[Buddha-l] liturgical languages

[Michel Clasquin]

Richard P. Hayes wrote:

> As I recall from my informal association with that outfit, this issue
> was deeply painful. Didn't Roshi Kapleau lose his sanction to teach as a
> result of his Japanese teacher being appalled that Kapleau's crew were
> translating chants into English? (If Japanese was good enough for the
> Buddha, it should be good enough for Americans, sou desu ka nee?) Or was
> that just an ugly rumour? 

I wasn't that deeply into the internal politics, but I believe they 
patched things up eventually.

> I still have a copy of the Rochester Zen Center chant book somewhere,
> and I quite liked the wording of their chants. Not bad at all. They
> sounded rather nice and made good sense.

In my third-year course of Buddhism, I present my students with two 
translated versions of the Heart Sutra side-by-side. One is the Zen 
Center's, the other is by Edward Conze. The point is to show the 
students how translations can serve different purposes: either it can 
have scansion and rhythm and be suitable for liturgical purposes even if 
it skips over some of the original content, or they can be more accurate 
to the original, but be suitable for academic purposes only.  It is rare 
to find a translation that does both.

Robert Frost once defined poetry as that which is lost in translation. I 
think he was right. You cannot translate poetry. What you can do is 
write a new poem in the other language that deals with roughly the same 
subject matter in a way that comes across according to the other 
language's understanding of poetry.

> We're still a long way
> off from having any Buddhist composers who rival Bach or Mozart
 > but give it time.

<unabashed elitism alert>The world generally is a long way off from 
having composers like Bach and Mozart</unabashed elitism alert> I 
vaguely remember hearing that Philip Glass has Buddhist leanings, 
though. Not that his music makes for hummable tunes, of course.

> There is probably nothing that human beings do quite as well as finding
> arguments to defend their current practices and currently held
> prejudices. 

See my signature line below ...

-- 
"Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so."
-- Bertrand Russell