The Verse from Mumon's Preface The Gateless Gate [Mumonkan]
大道無門 The Great Way is gateless,
千差有路 Approached in a thousand ways.
透得此關 Once past this checkpoint
乾坤獨歩 You stride through the universe.
Wandering Ronin's highly unskillful literal translation:
大道無門 Big road, no gate
千差有路 Thousand difference have road
透得此關 Through get this shut
乾坤獨歩 Empty earth alone step
Wandering Ronin commentary: I did this "new translation" as an interesting diversion and a non-scholarly exercise to see what would happen, but it does bring up a serious point. To read anything from a translator of an ancient Zen text is to put great faith in them and what they do. It seems that if a translation varies even by a few degrees, the entire original meaning can be misdirected or subverted. To make matters worse, that is even before we get to the subject of what is lost when we take a teaching out of the historical context of something from nearly a thousand years ago. Are we missing anything, and if so, what is it?
Submitted November 23, 2018 at 08:28AM by WanderingRonin77 https://ift.tt/2QeAF7L
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