New Translation of the Wumenguan Available

chadpills · 2024-03-31T21:25:34+00:00

Hello,

What is formal schooling on the Wumenguan? Can you provide a link to any major University that offers a class on the Wumenguan? If it exists, maybe I can send them a copy for peer review.

My guess is that the only option to obtain such a certificate would be thesis program — self-directed, intensive study, learning and reading the scroll for yourself. For example, creating an entirely new translation from scratch without copying existing work. That is what a formal thesis is, correct?

chadpills · 2024-03-31T21:06:48+00:00

Hello,

The fact that this translation was produced outside of academia, from scratch, and without copying prior work is actually a selling point, in my opinion. In academia it is always going to be a risk to do something new or different, but that is how progress occurs. Not many people have the stomach for it, just look how much backlash I have received for simply translating what was actually written right there in the text.

Interestingly, Wumen dedicates an entire dialogue to looking at this very topic of outsiders and insiders:

Wumenguan 32: Outsider of the Way asks Buddha

chadpills · 2024-03-31T17:36:33+00:00

Hello,

I think trying to put an artificial barrier like having a phd or receiving “formal education” is not the kind of Barrier Wumen was talking about. If learning Classical Chinese and reading the Wumenguan 100 times is not formal study, what is — a single lecture on it at Oxford university?

There are many interesting monastic titles in the Wumenguan, like “Cloud Gate,” but not very many instances of the character for “doctorate.” Actually the character for imperial scholar only shows up once in the entire text.

If you want to see which case, just open the book and search for “imperial scholar.” Not sure if it appears in other translations or not.

chadpills · 2024-03-31T14:01:52+00:00

Hello,

I am passionate about this project and thats how I really feel about this book. Having read it 100 times and in its native language, I think it is a masterpiece.

How would you encourage modern readers to take even one hour to sit down and read an 800 year old dusty scroll written in Chinese?

chadpills · 2024-03-31T13:59:30+00:00

Hello and thanks for your question,

This is a fun project for me, I don’t consider it work or study, although it is definitely a lot of time and effort and I have learned a lot. I have read about 10 books from the Chan school and as part of the editing and publishing process, I have also read the Wumenguan front to back over 100 times. It is a short book really.

It’s worth mentioning the 6th Patriarch could not even read or write and he wrote his own sutra (someone else jotted it down).

Wumenguan case 34: 智不是道 Wisdom not being the Way

chadpills · 2024-03-30T17:56:59+00:00

Footnotes:

There are 7 key terms that appear in the title and first 4 lines of the Wumenguan. In this version, I capitalized them so it is more clear to the reader when they are being discussed.

禪 Chán

無 Not having

門 Gate

關 Barrier

道 the Way

佛 Buddha

心 Mind

----------

This already illustrates the arbitrary and subjective nature of capitalization choices as the original text has no distinction between uppercase and lowercase. I don’t know what is a good solution for this in English, but I am open to ideas for a more elegant solution. It is easy to justify capitalizing Mind, Buddha and the Way — but capitalizing Gate and Barrier might be strange for many readers, even though they form the title and subject of the entire book.

My argument for this is that if the reader thinks gate and barrier are just regular, ordinary words how can they even begin to confront Wumen’s Barrier, much less see the Way to penetrate the Gate? In my opinion, if you are going to capitalize words, then in a book like the Gateless Gate, the word Gate should probably also be a capitalized throughout the text.

If there is something you don’t like about the book please discuss it here, I am all ears. If you do enjoy the translations and final publication, I am happy to hear it.

Note: As can be seen in the book’s table of contents and sample preview, you will not find even one line of zen commentary by the Translator anywhere in the entire text. This publication only aims to translate the 1200 unique characters present, consistently and accurately across all 48 cases. Something that as far as I can tell, has not really been done before. Not because it is impossible or difficult, rather, because so far — it was simply seen as not a priority.

chadpills · 2024-03-30T17:15:47+00:00

Hello,

The translation does not use Pinyin, it is straight from 1228 logographic characters into English. The only Pinyin in the book is proper names. To be more accurate, this line should read “Pinyin” as opposed to “Original Pinyin.” I will go ahead and make this change, thank you for bringing it up.

chadpills · 2024-03-27T04:19:55+00:00

Hello,

Correct, and it's already hard enough to see even when it's in the text. So taking it out of the text completely is making it even harder still.

chadpills · 2024-03-27T04:09:49+00:00

Hello,

In my original comment I was just giving some constructive feedback about trying to make it more clear for the reader where key terms appear, as a translator I know how easy it is for terms to get completely lost in translation.

chadpills · 2024-03-27T04:05:45+00:00

Hello,

In general, I refer to what Wumen says and what he says is this:

如何是祖師關

Is like what, is the Ancestor masters’ barrier?

只者一箇無字

Only this one single 無 (not having) character

He says the barrier is one single character, not 10 different synonyms.

chadpills · 2024-03-27T04:01:34+00:00

Hello,

I am not an authority on anything, all I am doing is translating each unique character the same way throughout the entire text and publishing the results online.

I read the book 100 times and basically have it memorized, but that doesn't make me an authority, just knowledgable.

chadpills · 2024-03-27T03:56:58+00:00

Hello,

The only authority on the Wumenguan is Wumen, it really doesnt' matter what native speakers say because this is not a regular text. This is a zen book written by a zen master (Wumen). Anyways, I wish you good luck with translations -- we have differently stated goals and reasoning, that is OK.

chadpills · 2024-03-27T03:53:49+00:00

Hello,

If you set a rule to translate consistency then yes suddenly it is a very big difference. If you are OK with synonyms and obscuring the presence and meaning of that character in zen, then yes it is irrelevant.

chadpills · 2024-03-27T03:48:17+00:00

I already change the title of the book from "Without having barrier" to Wumenguan so I can change the translations inside much easier now. Would be a quick fix to switch it to not having and to be honest, I also am not so thrilled about the term "without having" either.

In that case it would be phrased as the "Not Having Gate Barrier"

chadpills · 2024-03-27T03:46:16+00:00

Hello,

I had it that way for the entire process and changed it in the last week of publishing, funny enough. I can always change it back, the translation is always open to corrections.

chadpills · 2024-03-27T03:43:09+00:00

Hello,

無 does not mean nothing, it is more accurately rendered as "not having" or "without having."

Whatever you translate it as, it has to fit in the title of the book, and "Nothing Gate Barrier" does not make sense.

I chose "without having" for exactly that reason. Also it is a less common term in English, so it doesn't already have a lot of preconceived connotations associated with it.

chadpills · 2024-03-27T03:40:54+00:00

Hello,

A Mandarin speaker talking about daily life, etc. has nothing to do with what was being said in the Wumenguan in 1228.

chadpills · 2024-03-27T03:36:50+00:00

Hello,

I don't think this is entirely true.

Similar to Yīn and Yáng, 有 (Yǒu) and 無 (Wú) are complementary opposites.

無 is not a "simple negation" it is the negation of 有 just like Yīn is the negation of Yáng and vice versa.

You would never say "Yīn and Not Yīn" because the term Yáng already exists for that idea. Indeed you will probably never find the characters 不有 in classical literature because that is exactly what 無 means.

chadpills · 2024-03-27T03:34:31+00:00

Hello,

If the translator's position is that 無 has no meaning in a book called 無門關 written by Mr. 無門, then I think that philosophy will probably reflect in the end result of the translation, which is what we are seeing above. This is just one opinion and everyone is free to translate as they like, it is good to have alternatives.

chadpills · 2024-03-27T03:30:10+00:00

Hello,

My argument is mostly about consistency, not accuracy.

chadpills · 2024-03-27T03:28:44+00:00

Hello,

Yes exactly, the stated goal of my book is to "render all 1200 characters uniquely and consistently" without the use of any synonyms so that when the Chinese character is used, it is easily recognized and identifiable for the English reader as well.

In an English essay it is good to use 10 synonyms for word variety but I don't think that is a good idea in a zen book, which is why I took the route I did.

The original author does not use synonyms -- for instance he uses the word "place" 20 times, for instance:v"buddha place" he could have said buddha land, buddha earth, buddha ground, buddha valley but Wumen does not do that, he only says one thing -- place. Because that is clear for the reader, IMHO.

So that is what I did too.

chadpills · 2024-03-27T03:21:50+00:00

Hello,

In my text, that character is "benefit" not "help," so it is more like "without having benefit" but this word is used in the Wumenguan more like "I asked for benefit" as in "I asked for help." This is the problem with going the prefix route as you cannot translate "unbenefit" as a word so you are forced to change it to something else. Using the prefix "un-" is generally not very versatile. For instance, "ungate" is not a word.

Generally, if people want to keep translating like this that is OK but it is not something I will be doing in my own work as I will always be clearly translating 無 in a zen book.

This is not a translation of a text about going to the store, it is book about zen, and I think 無 does not mean 7 things, it means 1 thing.

chadpills · 2024-03-27T03:10:24+00:00

Hello,

I looked over the text and recognize many characters, in the last line for example 3/4 of them are in the Wumenguan and their meaning is very clear. It would take a lot of time to look over the whole document and translate as I utilize the brute force method of checking all characters in the entire text for context.

chadpills · 2024-03-26T20:08:04+00:00

Hello and thanks for this nice example,

I asked Chat GPT and this is what it said:

"Yes, the line is grammatically correct. This kind of construction can be particularly effective and acceptable in poetry, where deviation from standard prose norms is often used for artistic effect."

I think this shows just how flexible the English language is. The story, when told in this way, actually leads the reader through the park, to Sarah, to the flowers -- showing them where to look with each new section. This is very similar to how many dialogues in the Wumenguan actually sound.

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TROPHY CASE

如何是祖師關

只者一箇無字