This is another in a series of weekly blog posts comparing and contrasting the Sanskrit and Chinese Lotus Sutra translations.

In considering Chapter 11, Beholding the Stūpa of Treasures – or as H. Kern titles the chapter, Apparition of a Stūpa – I noticed an interesting difference among the nine easy and six difficult acts.

Murano has:

It is not difficult
To grasp the sky,
And wander about with it
From place to place.

It is difficult
To copy and keep this sūtra
Or cause others to copy it
After my extinction.

Kern, on the other hand, says:

22. To throw down the totality of ether-element after compressing it in one fist, and to leave it behind after having thrown it away, is not difficult.

23. But to copy a Sūtra like this in the period after my extinction, that is difficult.

At the time I thought it interesting to consider the “ether-element” and “the sky” in context of the five elements of physical existence:

1. Earth
2. Water
3. Fire
4. Wind
5. Void (Ether)

But the quibble over sky vs. ether was a rabbit hole I thought I would step around after my brief glance inside.

Then I got to Chapter 15, The Appearance of the Bodhisattvas from Underground, or as Kern has it, Chapter 14, Issuing of Bodhisattvas from the Gaps of the Earth.

Where were these great bodhisattvas before they sprung up through the earth and filled the skies?

Murano says at the start and later in gāthās:

They had lived in the sky below this Sahā-World.

But Kern says:

who had been staying in the element of ether underneath this great earth, close to this Sahā world.

Later in gāthās, Kern says:

40. They dwell in the domain of ether, in the lower portion of the field, those heroes who, unwearied, are striving day and night to attain superior knowledge.

Now it seemed I needed to explore that rabbit hole and the difference between ether and the sky.

Back in Chapter 11, the other English translations of Kumārajīva’s Chinese Lotus Sutra agreed with Murano on the difficult task. For example, the Modern Risshō Kōsei-kai translation offers:

If someone
Could grab hold of the sky
And, carrying it, travel about,
That would not be difficult.

Gene Reeves offered:

If someone
Took the sky in his hand
And wandered around with it,
That would not be difficult.

But even in that chapter there was a hint of dissent. Leon Hurvitz, who used both Kumārajīva’s Chinese translation and a Sanskrit compilation of the Lotus Sutra, offered:

If there should be a man
Who, holding open space in his hand,
Were to walk about with it,
Even that would not be difficult.

I was happy to leave that rabbit hole unexplored in Chapter 11, but Murano’s placement of the bodhisattvas in the “sky below this Sahā-World” was not supported by the other translators of Kumārajīva.

The 1975 Risshō Kōsei-kai translation has the bodhisattvas “dwelling in [infinite] space below this sahā-world.” A footnote for “[infinite] space” offered this:

Sanskrit ākāśa (space, ether) is often used as a synonym for śūnyatā (void).

Burton Watson has the bodhisattvas “dwelling in the world of empty space underneath the sahā world.”

None of the translators of Kumārajīva’s Chinese Lotus Sutra has the bodhisattvas dwelling in the sky.

In one of the side tunnels of this rabbit hole I found a nugget of information that offered one possible reason why Murano chose the word sky.

In Japanese, the five elements of physical existence are called godai.

Hisao Inagaki’s “A Dictionary of Japanese Buddhist Terms” (1989) explains godai in these terms:

Godai ‘The five great (elements)’; also godaishu ‘the five great seeds’; the five elements which constitute things in the world: (1) chidai, the earth element; (2) suidai , the water element; (3) kadai, the fire element; (4) fūdai, the wind element; and (5) kūdai, the space element.

The 1965 Japanese English Buddhist Dictionary (Daitō Shuppansha publisher) offers this definition of godai:

Godai pañca mahābhūtāni. The five elements. I. The five elements which are believed to be the components of all forms of matter: the earth-element (pṛthivī-dhātu), water-element (ap-dhātu), fire-element (tejo-dhātu), wind-element (vāyu-dhātu), and air-element (ākāśa-dhātu).

The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism includes “sky” among the synonyms for ākāśa: “space” or “spatiality”; “sky,” and “ether.” In addition, there are several online resources that define “ākāśa-dhātu” as the element of “sky or space.” See here and here and here.  So Murano’s choice of “sky” rather than the empty space other translators used is defensible.

Personally, I’m disappointed that the home of these bodhisattvas is a void beneath this world. I enjoyed the idea that these bodhisattvas were in the sky. I’ve never been to Australia, but I imagined these great bodhisattvas in the sky would be quite a spectacle.

Next: The Color, Smell and Taste of the Dharma

This is another in a series of weekly blog posts comparing and contrasting the Sanskrit and Chinese Lotus Sutra translations.

Beyond the question of whether the chapter seeks to help ordinary bodhisattvas, there are only minor differences between H. Kern’s Peaceful Life chapter and the English translations of Kumārajīva’s Peaceful Practices chapter.

For example, at the conclusion of the first section of gāthās, Kern has:

24. Let the sage first, for some time, coerce his thoughts, exercise meditation with complete absorption, and correctly perform all that is required for attaining spiritual insight, and then, after rising (from his pious meditation), preach with unquailing mind.

25. The kings of this earth and the princes who listen to the law protect him. Others also, both laymen (or burghers) and Brahmans, will be found together in his congregation.

Senchu Murano’s translation of Kumārajīva’s Chinese has similar language:

A Bodhisattva will be peaceful,
And free from timidity
If he stays in a quiet room
For some time,
Recollects the Dharma correctly,
Understands the Dharma
According to the meanings of it,
And then emerges
From his dhyāna-concentration,
And leads kings, princes,
Common people and brahmanas
By expounding this sūtra to them.

But Murano concludes this section of gāthās with:

Mañjuśrī, all this is the first set of things
That the Bodhisattva should do
Before he expounds the Sūtra
Of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma
In the world after [my extinction].

All of the English translations of Kumārajīva’s Chinese offer this summary graph at the conclusion of these gāthās. For example, Gene Reeves offers:

Mañjuśrī, this is called the first teaching
In which bodhisattvas should dwell at peace,
Enabling the, in future generations,
To teach the Dharma Flower Sutra.

In the prose section immediately following these gāthās, Kern has:

Further, Mañjuśrī, the Bodhisattva Mahāsattva who, after the complete extinction of the Tathāgata at the end of time, the last period, the last five hundred years, when the true law is in a state of decay, is going to propound this Dharmaparyāya, must be in a peaceful state (of mind) and then preach the law, whether he knows it by heart or has it in a book. In his sermon he will not be too prone to carping at others, not blame other preaching friars, not speak scandal nor propagate scandal.

All of the English translations of Kumārajīva’s Chinese skip this point of “whether he knows it by heart or has it in a book.” In Murano’s translation, we get:

“Second, Mañjuśrī! A Bodhisattva-mahāsattvas who wishes to expound this sūtra in the age of the decline of the teachings after my extinction should perform the following peaceful practices. When he expounds or reads this sūtra, he should not point out the faults of other persons or sūtras.

In comparing the translations, Kern’s translation often has additional details.

Here’s how Murano’s translation of Kumārajīva’s Chinese begins the second section of gāthās:

The Bodhisattva should wish
To make all living beings peaceful,
And then expound the Dharma to them.
He should make a seat in a pure place,
Apply ointment to his skin,
Wash dirt and dust off himself,
Wear a new and undefiled robe,
Clean himself within and without,
Sit on the seat of the Dharma peacefully,
And then expound the Dharma in answer to questions.

Kern renders this same scene with much more detail:

26. The wise man is always at ease, and in that state he preaches the law, seated on an elevated pulpit which has been prepared for him on a clean and pretty spot.

27. He puts on a clean, nice, red robe, dyed with good colors, and a black woolen garment and a long undergarment;

28. Having duly washed his feet and rubbed his head and face with smooth ointments, he ascends the pulpit, which is provided with a footbank and covered with pieces of fine cloth of various sorts and sits down.

29. When he is thus seated on the preacher’s pulpit and all who have gathered round him are attentive, he proceeds to deliver many discourses, pleasing by variety, before monks and nuns,

Again, as pointed out repeatedly in this comparison of Kern’s translation of an 11th century Sanskrit document and Kumārajīva’s fifth century Chinese version of the Lotus Sutra, the details may be different but the message remains the same.

Next: Ether and the Sky