[Buddha-l] Non attached & mindful culinary triumphalism?

[Dan Lusthaus]

> The category of morality seems entirely superfluous.

I agree with that completely. The issue, however, has been how Buddhists thought of it, not what we prefer or our baseline assumptions/conclusions/preferences.

It would be hard to say that Buddhists -- even Candrakirti -- were that dismissive of morality (the Candrakirti text that Karen Lang has been translating, his "moral tales" we might call them, demonstrates that).

Others here might have additional translations of the Bodhicaryāvatāra, but I grabbed some that were in reach, Stephen Batchelor's, and one based on the oral commentary of Geshe Kelsang Gyatso (based on the Tibetan version, confirming the distinction is preserved in Tibetan), the Crosby-Skilling version, and old Matics.

The full verse in Skt is:

mayā bālena mūḍhena yatkiṃcitpāpamācitam /
prakṛtyā yac ca sāvadyaṃ prajñaptyāvadyameva ca // (2.64) 

Batchelor:
Whatever has been done by me
Through Ignorance and unknowing
Be it the breaking of a vow
Or a deed by nature wrong,

The Geshe's group:
Through my ignorance, I have committed countless non-virtuous actions, breaking vows or engaging in deeds which were by nature wrong.

The Kate Crosby and Andrew Skilton tr. (Oxford Univ. Press):
Whatever evil I, a deluded fool, have amassed, what is wrong by nature and what is wrong by convention,

Matics, as if often the case, messes up a bit, but gets the prakṛtyā right:
Whatever the evil which ahs been accumulated by my foolishness and ignorance, and whatever of my speaking and teaching is objectionable, and whatever is evil by nature:

One can argue that the Buddhists *ought not* to have made such a distinction, but not that they didn't. (Nor that pāpa is only in the eye of the beholder)

Dan