APPENDIX:
LOST IN TRANSLATION

CH’AN’S CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK IS ALMOST ENTIRELY absent in the literature of Zen in English—whether in books about Zen, books by Zen roshis presenting their teachings, or translations of the original Ch’an literature from ancient China (many done by Zen teachers). From this it follows that the conceptual world of original Ch’an must be also absent in contemporary Zen teaching and practice, that direct transmission outside of texts. The absence of original Ch’an in books about Zen cannot be shown beyond the simple statement of the fact (to prove a negative here would require citing the entire literature). However, it can be documented in the translations of original Ch’an texts, and that is the project of this Appendix.

Translators of Ch’an texts have not understood the conceptual framework of original Ch’an (not surprising for the early translators, as they were our culture’s first encounter with a radically different way of thinking). And so, they have not recognized key philosophical concepts or understood how to translate them—whether in the terminology itself, or in how those concepts infuse the language more generally. These clearly defined and empirical concepts were either untranslated or translated with a mélange of vague and often meaninglessly abstract terms that often introduce metaphysical assumptions found in Indian Buddhism or Western philosophy. But metaphysical dimensions of any kind are entirely foreign to empirically based Ch’an understanding. Remarkably, translators also routinely use different terms to translate the same Chinese concept, even in a single passage. And to compound this, there is a general failure to understand translation’s task to respect original texts by rendering them on their own terms with precision and literary sensitivity. Instead, we often find loose paraphrase and restatement according to translators’ unrecognized assumptions and misunderstandings about the nature of Ch’an.

The original texts cited in this book are a tiny sampling generally chosen to represent the full chronological sweep of the tradition, and also taken primarily from the most prominent figures, those who exist in English translations that have exerted substantial influence on American Zen’s understanding of itself. Comparisons of those translations with the more philosophically accurate translations given in this book (all of which are my own) reveal how the earlier translations misrepresent Ch’an’s native cosmology. These comparative translations appear below in this Appendix. They are referenced with endnote numbers in the text. When multiple translations are listed, they appear in chronological order, to give a sense of how translators either repeated or differed from earlier strategies. The numbers following translators’ names give page numbers for the citations in the source texts. If more than one text is referenced for a single translator, the page number is preceded by the number of the text as given in the list of source texts, which appears after the Appendix.

1. Influential translations of the Taoist classics, root-source of Ch’an’s conceptual framework, also misrepresent Taoism’s foundational concepts. In translating , they inevitably impose a vague metaphysical realm wholly foreign to Taoism and Ch’an, using terms like not being and nothing.

2. Suzuki (3: 196): “see into nothingness.” He then goes on to explain this nothingness as a state in which “not a thing is,” suggesting a vaguely metaphysical realm completely foreign to Ch’an.

3. This cosmological/ontological sense of appears often in Ch’an texts, but it is generally lost in translation, replaced by such terms as “mind,” “consciousness,” “conceptual consciousness,” “thought,” “meaning,” “secret meaning,” “cardinal meaning,” “truly important.”

4. Blofeld (106):

So if I now state that there are no phenomena and no Original Mind, you will begin to understand something of the intuitive Dharma silently conveyed to Mind with Mind.

Here is a strange metaphysics having nothing to do with Ch’an or the original text. It is the translation, and not the original, making the assertion that reality both empirical and mental somehow doesn’t exist. The distortion is only compounded in the claim that this non-existence is the essential insight of Ch’an, the “Dharma silently conveyed.” This is the kind of incomprehensibility that is so often presented as a Zen essence the intuiting of which represents enlightenment.

5. (“Absence”) is never discussed in its Taoist sense as a cosmological/ontological concept in English-language books by modern Zen teachers. And in modern translations of Ch’an texts, is never translated in that native Taoist sense. It is often left untranslated. Sometimes it is simply left in its Japanese pronunciation mu (see this page f.), which erases the concept entirely (and also represents an act of cultural appropriation, presenting Chinese Ch’an as Japanese). And sometimes it is translated as “no/not.” “No/not” is a common meaning for , and so is sometimes correct. But this translation is very often used when the term is clearly meant in its philosophical sense, and when the word is meant to have both meanings simultaneously, which is very often the case in an array of crucial philosophical terms, as we will see. When recognized as a philosophical concept, it is translated with terms like “non-being,” “non-existence,” “void,” all of which introduce a metaphysical realm familiar to Indian Buddhism, but that has nothing to do with Ch’an’s radical empiricism.

6. The Chinese title of the Mind Sutra is , which is generally mistranslated into English as the Heart Sutra. means “heart” and “mind” as a single entity (see this page), and “heart” alone has apparently been chosen for emotional appeal. But in Ch’an, should almost always be translated “mind” because the emphasis is on consciousness empty of all contents, rather than emotions. And indeed, the Mind Sutra focuses with great concision on Absence/emptiness as the essential nature of mind that must be understood for awakening.

The poem begins with a long incantation on emptiness (), including lines like:

This beautiful world of things,

this world is no different than emptiness,

and emptiness no different than this world,

this world exactly emptiness,

emptiness exactly this world.

Our perceptions and thoughts, actions and distinctions:

they too are all like this.

In translations, this emptiness is widely assumed to have the kind of metaphysical implications it would have in Indian Buddhism, suggesting everything is illusory, etc. But in its native Taoist framework, emptiness is synonymous with Absence, which makes the sutra’s proposition quite precise and empirical.

In addition to emptiness, the other repeated term in this passage is (se). In the numerous existing translations, is always translated as “form,” hence translations like this by Roshi Robert Aitken, which is virtually the same as other translations by people like D. T. Suzuki or Red Pine: “form is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form; / form is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly form.”

Such translations invest the Mind Sutra with an impossibly vague metaphysics that typifies Indian Buddhism, and that had little appeal to the empirical-minded Chinese, for form can only be read as an abstract metaphysical concept that somehow shapes or informs the physical realm. But in fact, means “color” or “beauty/appearance,” as in a beautiful and even seductive woman. Hence, the sense is very physical and tangible and sensual: “this beautiful world of things,” or perhaps “the beautiful things of this world.”

The emptiness sequence is followed by the even more incantatory sequence referenced in this note, where replaces (“emptiness”) as the rhythmic drumbeat. The Chinese also means “no/not,” that simple grammatical function word. As we see again and again, that double meaning is often exploited in philosophical concepts, and here it allows to be read throughout either in its simple meaning of “not” or in its cosmological/ontological meaning, “Absence.” Reading as “not,” the passage reads as a series of negations, which is how translators have always rendered it and which gives the following in Aitken’s translation:

Therefore, in emptiness there is no form, no sensation, thought, impulse, consciousness;

no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind;

no color, sound, smell, taste, touch, object of thought;

no realm of sight to no realm of thought;

no ignorance and also no ending of ignorance

to no old age and death and also no ending of old age and death

But read only this way, it again describes some kind of imagined metaphysical realm that is perhaps known through awakening and is more true than the physical world. The empirically minded Chinese would have had no patience for such claims.

Hence, we are encouraged to read as the this-worldly Taoist concept of Absence, the physical world seen as a single generative tissue. This reading is also suggested because between the poem’s “emptiness” section and “Absence” section, there is a sentence full of negations in which the more common negation word is used. So the sudden switch to rather than continuing with suggests that we read as “Absence.” And further: the more this passage is read as poetic incantation—and the Mind Sutra is routinely chanted by Ch’an practitioners—the more resonates as “Absence.” This empiricist and incantatory reading gives lines like my translation in the main text that is referenced by this note:

And so, in emptiness this beautiful world of things is Absence,

perceptions Absence, thoughts, actions, distinctions,

Absence eyes and ears, nose and tongue, self and meaning and ch’i-mind itself,

Absence this beautiful dharma-world,

its color and sound, smell and taste and touch,

Absence the world of sight

and even the world of ch’i-mind, its meanings and distinctions,

Absence Absence-wisdom

and Absence Absence-wisdom extinguished,

Absence old-age unto death

and Absence old-age unto death extinguished.

The poetic effectiveness of the passage, as it would have been read by the ancient Chinese masters, is how the two readings exist simultaneously. And in fact, the two are complementary, for when the world is seen as Absence, there are indeed no individuated things as when is read as “not,” making the sequence a list of negations.

7. Blofeld (34):

Mind in itself is not mind, yet neither is it no-mind. To say that Mind is no-mind implies something existent.

Here we see Ch’an’s conceptual approach again replaced by a mélange of Indian Buddhism and Western philosophy, for the translation posits mind as something “non-existent,” as somehow transcendental. But that seems barely significant compared to the complete erasure of the foundational concepts Absence and Presence. (The second meaning of as “no/not” operates here, but only secondarily.)

Similarly, to take another random but representative sample, one among countless, here is another passage from Blofeld’s translation (106): “Once more, ALL phenomena are basically without existence, though you cannot now say that they are NON-EXISTENT. Karma having arisen does not thereby exist; karma destroyed does not thereby cease to exist.”

Translated accurately within its native philosophical framework and respecting the essential Ch’an spirit of dismantling all concepts, the passage reads like this: “The dharma of all things is not fundamentally Presence, and it’s also not Absence. What has arisen from the origin-tissue is not Presence, and what has vanished back into the origin-tissue is not Absence.”

This is challenging philosophically, but the Blofeld version can only be described as wisdom-nonsense. In it, Ch’an’s foundational ideas are absent and/or misshapen, and a kind of metaphysics is introduced into this strictly empirical ontology/cosmology. The translation sees Ch’an through the lens of Indian Buddhism (when Ch’an in fact dismantles the ideas of that tradition), not just with the metaphysics in which nothing exists but also with the complete mistranslation of as the trendy “karma” when it means “source” or, more fully: “origin-tissue.”

8. Translations of this dramatically direct declaration (Blythe, Shibayama, Sekida, Aitken, Yamada) are another striking example of Ch’an’s native concepts lost in translation, for they all leave (“Absence”) untranslated, choosing instead to render it as the Japanese pronunciation of the word: mu. (Again, to say nothing of the cultural appropriation involved.) Thomas Cleary translates it simply as “no.”

9. There are many translations of this widely influential poem. The early translators R. H. Blythe and Arthur Waley realized there are philosophical dimensions in this passage, but they introduced a metaphysical realm of “non-being,” and otherwise didn’t understand or render what the Chinese was saying:

Blythe (1: ch. 3): So too with Being and non-Being.

Waley (298): Being is an aspect of Non-being; Non-being is an aspect of Being.

Suzuki (2: 81–2) changes the terminology, but not the imposed metaphysical realm:

What is is the same with what is not,

What is not is the same with what is.

Later translators, including Watson and a host of Zen teachers, generally followed one of these two strategies. One noteworthy variation, with its own version of metaphysical imposition, is Andy Ferguson’s recent translation (502):

Existence is but emptiness,

Emptiness, existence.

10. Blofeld (43) here imposes the same metaphysics as Ferguson (above):

If only you will avoid concepts of existence and non-existence in regard to absolutely everything, you will then perceive the DHARMA.

As Blofeld’s translation is an influential antecedent, it is perhaps part of the reason for the assumptions that led to later mistranslations like Ferguson’s.

11. This poem from No-Gate’s Forward offers another example of how the Taoist ontology/cosmology of Absence and Presence is erased in translation, for translators all take to mean simply “no,” as in Roshi Robert Aitken’s version (1: 4):

The Great Way has no gate;

there are a thousand different paths;

once you pass through the barrier,

you walk the universe alone.

The other translations are all very close to this. And none translate Absence’s complement, “Presence,” where it appears in the second line. But translated in its native philosophical framework, the poem looks like this:

The great Way is a single Absence-gate

here on a thousand roads of Presence.

Once through this gateway, you wander

all heaven and earth in a single stride.

12. In the two primary translations, the cosmological/ontological concept is lost when is translated as “void” (Sasaki 165) and “no fixed form” (Watson 3: 25–6):

If the mind is void, wherever you are, you are emancipated.

And because this single mind has no fixed form, it is everywhere in a state of emancipation.

13. Translations of tzu-jan, a precisely defined concept in Taoist/Ch’an thought, vary widely and in considerable confusion, including: “what we are,” “So-in-itself,” “nature,” “naturalness,” “genuine character,” “own nature,” “Supreme Enlightenment,” “fruition,” “spontaneous,” “familiar.”

14. Yampolsky and Red Pine (this passage is not included in the text used by Cleary and McRae) lose the Taoist cosmological/ontological dimensions of the awakening that Prajna-Able is describing when they translate (“ch’i-thought/mind”: this page) simply as “cardinal meaning” and “truly important” (italicized):

Yampolsky (132): “If you do not know the original mind, studying the Dharma is to no avail. If you know the mind and see its true nature, you then awaken to the cardinal meaning.”

Red Pine (2: 8): “Unless you know your own mind, studying the Dharma is useless. But once you know your mind and see your nature, you understand what is truly important.”

15. The major translators of Ch’an texts use a startling range of terms to translate (inner-pattern), all vague abstractions giving no hint of the actual philosophical concept: “reason,” “principle,” “truth,” “true principle,” “inner truth.” In a footnote explaining , which he has translated as “Reason,” Suzuki (2: 73) gives these alternate meanings for the concept: “Higher Intuition,” “Conduct,” “Practical Living.”

16. Translators muddle these key passages with inaccuracy and vague abstraction:

Suzuki (1: 181–2): “in silent communion with the principle [“Reason” in Suzuki’s earlier translation (2: 72)] itself…free from conceptual discrimination…understand the truth…the wise.”

Thomas Cleary (1: 5–6): “tacitly merging with the Way…[untranslated]…the true principle is contrary to the mundane…heroes of the Way.”

J. C. Cleary (34–5): “This is tacit accord with the real inner truth…without discrimination…using inner truth…the wise awaken to the real.”

Red Pine (2: 3–4) “complete and unspoken agreement with reason…[untranslated]…choose reason over custom…the wise wake up.”

Foster (4): “Complete, ineffable accord with the Principle…without discrimination…going with the Principle…the wise awaken to the truth.”

Foster offers a suggestive but still vague and inaccurate footnote: “Principle (li) is a central concept in classical Chinese thought, where it refers to the cosmic order.”

17. Dragon-Lake’s final question (“You just saw the inner-pattern of Way. Tell me, what is it?”) is reduced by translators to the following variations, several later translations apparently copying the distinctive error of the first:

Blythe (199): “What have you realized?”

Shibayama (201): “What realization do you have?”

Sekida (93): “What sort of realization did you have?”

Aitken (1: 177): “What truth did you discern?”

Thomas Cleary (3: 132): “What principle have you seen?”

Yamada (136): “What have you realized?”

18. For comparison:

Suzuki (1: 82): “the reason in its essence is pure which we call the Dharma”

Thomas Cleary (1: 7): “the truth of the purity of nature.” [Truth here translates (dharma), (inner-pattern) is untranslated.]

J. C. Cleary (36): “The Dharma, the Teaching of Reality, is based on the inner truth of the inherent purity [of all things’ true identity].”

[bracketed clarification is Cleary’s]

Red Pine (7): “The Dharma is the truth that all natures are pure.”

Foster (5): “The principle of essential purity is the Dharma.”

Broughton (11): “The practice of according with Dharma, the principle of intrinsic purity is viewed as Dharma.”

19. As we have seen with so many root concepts, (“dark-enigma”) is often left untranslated, or is translated with a mélange of misleading and falsely mystifying terms in English (the word-choice, again, often changing within a single text), such as:

Suzuki: “deep mystery”

Waley: “mystery”

Blythe: “deep mystery”

Shibayama: untranslated, “various profound philosophies,” “underbrush”

Sasaki: “mysterious principle,” “deep and mysterious”

Sekida: untranslated, “all the secrets of the world,” “profundity”

Aitken: untranslated, “abstruse doctrines,” “darkness of abandoned grasses” [following Shibayama]

Thomas Cleary: “mystic discernment,” “the hidden”

Watson: “Dark Meaning,” “secret meaning,” “profound and abstruse,” “dark in entity”

Yamada: untranslated, “abstruse doctrine,” “grasses” [following Shibayama and Aitken]

20. In the following translations that thoroughly misrepresented the original, the root concepts are italicized, appearing in this order: dharma (), existence-tissue (), dark-enigma (), existence-tissue (), emptiness (), dharma (), tzu-jan ().

Suzuki (2: 80):

If the mind retains its oneness,

The ten thousand things are of one Suchness.

When the deep mystery of one Suchness is fathomed,

All of a sudden we forget the external entanglements:

When the ten thousand things are viewed in their oneness,

We return to the origin and remain what we are.

Waley (297):

If the mind makes no distinctions all Dharmas become one.

Let the One with its mystery blot out all memory of complications.

Let the thought of the Dharmas as All-One bring you to the So-in-itself.

Blythe (1: ch. 3):

If the mind makes no discriminations,

All things are as they really are.

In the deep mystery of this “things as they are,”

We are released from our relations to them.

When all things are seen “with equal mind,”

They return to their nature.

Watson (2:150):

When the mind refrains from differentiation,

the ten thousand phenomena are a single Suchness,

a single Suchness dark in entity,

lumpish, forgetful of entanglements.

View the ten thousand phenomena as equal

and all will revert to naturalness.

Foster (14):

If you don’t conjure up differences,

all things are of one kind.

In the essential mystery of identity,

eternal and ephemeral are forgotten.

Seeing the things of the world evenly

restores their genuine character.

Ferguson (501):

If the mind does not go astray

The myriad dharmas are but One,

And the One encompasses the Mystery.

In stillness, conditioned existence is forgotten,

And the myriad things are seen equally,

Naturally returning to each one’s own nature.

21. For comparison:

Sasaki (183): “…grasp and use, but never name—this is called the ‘mysterious principle.’ ”

Watson (3: 30): “…get hold of this thing and use it, but don’t fix a label to it. This is what I call the Dark Meaning.”

22. For comparison:

Sasaki (206): “in control of every circumstance…this very man of the Way, dependent upon nothing…mysterious principle of all the buddhas.”

Watson (3: 40): “to master the environment…a man of the Way who has learned to lean on nothing…the secret meaning of the buddhas.”

23. For comparison:

Sasaki (247): “the buddhadharma is deep and mysterious”

Watson (3: 56): “The Dharma of the buddhas is profound and abstruse”

24. For comparison:

Blythe (303): “Getting rid of your illusions and penetrating into the truth…”

Shibayama (316): “To inquire after the Truth, groping your way through the underbrush, is for the purpose of seeing into your nature.”

[Shibayama repeats his mistaken translation of (dark-enigma) as “underbrush,” and Aitken and Yamada again follow.]

Sekida (131): “You leave no stone unturned to explore profundity, simply to see into your true nature.”

Aitken (1: 278): “You make your way through the darkness of abandoned grasses in a single-minded search for your self-nature.”

Thomas Cleary (3: 204): “Brushing aside confusion to search out the hidden is only for the purpose of seeing essence.”

Yamada (220): “The purpose of making one’s way through grasses and asking a master about the subtle truth is only to realize one’s self-nature.”

25. It’s important to note that here, as normal in classical Chinese, there is no you/your in the original. Personal pronouns like this, necessary in English and rare in classical Chinese, create an illusory self separate from everything else, a proposition that exactly contradicts the liberation described in this passage.

26. Wu-wei is generally translated with some variation on the idea of “non-action.” Although seemingly literal, that translation completely misrepresents the concept, turning it into a kind of monkish passivity. In fact, the import is quite the opposite: action that is selfless, spontaneous, and even wild. When there is some awareness of the philosophical concept, the translations fail to render the concept at all: “the uncreated” (Suzuki), “nameless” (Cleary), “the sublime” (Red Pine). In addition, translators often use starkly different terms to translate the same wu-wei, even when it occurs within the same passage. Specific examples can be found in the next two notes.

27. Words translating wu-wei are italicized:

Suzuki (1: 180): “serene and not-acting”

Thomas Cleary (1: 5): “silently not-doing”

J. C. Cleary (34): “still and nameless”

Red Pine (3: 3): “Without moving, without effort”

Foster (4): “still, effortless”

28. In this passage, which in the original Bodhidharma text comes only a few paragraphs below the passage noted above, the translators all use entirely different terms (again italicized) to translate the same wu-wei:

Suzuki (1: 182): “Their minds abide serenely in the uncreated.”

Thomas Cleary (1: 12): “their minds at ease, without striving”

J. C. Cleary (35): “Pacifying mind without contrived activity.”

Red Pine (3: 5): “They fix their minds on the sublime.”

Foster (4): “Peaceful at heart, with nothing to do.”

29. For comparison:

Suzuki (1: 199): “The wise are non-active.”

Waley (297): “Those who know most, do least.”

Blythe (1: 83): “The wise man does nothing.”

Watson (2: 150): “Wise men take no special action.”

Ferguson (501): “The wise do not move.”

30. The standard translations of the final sentence contradict what’s come before and introduce Dhyana Buddhism’s focus on cultivating a mental state of nirvana-tranquility, apparently because the translators assume that Ch’an is essentially a form of Indian dhyana Buddhism. Their misreading of the original mistakenly describes thoughts as a violation of dhyana purity and stillness, thereby proposing exactly what Prajna-Able is arguing against here. For him, mind is “original source-tissue purity” even when preoccupied with “illusory thoughts” that “hide” the world from us.

Yampolsky (139): “If someone speaks of “viewing purity,” [then I would say] that man’s nature is of itself pure, and because of false thoughts True Reality is obscured.”

[bracketed clarification is Yampolsky’s]

Thomas Cleary (2: 35): “If you speak of fixating on purity, people’s essential nature is originally pure; it is by false thoughts that they cover reality as such…”

McRae (59): “If one is to concentrate on purity, then [realize that because] our natures are fundamentally pure, it is through false thoughts that suchness is covered up.”

[bracketed clarification is McRae’s]

Red Pine (2: 14–5): “If someone says to contemplate purity, your nature is already pure. It’s because of deluded thoughts that reality is obscured.”

31. For comparison:

Yampolsky (139): “ ‘Thought’ means thinking of the original nature of True Reality. True Reality is the substance of thoughts; thoughts are the function of True Reality. If you give rise to thoughts from your self-nature, then, although you see, hear, perceive, and know, you are not stained by the manifold environments, and are always free.”

Thomas Cleary (2: 33): “ ‘Thought’ means thought of the original nature of reality as such. Reality as such is the substance of thought, thought is the function of reality as such. The intrinsic nature of reality as such produces thought. [Cleary translated from a different text that has additional material here]…the essential nature of reality as such produces thought. Though the six senses have perception and cognition, the real essential nature is not affected by myriad objects; it is always independent.”

McRae (59): “Thought is to think of the fundamental nature of suchness. Suchness is the essence of thought, thought is the function of suchness. Thought is activated in the self-nature of suchness…[McRae translated from a different text that has additional material here]…thoughts are activated from the self-nature of suchness. Although the six sensory faculties possess perceptual cognition, they do not defile the myriad realms. And yet the true nature is always autonomous.”

Red Pine (2: 13): “And ‘thought’ is thought about the original nature of reality. Reality is the body of thought, and thought is the function of reality. When your nature gives rise to thought, even though you sense something, remain free and unaffected by the world of objects.”

32. For comparison:

Watson (1: 94): “Let your mind wander in simplicity, blend your spirit with the vastness, follow along with things the way they are, and make no room for personal views…”

Graham (90): “Let your heart roam in the flavourless, blend your energies with the featureless, in the spontaneity of your accord with other things leave no room for selfishness…”

33. The final clause (“Absence’s own doing/action [wu-wei] wandering boundless and free through the selfless unfolding of things”) becomes in the standard translations:

Watson (1: 87): “…they wander free and easy in the service of inaction.”

Graham (90): “…go rambling through the lore in which there’s nothing to do”

34. For comparison:

Sasaki (199): “return to impermanence”

Watson (3: 36): “headed for the impermanence that awaits us all”

35. Blofeld (80):

If you could prevent all conceptual movements of thought and still your thinking-processes, naturally there would be no error left in you. Therefore it is said: “When thoughts arise, then do all things arise. When thoughts vanish, then do all things vanish.”

Here the Taoist/Ch’an conceptual framework is lost in the first sentence when tzu-jan is translated simply and inaccurately as “naturally,” and “unborn” becomes “prevent.” This and the absence of “dharma” makes the quoted saying sound like it is some kind of idealism in which the physical world is a creation of the human mind. This metaphysics pervades the Blofeld translation—as in “pure Mind, the source of everything” (this page), which seems to be proposing a universal God-consciousness or again some kind of idealism in which physical reality is a creation of the human mind. But the text actually says something like “this pure-clarity source-tissue mind of origins,” referring to empty-mind as generative Absence. Blofeld’s imposed metaphysics is quite the opposite of Ch’an principles. As is the forced struggle to “prevent” thought, and also the judgmental and moralistic “no error”—both exactly what Yellow-Bitterroot Mountain is arguing against.

36. Blofeld (130) here misses both of the big concepts, “non-birth” and “tzu-jan occurrence.” And once more, falsely assuming “no-birth” somehow refers to “conceptual thought and intellectual processes” not mentioned in the original (hence his brackets), he imposes dhyana quietism on Ch’an (again, the opposite of what Yellow-Bitterroot Mountain proposes):

When [conceptual thought and intellectual processes] no longer trouble you, you will unfailingly reach Supreme Enlightenment.

37. Compare Blofeld (127):

Only when your minds cease dwelling upon anything whatsoever will you come to an understanding of the true way of Zen.

38. Compare Poceski (312):

When (a person) comes to apprehend (the true nature of) the mind and the external objects, then there is no more arising of deluded thinking. When deluded thinking is not created anymore, that is precisely the acceptance (of reality based on cognition) of the uncreated nature of things. It originally exists, and it exists in the present moment, not being something that is dependent on spiritual cultivation or sitting meditation. When there is no more (attachment to) practice and sitting, that is precisely the untainted meditation of the Tathagata (Buddha).

39. Other translations leave (Absence) untranslated, rendering it simply as the Japanese pronunciation: mu. (This is true for all instances of in No-Gate Gateway, though it is clearly the central concept of the book.) And so, they lose the cosmological/ontological dimensions of what is involved in this awakening.

The crucial concept of tzu-jan in this phrase (“nurture the simplicity of occurrence appearing of itself [tzu-jan]”) is left out in all other translations of No-Gate Gateway, most done by modern Zen roshis, two of whom repeat Blythe’s mistaken “fruition.” Terms used to translate tzu-jan are italicized.

Blythe (32): “After a certain period of time, this striving will come to fruition naturally…”

Shibayama (19): “when your efforts come to fruition”

Sekida (28): “and when the time comes” [tzu-jan untranslated]

Aitken (1:9): [entire phrase untranslated]

Thomas Cleary (3: 2): “Washing away your previous misconceptions and misperceptions, eventually it becomes thoroughly familiar”

Yamada (12): “After a certain period of such efforts, Mu will come to fruition”