About a year ago, I began reading about Buddhism, because some of what I understand to be its foundational ideas were compelling to me.
I'm becoming frustrated by the wild heterogeneity of it all. Recently, it has seemed to me that even the state of "enlightenment" is described in different, mutually exclusive terms, by different traditions. And on top of that, for an American, Orientalism seems to poison the great bulk of Buddhism as it is made available to me.
I have not learned much about Zen yet. I came across your subreddit yesterday, though, and spent a lot of time reading. The tenor of conversation here is intimidatingly adversarial. But, I appreciate the orientation towards rigor, and the relatively limited number of texts that are treated as authoritative. I also like that "mind pacification" is explicitly not identical with "Zen."
I spent some time reading "The Gateless Barrier," which I know is probably not the right way to "do it;" but, just trying to familiarize myself. I wanted to ask about the problem of translation, for an English speaker trying to engage with this literature. This stuff seems so, so dense. I can't imagine a faithful translation into English is really possible. Which is a problem with translation generally, of course. But, my understanding -- and I invite correction if anything I've said here is in error -- is that this literature was composed in order to produce a state in the person engaging with it which is conducive to enlightenment.
How do you trust your sources if they are in translation? How do you know the translation still faithfully points to "Zen," rather than to some different "interesting psychic phenomenon"?
Apparently there's a Japanese translation of Finnegans Wake. I can't begin to imagine what that even means, you know?
Thanks for taking the time to read.
Submitted December 22, 2019 at 12:57AM by in_dee_nile https://ift.tt/394qDMQ
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