BTTS VOLUNTEERS NEWSLETTER

Transcription

1 BTTS VOLUNTEERS NEWSLETTER The Venerable Kumarajiva translated Sutras for the Seven Buddhas, rescuing the multitudes from the sea of suffering. Great Master Hsuan Tsang sought the Dharma on behalf of the people, enabling living beings to reach the Land of Bliss. - By the Venerable Master Hua 1

2 Table of Contents Preface by Dharma Master Heng Yin... 3 Ongoing Translation Projects... 4 Ongoing Translation Projects Schedule... 5 Promotion work for BTTS... 6 A message from the Team working on ebook conversions... 7 Buddhist Translators without Borders by Reverend Heng Sure... 8 Volunteers Reflections

3 Preface by Dharma Master Heng Yin In this second issue of the BTTS Volunteers newsletter, you will read about some of the many ongoing translation projects. In case you would like to get involved, a detailed schedule is provided of the weekly Skype translation and review meetings taking place. We are happy to report that the work of promoting BTTS publications, which has been bravely carried on by a few persistent individuals in the past, is now gaining new momentum with Katherine Lam, our new promotions coordinator, and the volunteers who have signed up to help spread the Dharma. Our promotions effort is focused on developing a new BTTS website (btts.drba.org) as a platform for the promotion of ebooks and other publications. This website will be closely linked to bttsonline.org, our online bookstore, but it will also include other information about BTTS. Katherine describes some easy ways to help publicize BTTS works. We welcome your feedback on the new website as well. Another team is working hard on converting all BTTS books into ebooks. Publishing ebooks promises to be an easy and effective way to reach a huge audience. The team has already done several pilot projects but needs more volunteers in order to convert more books into more formats. We welcome your feedback on the ebook design and process. c d To encourage all the volunteers engaged in collaborative translation work, here is some advice from the Venerable Master: The measure of our minds should encompass all of space and pervade worlds as numerous as grains of sand, excluding nothing and including everything. If you have doubts, bring them up. If you feel that a certain point is correct, you can explain your reason. Everyone is here to discuss and investigate together. We don t need to argue. It s not a case of one person winning and another losing. No one wins, and no one loses. At all times, everyone is level and equal. United and equal, we advance together. b a Finally this issue features reflections from several volunteer translators from the United States, Australia, China, and Malaysia. With Skype and other technologies, it is now possible to collaborate globally on the sacred work of translating Buddhist texts. It is heartening to see the number of new translation projects and new volunteers participating in all the various steps from initial translation to online promotion. 3

4 Ongoing Translation Projects Translation & Review in Progress The Dharma Realm is Just the Mind (Fajie Wei Xin) 100 Days Chan Talk Review in Progress Avatamsaka Sutra o Ch 25, Part 7 o Ch38 Revised Editions Lotus Sutra Sixth Patriarch Sutra Ready for Certification Avatamsaka Sutra several chapters Ready for Publication Biographies of Patriarchs in India and many more! Currently there are quite a number of projects going on. Work is being done on a completely revised edition of the Lotus Sutra; the biographies of the Patriarchs in India are being prepared for publication; the Sixth Patriarch Sutra is undergoing a revision as well, and these are only a few. Several chapters of the Avatamsaka Sutra with commentary are being prepared for certification while the new energy of the Avatamsaka Project, which breezes afresh through the entire Sutra, is now also including Part 7 of Chapter 25, the Ten Transferences, and also Chapter 38, Transcending the World. Several individuals and groups are working on different parts of The Dharma Realm is Just the Mind (Fajie Wei Xin), a collection of Dharma talks by Master Hua during the 1981 delegation to Asia. Almost half of the text has gone through a primary translation, and for some parts, review is already on the way. Over in Asia Pacific, a team is in the midst of translating 100 Days Chan Talk, a series of lectures on meditation given over 98- days in the early 70s by Master Hua. On a regular basis, people come together, either in person or on Skype. Below are listed some of the opportunities (in California time) for people to join in Dharma- joy. If you wish to join any of the groups, please contact us through bttsvolunteers@gmail.com. Apart from group translation, people are also invited to request sponsorship of independent projects. There is plenty of work for everyone! 4

5 If you re interested to help, please contact us at: Monday Ongoing Translation Projects Schedule Note: All times below are at Pacific Standard Time (California, USA) 5:15 6:15 PM Primary translation of a section from Dharma Talks by Master Hua. 8:30 10:15 AM* A new translation of Chapter 25 Part 6 of the Ten Transferences in Avatamsaka Sutra. Tuesday 2:00 3:30 AM Asia Pacific team working on 100 Days Chan Meditation Talks by Venerable Master Hsuan Hua. 1:00 2:45 PM* Under Reverend Heng Sure s leadership, the plenary committee of the Avatamsaka Project is going through the Chapter One of the Avatamsaka Sutra, revising many of the early BTTS translations. Thursday 2:15 4:15 PM A new translation of Entering the Dharma Realm Chapter 39 of the Avatamsaka Sutra. 5:15 6:15 PM Primary translation of a section from Dharma Talks by Master Hua. Friday 5:15 6:30 AM True Filial Respect in Buddhism: An Anthology a (primary) translation project working on a compilation of quotes & excerpts on filial respect from Sutras, Shastras, and other sources. Saturday 1:30 3:00 AM Asia Pacific team working on 100 Days Chan Meditation Talks by Venerable Master Hsuan Hua. 5:30 7:30 AM Review group of Chapter 38 of the Avatamsaka to include the commentary by Venerable Master Hsuan Hua. 1:00 3:00 PM Chinese preparation group led by Dharma Master Jin Fan, does research for the Avatamsaka project. Sunday 5:30 7:00 AM Primary translation of a collection of autobiographical stories on the life of Venerable Master Hsuan Hua. 3:30 5:30 PM A new translation of Chapter 25, Part 7 of the Ten Transferences in Avatamsaka Sutra. 7:00 8:30 PM Reviewing a section from The Dharma Realm is Just the Mind. *New meeting time for when Rev. Heng Sure is in Australia (Jan 13 to early Apr 13) 5

6 Promotion work for BTTS An update from Katherine Lam Making people aware of the ancient Buddhist scriptures and practices, serves an important role in propagating Dharma to the West. We have recently been working on a new website to provide information on new publications, current BTTS projects, training opportunities, free downloadable materials, and so forth. In addition, a Twitter account (twitter.com/bttsonline) and Facebook page (facebook.com/bttsonline) were created, which so far have 87 'likes'. Encouraging readers to write reviews for our books is another way of building online presence. So if you have a moment, please leave your reviews on Amazon.com, goodreads.com and on bttsonline.org. If you are interested in helping BTTS with promotion work please us at: bttspromotion@gmail.com Another project that is being started is a regular e- newsletter to announce BTTS publications. However, these tasks by no means are easy to do without the help from volunteers. So, if you re interested to help please contact us! 6

7 A message from the Team working on ebook conversions W e have recently launched an ebook Project to further propagate Buddha Dharma to the whole world, and WE NEED MORE VOLUNTEERS! Why ebook? With the rapid development of technology, more people rely on reading on electronic devices, like Kindle, ipad, and Nook. Electronic versions make readings easier to access, organize and spread. The ebook Project is therefore exploring this new area, targeting a vast audience. Currently, ebook formats like MOBI and EPUB offer advanced features compared to Adobe PDF, including font resizing and text- to- speech, significantly enhancing readers experience. We hope, through this ebook Project, more people can benefit from Buddha Dharma. Our current projects Currently, we are working on the Vajra Sutra and the Amitabha Sutra. But a whole range of books is waiting to be converted. We really need more volunteers to get involved in this project. It is a new area and we are learning every day. Possible assignments include ebook conversion, review, revision and user experience Training will be provided so don t worry about your technical background. Welcome to join us because we believe teamwork would rule any issue out. If you d like to help, please us at bttsvolunteers@gmail.com From: The ebook Conversion Team 7

8 BTTS VOLUNTEERS NEWSLETTER January 2013 Buddhist Translators without Borders by Reverend Heng Sure Reprinted from The Interfaith Observer s January 2013 issue An assembly reciting the Avatamsaka Sutra Renewed Community from Ancient Seed I m sitting in a retreat bungalow in the Australian bush south of Brisbane, near Mudgeeraba, Queensland. I am translating an ancient Buddhist scripture with twenty other people, most of whom are in different countries. I m working with a Macintosh laptop facilitating a wireless Skype conference call. I have as well an ipad 2 running FaceTime, Apple s videophone software, connected to a room in a Buddhist monastery in California. My word processor, Nisus Writer, has a bilingual Chinese- English edition of the Avatamsaka Sutra, that is, The Buddha s Flower Garland Scripture. The text is said to be the first teaching the Buddha delivered after his enlightenment beneath the Bodhi tree, some 2500 years ago. The local broadband provider here in Australia s Gold Coast has extended its coverage out to the bush, Australian for forest. So, via FaceTime, I can see a room with Buddhist monks, nuns, laymen, laywomen and student interns in Ukiah, California, at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. They in turn see my image projected onto a movie screen in their translation room. Joining us remotely online via Skype are translators and auditors in Paris, London, Rotterdam, Taipei, San Jose, Oakland, and Index, Washington, in the Cascade Mountains. I can hear their voices over my computer speakers and they can hear mine, even though the birds chattering outside my window are not California bluejays but kookaburras, cockatoos, and rainbow lorikeets. All of our software and hardware tools are off- the- shelf, available to anybody with a modest budget, creating a two- way, smooth, audible stream of voices and images. We are creating something collaboratively that would have been unimaginable five years ago. cont d Visit us at btts.drba.org 8

9 BTTS VOLUNTEERS NEWSLETTER January 2013 cont d The main gate into the City of 10,000 Buddhas in northern California. One Tradition, Many Languages Now English Buddhist scriptures have been around in Asian languages since the third century BCE. Four hundred years later they began to move from Pali and Sanskrit, Indian canonical languages, into Chinese. From Chinese they disseminated into East Asia, with translations emerging in Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese. And the Buddha s voice can be read in English since the late Chan Master Hsuan Hua came to the United States from his native Manchuria and spent 30 years teaching English speakers and readers. In daily sessions he explicated the Avatamsaka Sutra line by line. The task before our translation group is to render it into English, a text known as the king of kings of Buddhist sutras. In English we have only one other complete translation extant, and it has a deserved reputation for omissions and other infelicities. The Buddhist Text Translation Society, with whom we work, has published only a few of its forty chapters. Now we have tackled it sequentially from the beginning. When this scripture was rendered into Chinese from Sanskrit it was done by a committee of monks and scholars numbering in the hundreds, sometimes including the emperor himself, or empress, in some cases, when the reign favored Buddhism or wanted its blessings. cont d 9

10 BTTS VOLUNTEERS NEWSLETTER January 2013 cont d Rev. Heng Sure speaking about the Avatamsaka Sutra at the Berkeley Our collaborative format, aided by technology and the internet, follows along behind great translator- monks of the past Venerable Kumarajiva ( CE), Master Xuanzang (c. 596 or ), or the Monk Fazang ( CE), a favorite of the Empress Wu Zetian (c ), to name a few. In their assemblies scholar- practitioners gathered to translate the texts, including monks from India and the Silk Road kingdoms who could read the original manuscript aloud in Indian languages. Buddhist Monastery. Then there were pilgrims, editors, polishers, certifiers, clouds of scribes, and musical liturgists who invoked spiritual presence and blessings on the work and who dedicated the merits at the end of each day. Sometimes the imperial ministers present lavishly funded the enterprise, building halls and dwellings for the monastic translators and their staffs and occasionally serving as liaison between the palace and the monastery. the Golden Era of the Tang Dynasty (6th to 10th centuries CE), hundreds of In monks and scholars took part in imperially sponsored translation assemblies, and manuscripts were painstakingly copied by hand. In the digital age today it is a challenge to find half a dozen monks and nuns to sit together; how much the more difficult is it to gather talented translators or experts in Sanskrit, Buddhist Chinese and English prose. Yet with several key- strokes, today we can send copies of our translations around the world, and the numbers improve. cont d 10

11 cont d Monks tools have moved from quills and colored inks to keyboards and printed circuits, but the intent and the effort is identical with their predecessors throughout history. Some voices lament monks working with technology, as if the only proper monastic vocation is prayer. In fact, monks have always been leaders in technology. The earliest printed book was created in 868 CE, a woodblock print of the Vajra or Diamond Sutra. European monks kept Western civilization alive during barbarian invasions think Celtic monks illuminating manuscripts in tall towers, tranquil and serene above the Visigoths plundering the market towns and burning the farmhouses below. By preserving and translating textual treasures from the past, monks give readers today and in the future access to the wisdom of the ages. Monks tools have moved from quills and colored inks to keyboards and printed circuits, but the intent and the effort is identical with their predecessors throughout history. Today we enjoy special new tools the collaborative resources of online wiki- style dictionaries, glossaries, and indices are a reality. Underneath the cursor in one s browser are resources that heretofore required the presence of an East Asian Library in your neighborhood. These tools live online, in the cloud, and in your browser. cont d 11

12 cont d Positive Influence on Buddhist Intrafaith Relation Another advantage of the digital world for Buddhist translation work is the unprecedented ability to access texts from the different schools of Buddhism. Throughout history the Buddhist community in Asia has experienced partisan schisms: the Theravada, or southern school, avoided the Mahayana, or northern school. The Vajrayana school held itself apart from both the others. Now, though, with the ubiquity of the digital world one can compare texts from all three schools and learn the genuine differences free from bias, stereotypes and bigotry born of distance. Some people say that translation by committee creates a camel- leopard, something that never existed between heaven and earth, a dysfunctional, hybrid animal. Translating the sutra with a group of men and women monastics while balancing Sanskrit, Tang Dynasty Chinese, and contemporary English prose might seem the perfect cradle for the birth of a camel- leopard. The spirit of collaboration, of give- and- take, of mutual joy in the exploration of this ancient wisdom, is the spirit that prevails in our virtual translation room spanning the planet. My experience suggests otherwise. The spirit of collaboration, of give- and- take, of mutual joy in the exploration of this ancient wisdom, is the spirit that prevails in our virtual translation room spanning the planet. Someone asked one of our senior translation hands, How is it that these young interns come back each week to join our translation group? They re teen- agers. You d think that translating ancient texts would be boring beyond belief. The translator answered, I would say it s because they like to watch adults having fun with the Dharma. It s always been true in the East, and now in the West as well, bringing ancient wisdom into a 21st century world

13 Volunteers Reflections In 2004, I began going to Gold Mountain Monastery and shortly after that I became a volunteer until this day. A year or two later, I started going regularly to the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery (BBM). I also attend as much as I possibly could the Guan Yin sessions and other special sessions at the City of Ten Thousands Buddhas (CTTB). My translation experience began with one thought. About two years ago, I was in CTTB for a special event, maybe a Guan Yin session - I am not sure now. I remembered I was bowing in the Buddha Hall and moved to tears by the atmosphere. I thought to myself, Oh, I wish I could do something meaningful to repay the Venerable Master s kindness I hope I can be of some use. In September last year, I joined a small group to translate a short chapter in "the Great Master Han Shan s Wandering in a Dream Collection ( 憨山老人夢 遊集 ) " under Professor Marty Verhoeven s guidance. The group would translate on Thursday evening and our teacher Prof. Verhoeven would lecture the English text on Friday evening at BBM. We researched on Chinese Buddhist terms, Classical Chinese terms, Sanskrit, etc. to make sure the English translation we applied was most suitable and understandable to Westerners without losing the Chinese meaning. My translation experience began with one thought Oh, I wish I could do something meaningful to repay the Venerable Master s kindness I hope I can be of some use. - Suzanne Ng Cont d 13

14 cont d This required a delicate balance, and was often difficult and time consuming. Furthermore, we had to be mindful of Master Han Shan s style of writing, which was direct and penetrating, so the English would reflect the same. This might sound challenging, but the joy and benefits I got from the experience were beyond compare. Sometimes the Master s words would stay in my mind for days and affect how I perceive the world, making me return the light and look within. This summer I signed up to be a BTTS volunteer. Currently I am assigned to several translation projects: the Ten Transferences Chapter (25) of the Avatamsaka; Autobiographical stories from the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua s life; Dharma Talks by the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua; and True Filial Respect in Buddhism: An Anthology. The format of the translation sessions is similar, all of us volunteers communicate through Skype. I call this "the Buddha hall in space". Why is that? Well, it did not take me long to realize that the task may very well be translation but most importantly I have the best opportunity to cultivate the six paramitas (giving, morality, patience, vigor, concentration, and wisdom) by observing my colleagues during the sessions. For example, people researched on their own time and shared with the group. People listened patiently and spoke gently with kind words. People used humor appropriately at tense moments. I observed all of their skills and learned from them. After each session, I am always elated. Moreover, I have not even mentioned the Dharma joy from translating the texts that in itself is another experience. I am merely scratching the surface of the benefits from being a BTTS translator. The joy is truly endless. - Suzanne Ng, USA Sometimes the Master s words would stay in my mind for days and affect how I perceive the world, making me return the light and look within. 14

15 Volunteers Reflections This is an incredibly wonderful experience. We have people on at least two different continents working on a herculean task that none of us is capable of accomplishing as individuals; we are overcoming difficult communication issues, and through our collective efforts translating something as complex as the Dharma. This is simply amazing, absolutely amazing! This is a beautiful thing we are doing, and I am extremely grateful, and very pleased to be a part of it. - David Fisher, USA - Joining the translation sessions is exceptional experience for me as I can both learn the skills of translation and acquire knowledge about Buddhism, but also accumulate merit and virtue in the process. And it's most rewarding when we do something in contribution. Amitabha! - Sun Song, China - I have found the group translation experience both humbling and stimulating. This group translation method adopted by BTTS provides excellent opportunities for attendees to hear, consider and absorb the collective wisdom of the group. It is also a great practical way of challenging our own mental and emotional habits and becoming more mindful of how we manifest ourselves in various situations. - ML, Australia - It is very insightful to work with my group especially when we are all from different age group and countries. The differences enable us to learn from each other to enhance our knowledge in Buddhism and to more accurately translate the underlying Dharma quotes by Master Hsuan Hua. The most important thing which I gained in this group is that we developed mutual understanding which is vital in ensuring the smooth progress of the translation team. - Michael Teng, Malaysia / Australia - 15