The logic of Buddhist philosophy

Re:The logic of Buddhist philosophy by tremols on Thursday May 08, 2014 @09:20AM (#7715084)

Much of the mysticism and misunderstandings about indian philosophy comes from a very bad habit in the translation of indian works where some words are left untranslated as to give them a magical-religious cool sounding sanskrit aura.

If koti means corner, there is no reason that 'koti' should appear in a translation instead of corner otherwise you are giving it a special importance that distracts from the text's true meaning. Almost every translation of indian philosophy suffers from this fetish for the sanskrit language and as beautiful as sanskrit is, it shouldn't contaminate the purpose of a translation.

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Re:The logic of Buddhist philosophy by 1stop on Thursday May 08, 2014 @09:29AM (#7715120)

I was under the impression this was done because the english translation loses some meaning or context.

The idea that every concept can be translated is probably a false one. Ideas are built on cultures, cultures are described by language you can't change one without changing another. So when describing an idea generated by a culture, using a secondary idea and secondary culture, you will lose things.

That is why (for example) nirvana, has a bunch of translations: awakening, calmness, relief, void/voidless, the light, nothingness, or (my favourite) phew. Because we don't have the context to properly describe that in the west (latin-germanic based languages), so we need a bunch of other concepts that kind of point at it.

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Re:The logic of Buddhist philosophy by kazagistar on Thursday May 08, 2014 @03:09PM (#7717050)

If a concept cannot be translated between languages, it seems likely that it cannot be translated properly between people either. Or do you mean directly translated? The concept of nirvana is ill defined if you cannot directly describe it, and can only point at it.

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Re:The logic of Buddhist philosophy by 1stop on Thursday May 08, 2014 @11:24PM (#7719153)

ill defined in one language, doesn't mean ill defined in another.

I'm saying language and culture are inextricably linked. And not 100% compatible with all other languages and cultures.

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Re:The logic of Buddhist philosophy by Daishiman on Thursday May 08, 2014 @02:13PM (#7716739)

The problem is that a lot of those words are only a rough translation, and if you want to understand the concepts more profoundly then you're going to need something more to get by.

The Buddhist Mahayana concept of "emptiness" requires at the very least a few paragraphs to have a grasp, at best a couple of books on your belt. Same with "concentration" (samadhi), "insight" (vipassana), "life-energy" (prana), and so on and so forth.

To the uninformed reader they certainly add that confusion, but for someone versed in Eastern philosophy it's essential that the original concepts be preserved.

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Re:The logic of Buddhist philosophy by valarauca1 on Thursday May 08, 2014 @10:58AM (#7715625)

I like how you are arguing this for sanskirt, that maintaining words or parses in an ancient dead language for eloquence, historical, cultural heritage is wrong. Yet you say nothing of the text doing the same thing for latin words or parses.

Seems like mild euro-centrism.

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