Have you ever noticed that all the Sutras start with, “Thus have I heard?” Or maybe what you’ve read started something phrased differently. All the written Suttas & Sutras are based upon Ananda’s prodigious memory. It was’t until hundreds of years after Ananda’s death that any of the Buddha’s sermons were written down. Then these were translated into Pali, then Sanskrit, then probably a few more local dialects and languages, then Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, English, German, French, and all the rest.
All the Buddhist scripture we have, all the writings of Nagarjuna, Ashvaghosa, Wonhyo, Jinul, Bodhidharma, and the rest are one big game of telephone. From translation to translation, even in just one level there can be variations. Go from Sanskrit to all the others mentioned above, there are bound to be differences; different translators will translate the same writing from Chinese into English and come up with different words.
Going from some languages like Chinese to English are never one-for-one. The Chinese character is a representation, not spelling. It’s not like “chat” in French = “cat” in English. The best we can hope for is that the translator captures the spirit of the teaching, and that we don’t get hung up on one version of something.
In his talk of November 20, 2024, Min’Ui Maitri points out that he found 23 translations of the Xinxin Ming, without even trying. They’re all relatively close to one another, some possibly embellished more than others, some more literal. We can have favorite translations that work for us, even in the case of a teaching whose opening line is “The Great Way is easy for those not attached to preferences.”
How many versions of the Heart Sutra have you heard? How about the Four Great Bodhisattva Vows? Does one translation render all others incorrect because the words differ? Sanghas can prefer one version of a chant or a teaching, and Sangha members will get used to them, and may be taken aback when they hear to a different way. But that doesn’t make the other versions used in other Sanghas heretical.
The Dharma is the Dharma. And there’s a reason that we’ve been told that the Great Way is beyond words. At least, thus have I heard…
