Translation Award for Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

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plwk
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Translation Award for Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

Post by plwk »

Image

Our chairman and founder, Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi, received a special honor in late April when he was informed that his translation of the Anguttara Nikaya, The Numerical Discourses of the Buddha, was chosen to receive the 2013 Khyentse Foundation Prize for Outstanding Translation Work. More here
Knotty Veneer
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Re: Translation Award for Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

Post by Knotty Veneer »

Exceedlingly well deserved. A great man. All of us who like to lament about Buddhism in the West should remember Bhikku Bodhi.
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Re: Translation Award for Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

Post by Grigoris »

Couldn't have been given to a more deserving individual! :twothumbsup:
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Leo Rivers
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Re: Translation Award for Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

Post by Leo Rivers »

A One Man Pali Text Society. :applause:

The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya
(with Bhikkhu Nanamoli, 1995, Wisdom Publications)
Numerical Discourses of the Buddha: An Anthology of Suttas from the Anguttara Nikaya (with Nyanaponika Thera, 2000, Altamira Press)
The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya (2000, Wisdom Publications)
A Comprehensive Manual of Abhidhamma: The Abhidhammattha Sangaha of Ācariya Anuruddha(2000, BPS Pariyatti) [The ultimate in you pick it up to look at something and look up 45 minutes later stunned you found it so interesting.]
In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon (2005, Wisdom Publications)



PS: Is the Khuddaka Nikaya near the same sized as these? Is it on the horizon?

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/index.html
plwk
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Re: Translation Award for Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

Post by plwk »

No idea Leo. Being an 18 part collection of both early and late stuff, full translation of this Nikaya into vernacular languages is still pending from anyone.
As I found out over the years that some selective Theravadins reject this Nikaya on the basis of it containing late stuff as how they too reject the Abhidhamma.
Then again, some of them would reject anything that doesn't fit their fancy as well...
And I am still awaiting his translation for this particular Nikaya...
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Leo Rivers
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Re: Translation Award for Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

Post by Leo Rivers »

is still pending from anyone.
About 5 chunks have been done, The Poems of the male and female elders, (The Ther-i/a gatha), the Sutta Nipata, and the Dhammapada, as well as the Story of Gotama (which I tracked down a copy of) and the huge chunk of Jataka, a pitaka to itself. (500+ stories.

But some of the others, both translated and in sub-space, look really interesting, like the Udana and the Itivuttaka which I didn't know about until today. Can't afford it tho... And the Stories of the lived of Kings and Hungry Ghosts as well as a Bodhisattva Casebook of tales.

Read the link - there are 15 of them, and 3 more in doubt, including the Questions of Milinda, which I always assumed was Official.
mikenz66
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Re: Translation Award for Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

Post by mikenz66 »

There are some real gems in the KN.

Almost the entire KN has been translated by the Pali Text Society.
http://www.palitext.com/
As plwk notes, they are quite variable, so there's not such a need for a complete translation by one person.

Here are some resources:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/index.html

Among the highlights:
There are numerous Dammapadas, of course.
The Udana & The Itivuttaka by John D. Ireland is good and isn't expensive:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?index=b ... 955240164X
The Sutta Nipata is said to contain some very early suttas, espcially the last two chapters. As well as the book translations (the modern ones still being relatively expensive) translations are available on Access to Insight. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... index.html
and in various other on-line sources.

To bring us back to the topic, there are some talks by Bhikkhu Bodhi on some of the Sutta Nipata discourses:
http://bodhimonastery.org/sutta-nipata.html

:anjali:
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Re: Translation Award for Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

Post by DNS »

Leo Rivers wrote: Numerical Discourses of the Buddha: An Anthology of Suttas from the Anguttara Nikaya (with Nyanaponika Thera, 2000, Altamira Press)
He also recently did the complete Anguttara Nikaya (Wisdom Publications)

We also have a thread about this great accomplishment over at Dhamma Wheel. Bhikkhu Bodhi has some Mahayana connections too; this is what I wrote over there:

Bhikkhu Bodhi had a lot of contact with Mahayana in his early days as a monk (he even ordained with them initially) and then more recently at the monastery where he resides. In between and throughout his career he was mostly in Sri Lanka and of course a fully ordained Theravada monk but I think the exposure to some great Mahayana masters really made him grow spiritually as a great Buddhist monk. For example, he apparently has well-developed karuna and is not dogmatic at all in regards to Theravada or the Commentaries.

:thumbsup: A well-deserved award for one of the greatest monks of modern times.
plwk
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Re: Translation Award for Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

Post by plwk »

Read the link - there are 15 of them, and 3 more in doubt, including the Questions of Milinda, which I always assumed was Official.
Of course there are 15 of them but I am not just looking at the Thai ones but having in mind the Burmese & Sri Lankan ones which incorporate the other 3 which the former omits...
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Re: Translation Award for Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

Post by Zhen Li »

The only books you will not be able to get in English from the Khuddaka Nikaya are the Apadana and the Niddesa.

I made a collection of the KN myself, using out of copyright or open source translations, which came to eight volumes (each 500-800 pages), some of which were more condensed than others due to the PDFs that I used including two pages per digital "page." So I think if we had an edition from Wisdom which is anything like those, we'd probably be looking at two to three books about the size of the Samyutta Nikaya, which is 2080 pages. I was also using the Burmese canon (18 books). I don't see any reason to exclude the last three books, since criteria for inclusion obviously has nothing to do with whether it was spoken by the Buddha or not. The great bulk of the collection is also Jataka material, which in the PTS translations are in six volumes (though I know of a three volume version too). Again, despite many of the existing translations being of high quality, it can be a bit jarring to go from 19th century muddled mess (e.g. where Sangha = Church) to recent academically permissable translations, such as those of the Itivuttaka or Udana. So I can see the value of this being done.
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Re: Translation Award for Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

Post by longjie »

Knotty Veneer wrote:Exceedlingly well deserved. A great man. All of us who like to lament about Buddhism in the West should remember Bhikku Bodhi.
There are a few hundred Mahayana sutras, but how many have been translated into English? Just a few, and the reason is because there is no market for them. Christianity has hundreds of millions of western followers, and how many times have they translated their one book? Too many times to count. Western Buddhism can't even ramp up the support to translate the texts even once. That's why we have no Yogacarabhumi Shastra, no Mahavibhasha, no Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra / Shastra, etc. Few followers, lack of commitment, lack of demand, little institutional support... We need people like Bhikkhu Bodhi, because if we didn't have them, people wouldn't even believe that western Buddhism exists.
;)
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Zhen Li
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Re: Translation Award for Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

Post by Zhen Li »

There also just aren't as many western Mahayana monks as compared to Theravadan ones. The Zen folks translate their Zen writings sometimes, and Tibetan folks translate what matters to them (i.e. not usually non-Vajrayana Mahayana texts like Sutras in Tibetan).

It takes lots of time to do these translations, and without being a monastic, that would require funding from either universities or governments. This often happens, but scholars in North America are less interested in translating than they were 50 years ago, and in Europe, few people would be interested in either spending or funding the many years of translating required for the Mahaprajnaparamita.

In either case, I don't think we can rely on "demand" or sales. Translations aren't going to be making back enough money to make a huge difference, let alone support the translator with the sales. I'd be surprised if this could even be the case with Bhikkhu Bodhi's translations - the best selling of them all was probably "In the Buddha's Words," rather than the collections themselves.

While, once in a while, you will get good translations of Sutras by academics (University of Hawaii Press publishes some good ones from time to time), the onus is really on Mahayana institutions that can support monks. I think the future of such enterprises really lies with true scholar monks (panditas). Look, for instance, at the great effort being taken by City of Ten Thousand Buddhas to translate the Avatamsaka Sutra, or the efforts of Venerable Heng Shou/Dharmamitra. Fo Guang Shan apparently is in the process of doing translations of the Chinese Fo Guang Canon, but the Sutras and Shastras have taken a back burner to more popular materials, but they certainly have the resources and may follow the lead of CTTB in the future.
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Re: Translation Award for Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

Post by Bakmoon »

Leo Rivers wrote:A One Man Pali Text Society. :applause:

The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya
(with Bhikkhu Nanamoli, 1995, Wisdom Publications)
Numerical Discourses of the Buddha: An Anthology of Suttas from the Anguttara Nikaya (with Nyanaponika Thera, 2000, Altamira Press)
The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya (2000, Wisdom Publications)
A Comprehensive Manual of Abhidhamma: The Abhidhammattha Sangaha of Ācariya Anuruddha(2000, BPS Pariyatti) [The ultimate in you pick it up to look at something and look up 45 minutes later stunned you found it so interesting.]
In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon (2005, Wisdom Publications)



PS: Is the Khuddaka Nikaya near the same sized as these? Is it on the horizon?
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitak ... urn false;
The Khuddaka Nikaya is just a miscellaneous section so that all of the treatises (like the Patisambhiddamaga), poetry collections (Like the Dhammapada), and small sutta collections (like the Sutta Nipatta) have some place to go. They don't really form a distinct collection as a whole. I hope more of the Khuddaka Nikaya gets translated. There are some real gems in there that are badly understudied in my opinion.
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Re: Translation Award for Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

Post by Malcolm »

Zhen Li wrote:There also just aren't as many western Mahayana monks as compared to Theravadan ones. The Zen folks translate their Zen writings sometimes, and Tibetan folks translate what matters to them (i.e. not usually non-Vajrayana Mahayana texts like Sutras in Tibetan).

Ahem....

http://84000.co" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

You will find many Mahāyāna sutras here, more "every" day.
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Zhen Li
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Re: Translation Award for Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

Post by Zhen Li »

Yes, I have also found the ones that are completed there to be very good.
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