[Buddha-l] query about a term in Japanese zen, translated as "soul" in one text.

[sjziobro at cs.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: Jo <jkirk at spro.net>
To: 'Buddhist discussion forum' <buddha-l at mailman.swcp.com>
Sent: Sun, Jan 15, 2012 2:42 pm
Subject: Re: [Buddha-l] query about a term in Japanese zen, translated as "soul" in one text.


Hi Stan, Interesting--I know next to nothing about Japanese language and little 
about Zen in Japan. Richard cut my post by the way and substituted links to the 
Pali dictionary. Probably my email format does not agree with his.

[Richard is a good editor.  I wonder if there is a corollary in his case of disagreement with fine editing?] 

You don't seem to have caught that I was deliberately enlarging the query to 
translation of terms as "soul" in the wider and older context. Sally mentioned 
that this term appears often, she wondered about its translation status, so  I 
thought it of interest that it also appears in major dictionaries written of 
course by westerners, and tried to reply to what Richard said about early 
Buddhism. 

[I didn't miss it; I simply wanted to finally respond directly to the original query. Your post was informative and engaging.
It was clear to me years ago that a knowledge of the Indian notions of soul was necessary to better understand Buddhist notions
of non-soul or no soul, since the Buddhist concepts were critiques of the Indian concepts.  Christian notions might be more in
line with Buddhist inasmuch as there is nothing existing of itself and for itself in the realm of creatures.]

 Strikes me, reading yours here, that a better term for conveying the Indian idea 
of jiva would have been the GK. pneuma, because of the association in Indian 
thought with breath and spirituality and the non-material nature of the jiva. 
Also, didn't some early Christian writers use this term instead of "soul"? Maybe 
even Max Mueller used it as an analogy to some Skt terms; been a long time since 
I read anything by him so just guessing.

[Your points are well taken here. To my knowledge in the patristic Christian literature the general term for soul for the Greeks
was psyche or, sometimes, nous.  Pneuma referred to the spirit of a person, which, following Plato, was a part of the soul.  Pneuma
also referred to the Holy Spirit.]

 Didn't you use the wrong compound here: "This term connotes what 霊魂....", since 
you  compared it to the same? Did you mean to use 魂?

[Yes, I did use the wrong word.  The sentence should read: 'This term connotes 
what 魂 connotes, and it can be used to translate "jiva."'

Stan

_________________

 

 

Joanna,

 

I am not responding to your informative post, but responding to the original 
inquiry, presuming that it has yet to be answered.  The term translated as 
"soul" was most likely "tamashii" (魂).  This terms refers to the animating 
principle of a living being.  It can also connote the psyche or the spirit.  
Since the advent of Christianity to Japan in the mid-sixteenth century A.D. a 
Sino-Japanese composite has also been used, "reikon" (霊魂).  This term connotes 
what 霊魂 connotes, and it can be used to translate "jiva."  "Rei" (霊) by itself 
can connote numen, spirit (pneuma).  I'll check some of my specifically Japanese 
Buddhist dictionaries for these terms.

 

Regards,

 

Stan Ziobro

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----

From: Jo < <mailto:jkirk at spro.net> jkirk at spro.net>

To: 'Buddhist discussion forum' < <mailto:buddha-l at mailman.swcp.com> 
buddha-l at mailman.swcp.com>

Sent: Sun, Jan 15, 2012 11:51 am

Subject: Re: [Buddha-l] query about a term in Japanese zen, translated as "soul" 
in one text.

 

 

In my comments here I’m not referring to E. Asian Buddhists but to what we think 
r someone thinks the Buddha thought. 

 

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