Verse 97

I have been studying Buddhist literature for a year or so now. Not in great detail, but enough to start seeing some patterns. I want to share one particularly amusing thing.

There is a classic text called the Dhammapada. Although there is no creation myth or general "beginning" to the Buddhist mythology (analogous to Genesis in the Christian Bible), many regard the Dhammapada as a "basis" text. The great thing about Buddhist literature is that there are multiple translations, and all scholars read many versions of each sutta (text/lesson/saying) in order to explore different aspects of it. This is not Truth-with-a-capital-T, like some sect's particular version of the Bible for which all others are blasphemy. This is religious scholarship at its best.

There are lots of translations of the Dhammapada. I got interested because my teacher Gil Fronsdal recently did his own translation and gave an evening of readings from it. I have also read several other translations of it.

[What is it translated from? We don't actually know what language the Buddha spoke. Most of the stuff was finally written down in Sanskrit, which was later translated into Thai and now English and many other languages. The earliest texts are usually called "the Pali canon," because Pali was the spoken language presumed to be common at the Buddha's time.]

Let's talk about Verse 97. This one is hilarious.

The whole thing is an extended pun. In other words, it's a joke-- you know, they had jokes even in 500 BC. And even serious meditators like jokes. It was probably intended to shock the listeners and get them paying attention.

The literal translation goes something like this:

"The man who is faithless, ungrateful, a burglar, who destroys opportunities and eats vomit — he truly is the most excellent of men."

Um, right! But if you get the joke, you see that there are other ways to translate these indelicate words. Bhikkhu Bodhi says it this way:

"The man who is without blind faith, who knows the Uncreate, who has severed all links, destroyed all causes (for karma, good and evil), and thrown out all desires — he, truly, is the most excellent of men."

And Thanissaro Bhikkhu writes it thus:

The man beyond conviction
knowing the Unmade
who has severed connections
who's destroyed conditions
has disgorged expectations:
the ultimate person.

Gil had yet another version, but I don't have his book yet.

Now compare these translations-- all of which were done by actual Buddhist monks or teachers-- to the "academic" translation by the Professor of Buddhist Studies, Glenn Wallis:

The person who is beyond faith
and who understands the unconditioned,
who cuts off rebirth, forgoes opportunity,
and gives up wishing--
that one is a superior person.

Uh oh! Wallis unwittingly used "forgoes opportunity," which is in the joke portion! He apparently didn't get that that's the joke, and he was supposed to use something like "thrown out desires" or "disgorged expectations." I checked the footnote about this verse, and Wallis doesn't even mention that the whole verse can be seen as a pun.

In other words, the academics don't really get it. This is the peril of just knowing about Buddhism, not actually doing the practice.