Quoting translators is very popular among religious people... as if google translate could ever have a worthwhile opinion about the material?
J.C. Cleary is a better translator than any AI we have now... but only because he was trained on the material and nobody really cares to properly train an AI on Ancient Chinese. But like D.T. Suzuki, not only did JC Cleary not "get" the material, he and Suzuki didn't get the fact that Dogen was a fraud.
Just think about that... they really were fooled by FukanZazenGi. Like... how clueless do you have to be for that to happen?
Since the 90's there has been plenty of room for doubt about any kind of connection between Dogen and Zen, and now with scholars openly admitting that Dogen invented Zazen (although not quite facing up to the fact that to say so makes Dogen a fraud and a liar) it is obvious to everyone that FukanZazenGi is not a Zen text at all.
How could people like Cleary and Suzuki not see this?
The answer is that translators aren't textual geniuses by default. Being good at language doesn't mean you are any good at understanding, academically or practically, what the language is telling you.
That's why google translate works... translation is about memorization and substitution and context... it's not a branch of philosophy or religion.
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µ Yo͞ok Welcome! Meet me My comment: People who quote translators "opinions" are doing so because they don't have any source material to back up the translator's claims... which is why D.T. Suzuki tends to fare better than J.C. Cleary as a philosopher... Suzuki understood it's book report it or choke on it.
Submitted March 05, 2023 at 09:22AM by ewk https://ift.tt/PfvJSTU
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