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How Do You Say "Anuttarasamyaksabodhi" in English?Author(s): Roger Corless

Source: Buddhist-Christian Studies, Vol. 9 (1989), pp. 237-239Published by: University of Hawai'i PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1390015Accessed: 27/01/2009 05:11

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NEWS AND NOTES

How Do You SayAnuttarasamyaksambodhin English?Roger CorlessDuke University

A fundamental obstacle to Buddhist-Christiandialogue is the lack of termswhich cross the traditions. Christianity has grown up in the western hemi-sphere, and it has developed a technicalvocabulary n western anguages.Like-wise, mutatismutsndis, forBuddhism in the easternhemisphere.The lack of aprecise way to expressthe terms of one tradition in the language of the otherleads to incomprehensionat best and, at worst, total misunderstanding. It iseasy for Christiansto misunderstandBuddhism as Nihilism when funyata istranslatedas 'Nothingness' and for Buddhists to misunderstandChristianityasfsvaravsvda hen 'God' is translated as fsvara (and its equivalents, such as theChinese tzu-tsai t'ien). As a Buddhist whose nativelanguageis English, I wantto suggest a beginning to a solution of this enormous problem. Speakersofotherlanguages,whether easternorwestern,Buddhist orChristian,might wishto follow my lead in a mannersuitableto theirown situation.

When we try to bring a Buddhist term into English, we sometimes tryto doit in a manner similarto ko-i, the "extension of the meaning" by which theChinesegave a native term, usually Taoist,a Buddhist meaning. As a result, itwas some centuriesbefore the Chinese realizedthat, for instance, nirvanaandsamsarawere not like yin and yang, and that nirvanawas not non-being (wu).In a similarway,we speakin Englishof Buddhist "monksand nuns"; "the PaliCanon"; and so forth, "extending the meaning" of Christian ermsthat haveno equivalentin Buddhism.Even the terms "Buddhist" and "Buddhism" are suspect. "Are you a Bud-dhist?" we can ask in English. Try asking that in, say, Chinese, and you getsomething like "Do you cultivateaccording o the Buddha Dharma?" But thatis not what we mean when we ask, "What is your religion?" That is, appar-ently, a Christianquestion, and it does not appearto have a Buddhadharmicreply.That we do not notice this is nicelyillustratedby a recent issue of Zampa,the newsletter of KarmaTriyanaDharmachakran Woodstock, New York. Itbegan a readers' orum on the issue of: "When you areasked 'Are you a Bud-dhist?' do you avoid the question or do you answer truthfully?" NobodyBuddhist-ChtistianStudies9 (1989). ? by Universityof Hawaii Press.All rightsreserved.

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238 NEWS AND NOTESpointed out that the question could not be intelligibly expressed in Tibetan,and that it sounded suspiciously ike Matthew 10:32-33.At other times, English-language Buddhist terms take on the flavor of aTibetan "Nyingma versus Sarma" controversy,with the English language"Nyingmas" as the pioneer semi-agnostic academicsand the "Sarmas"as thenewer generation of scholar-practitioners. hus we find EdwardConze's "own-being" jostlingJeffreyHopkins's "inherent existence"forsvabh2va. he unin-structedgeneral readermay not realize that "the five heaps in their own-beingare empty" (Conze, BuddhistWlisdomBooks)and "the five aggregatesareempty of inherent existence" (Donald Lopez, TheHeartSutraExplained)retwo versionsof the same sentence.

Another source of confusion is the transferenceto the English-speakingworld of the cultural divisionsof the traditionalBuddhist world. Practitionersand/or academics tend to workprimarilywith, and think first in, one of themajor "canonical" (? ) languages, and pass on a receivedway of Anglicizingthose languages. Thus, Pali-basedBuddhistsand buddhologists tend to speakof bhavanaas "meditation," whereasTibetan-basedBuddhists and buddholo-gists prefer "practice"and Chinese-basedBuddhistsand buddhologists prefer"cultivate."The sophisticatedtranslation committees at some centers, whichare intended as aids to indegenization, unfortunatelytend to make the prob-lem worse, since the centerswork entirelywithin their own lineages.I suggest the following project for establishing the Dharma in the Englishlanguage.

1. Compile a list of Buddhist terms which appearin English dictionaries.Anotable feature of English is its hospitality to foreign words and its readiness otransliterate hem. "Buddha" and "nirvana"have been naturalized, "Dhar-ma" and "Sangha" are waiting on a linguistic Ellis Island, anuttara-samyaksambodhiill probablynevermake it past a visitor'svisa. The Chinesetried to receiveit, and came up with a barbariccompound of nine charactersbefore throwingit out in favorof cheng-chiieh. erms hat become English byreception into the dictionariesseem to shed their exotic diacritical dress. Itwould seem odd, except to a pedantic academiclike myself, to be alwayswrit-ing 'nirvana' nsteadof plain 'nirvana.'2. Compile a list of English equivalentsand transliterationsused by practicegroups, arranging he results by lineage. This partof the projectwould requireconsiderable aborand perhapsnot inconsiderable unding.

3. Then, soonerrather han later, arrangea workshopon translationequiva-lents, either in conjunction with the next Buddhist-Christianconference orautonomously, o begin the classificationof the results.Somethingthat we need to avoid is the tendency,even the obsession, amongcertain academicsand certainpracticegroups (guess who and which ) to trans-late one Buddhist technical term in a certainlanguage by one English word,now and for ever unto kotisof nayutas f lokadhtavahwithout end. This willneverdo. It assumes the svabh2vaf a certain wordin a certainlanguage, and

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