(Non-)Translation Fraud: "Hua-tou" Edition

From an earlier exchange as well various non-translations that have been passed off as "Zen Masters advocate that people meditate on a word"

Earlier incarnations of this particularly weak-sauce fraud include claiming words like "tao, mu!, prajna, koan" are somehow ineffable and untranslatable(except by their Priests) and that rendering them as foreign words instead of their English equivalents is in no way done to advance reliance on those Priests as communicators-of-meaning and that using untranslated foreign words in print media is not an age old marketing gimmick.

To get everyone up to speed on this current iteration, there are various Buddhist churches fraudulently advertising themselves as Zen who believe that Zen Masters secretly taught people to "stare at sayings" or "meditate on questions that may or may not have ever even been said by Zen Masters" including famous not-Zen stuff like:

"What is the sound of one hand?"

“What is it?”

"Who is dragging this corpse around?”

"What is this?"

“What is Mu?”

This religious practice is advertised as:

"an advanced practice for those of particular talent, or those who had already advanced through other practices first."

"a practice that leads to the very limits of speech and acts as a purification device."

Based in the Zen teachings of various Zen Masters including, most famously, Dahui of Shobogenzo fame.

The fraud is a convoluted mess, but here's the what I got for Zen Masters that advocate "a practice that leads to the very limits of speech and acts as a purification device." for "students of a particular talent; having advanced through other stages":

. . .

Zen Masters that specifically reject "a practice that leads to the very limits of speech and acts as a purification device" that is based on "staring at sayings" and/or contemplation of the above "questions".

Zhaozhou

Yunmen

Foyan

Linji

Yingan

And more!

Here's the real kicker, huatou(話頭) is super easily translated word by every dictionary ever that wasn't put together under the "guidance" of fringe Buddhists trying to poison the well of secular scholarship. Some possible working definitions:

"Thread of conversation" -Pleco Basic Chinese-English Dictionary

"Thread of discourse" Oxford Chinese-English Dictionary

"Subject" CEDICT

Here you go for the linguistic breakdown

Submitted May 12, 2020 at 07:29AM by ThatKir https://ift.tt/2Lk7EDp