Edward Conze spent his academic career studying and translating the Sanskrit Perfection of Wisdom literature, and his work continues to be the standard for the English-speaking audience. Paired with his other major work (The Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom), Perfect Wisdom: The Short Prajnaparamita Texts serves as a broad survey of these texts in English. … Continue reading Perfect Wisdom: The Short Prajnaparamita Texts (Conze)
Tag: chinese
An Introduction to the Middle-Length Agama
The Middle-Length Agama (MA) is Taisho No. 26, which spans 60 fascicles and 388 pages of the Taisho Daizokyo, Vol. 1. To put this in perspective, a page of Taisho prose typically translates to 1,500 words of English, so a complete translation of MA will probably be 600,000-700,000 words in length. In addition to this … Continue reading An Introduction to the Middle-Length Agama
Book Review: The Diamond Sutra (Red Pine)
Red Pine's The Diamond Sutra: Text and Commentaries Translated from Sanskrit and Chinese is a book that I recommend to readers who want to explore the various Diamond Sutra translations and exegesis that remains untranslated today. In this book, Red Pine presents a translation of the sutra based on his studies of the Sanskrit and … Continue reading Book Review: The Diamond Sutra (Red Pine)
T235. Kumārajīva’s Diamond Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra
Thus I have heard: One time, the Buddha was at Anāthapiṇḍada Park in Jeta Grove near Śrāvastī with a congregation of 1,250 great bhikṣus. When it was time to eat, the Bhagavān put on his robes and took his bowl into the great city of Śrāvastī to ask for food. Having gone from place to place in that city asking [for food], he returned to his dwelling. After he finished eating his meal, he put away his robes and bowl, washed his feet, prepared a seat, and sat down. [continued ... ]
Progress Report
Things have been busy as I juggle a number of different projects in addition to my translation work. I'm still working on a re-release of Kumārajīva's Diamond Sutra in English, having taken a break from it to draft an English translation of Mañjuśrī's Teaching of the Perfection of Wisdom from Xuanzang's Chinese. I've decided that … Continue reading Progress Report
Progress Report: the Diamond Sūtra
The past two weeks, I've been working on my new edition of Kumārajīva's Diamond Sūtra. This critical translation will be as accurate and readable as I can make it. My concerns as a translator of a text like this are twofold: It needs to readable, modern English. It needs to represent as closely as possible … Continue reading Progress Report: the Diamond Sūtra
A New Start: 20 Years Later
It's been a little more than 20 years since I first laid eyes on a volume of the Taisho Daizokyo as a young student at Ohio State University. I had begun to teach myself to read Chinese because of my frustration with how much one translation of the Dao De Jing varied from the next. … Continue reading A New Start: 20 Years Later
Dharma Pearls 