talking about forsaking something essential, the root and lifeblood of the tree, for something individually insignificant. I enjoyed this phrase, and I also enjoy these tree-related hanzi (you can readily see what’s going on – it’s a tree with a marker to point you to the root, or to the leaves, respectively), so I could not bring myself to translate it any other way.

We also have here another water/mind related hanzi: 流. It means to drift. And as always, we’re not literally adrift in samsara, samsara is not an ocean, it’s a state of being. we are adrift in our minds, deluded by ignorance, and unable to grasp the way. We can compare this with the word for “flow” which is inherently directed towards something. This is simply 流動, drift + move, but the sense of the movement in 動 is not accidental, it’s active, not passive. So when unable to focus our minds towards the elimination of ignorance, our mindstream is scattered and unfocused, and we are therefore adrift in samsara.

This next phase is very simplified in Red Pine, and I think this is because it’s kind of hard to translate. 起 means to rise, stand up, or otherwise begin, and 違 means to violate or defy. The last part 無限 is clearly “without limit” or “limitlessly,” so there’s a clear sense of unchecked and rampant hatred/malice/poor behavior. Red Pine calls this “without reason,” the idea being that this unchecked behavior is like being a loose cannon. That’s fair enough, far be it from me to ascribe too much of a specific motivation to my past life. I’ve tried to stick as close to the text as I can, but I recognize that I’m not too happy with my own translation here.

On much of what remains of this paragraph, Red Pine and I largely agree with the sentiment of the translation. One thing that strikes me as odd is the choice of translation for 非天非人. These are hanzi are all very basic to my understanding. The first one 非 means “neither/nor/not” etc, and the other two are “heaven” and “man” respectively. It’s surprising to me that Red Pine translates 天 as “gods.” This is a valid translation, in the sense that ‘tian’ can mean ‘god’, but it’s odd because it’s such a common Chinese phrase to anthropomorphize the heavens, e.g. the mandate of heaven, sayings like “heaven rewards good deeds with virtue,” 為善者天報以德, etc. Certainly by the time of Bodhidharma, these sayings would be common, as Confucius had popularized the idea of heaven as a guiding force in the world some 1000 years earlier, and other forms of Chinese thought had long been interacting with those ideas too. On top of that, Buddhism doesn’t really have gods, as we saw just this week in our Approaching the Path series, Mahayana Buddhism may have an expanded cosmology, recognizing Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of many realms, but it doesn’t really have “gods.”

There are some other minor changes in the end of this passage too. For example, it is common to refer to a state of mind or a feeling as simply a “mind,” as I have done above. You also see throughout the sutras, explanations that fit this same kind of template. “Why do we say X? An explanation of what X means. Thus we say/this is what is called, X.” Obviously the exact translation from the Sanskrit depends on the translator, but as a matter of style, the translation as I have presented it largely fits within my knowledge of the way that Mahayana writers presented their ideas. Red Pine has summarized this in a completely different way to cap things off.

Concluding Remarks

All of this adds up, for me, to a version of the translation (so far) which seeks to remove many of the stylistic features of Buddhist writing, and in their place, try to express the same sentiments for readers unfamiliar with the tradition in a way which is more accessible. There’s definitely a sense in which these are improvements, so I don’t mean this as a criticism necessarily. The above format of “thus we say X” is very repetitive in the sutras, so streamlining the text is a welcome improvement. On the other hand, I can’t help but wonder if some of the poeticism of the writing is lost. We can never say for sure if sayings like “abandon the root for the trees” are intended to be poetic – maybe this is just how people spoke at this time, classical and middle Chinese are almost entirely reconstructions – but to my ear, they have a certain charm to them, which I feel inclined to preserve. I’m interested to see if this trend continues in the rest of these writings.

-白水

P.S.

Nirvana Sutra summaries resuming this week while we go back to drilling Chinese characters. With some time off for the holidays, I hope to make significant progress with these translation posts.