Source of Indra's Net?

[Zhen Li]

Aesthetics are important.

I happen to like 19th century translations with verse as verse. It's a matter of preference, and it also requires more skill on the part of the translator.

[Malcolm]

Aesthetics are important.

I happen to like 19th century translations with verse as verse. It's a matter of preference, and it also requires more skill on the part of the translator.

If you like clumsy, non-idiomatic translations, go for it.

Factually speaking however, you could never get the MMK into rhyme in English. You can't even really get into anything resembling a meter without doing violence to the text.

Go ahead, try. You will see what a dismal failure it is. Also, most of these 19th century translations are very, very, poor.

[Caoimhghín]

Go ahead, try.

Neither stopping, nor starting, nor ending.
Neither endless, nor single, nor many.
I salute he who taught, the Buddha Full-wrought,
of dependent origination.

I could go further.

[Caoimhghín]

This one is even more terrible.

No thing is it's own condition.
Conditioned by other? It isn't.
Neither in combination nor eschewing causation
No thing has ever arisen.

[Zhen Li]

This is really beyond the point and off topic. My comments regarding acceptability of translation are just a side note to a discussion about the Brahmajāla Sūtra. But the point is not that we should force something like the MMK into verse, just that we should produce localized English translations. In English, it is not localizable to produce a philosophical document in verse.

[Caoimhghín]

My apologies! I saw the opportunity for a limerick and took it. I love masterfully written verse, but my sheer immature enthusiasm for those delightfully whimsical rhythms, especially when coupled with lyrical content that does not correspond, I will admit that juxtaposition holds a special place in my heart.

But to topic!

[Malcolm]

Go ahead, try.

Neither stopping, nor starting, nor ending.
Neither endless, nor single, nor many.
I salute he who taught, the Buddha Full-wrought,
of dependent origination.

I could go further.

Your rendering is incorrect. it has only six terms, not eight:

Not ceasing, not arising,
not annihilated, not permanent,
not going, not coming,
not different, not the same,

And full wrought? What does that mean?

And how about pacification of proliferation?

Also the order, not ceasing, not arising, etc., is significant.

[Malcolm]

In English, it is not localizable to produce a philosophical document in verse.

Yes, and since there is really very little in Buddhist texts that are not of philosophical import...

Karikas and gathas should not be trivialized with awkward renderings to force them into some kind of metered, rhymed verse.

[Caoimhghín]

Go ahead, try.

Neither stopping, nor starting, nor ending.
Neither endless, nor single, nor many.
I salute he who taught, the Buddha Full-wrought,
of dependent origination.

I could go further.

Your rendering is incorrect. it has only six terms, not eight:

Not ceasing, not arising,
not annihilated, not permanent,
not going, not coming,
not different, not the same,

And full wrought? What does that mean?

And how about pacification of proliferation?

Also the order, not ceasing, not arising, etc., is significant.

I've been scolded once before for not staying on topic!

But yes, the auscipious cessation of hypostatization is missing. Similarly, as you noted, two terms from the beginning list are omitted for the rhyme.

I originally had it ending like

The goodly, I laud, the D.O. he taught,
for the ending of reification

But I decided, since the effort wasn't a serious proposal for a all-limerick MMK, that it was ultimately more amusing to have the first post end with a rhyme based on "dependent origination" itself.

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PS, and I forgot to add:

And full wrought? What does that mean?

"Full-wrought" it was happens when you try to squeeze "Fully Enlightened Buddha"/saṃbuddhas into 2 syllables and have it rhyme with "taught".

[Malcolm]

In other words, it is a fail.

Neither stopping, nor starting, nor ending.
Neither endless, nor single, nor many.
I salute he who taught, the Buddha Full-wrought,
of dependent origination.

I could go further.

Your rendering is incorrect. it has only six terms, not eight:

Not ceasing, not arising,
not annihilated, not permanent,
not going, not coming,
not different, not the same,

And full wrought? What does that mean?

And how about pacification of proliferation?

Also the order, not ceasing, not arising, etc., is significant.

I've been scolded once before for not staying on topic!

But yes, the auscipious cessation of hypostatization is missing. Similarly, as you noted, two terms from the beginning list are omitted for the rhyme.

I originally had it ending like

The goodly, I laud, the D.O. he taught,
for the ending of reification

But I decided, since the effort wasn't a serious proposal for a all-limerick MMK, that it was ultimately more amusing to have the first post end with a rhyme based on "dependent origination" itself.

---------
---------
---------
PS, and I forgot to add:

And full wrought? What does that mean?

"Full-wrought" it was happens when you try to squeeze "Fully Enlightened Buddha"/saṃbuddhas into 2 syllables and have it rhyme with "taught".

[Caoimhghín]

In other words, it is a fail.

Well, I think it did what it was intended to do brilliantly, namely, be a somewhat awkward and unworkable yet clearly recognizable limerick rendition of the opening.

[Zhen Li]

In English, it is not localizable to produce a philosophical document in verse.

Yes, and since there is really very little in Buddhist texts that are not of philosophical import...

Karikas and gathas should not be trivialized with awkward renderings to force them into some kind of metered, rhymed verse.

Actually, the majority of what appeals to the Buddhist laity throughout history and today are songs and narrative literature. What appeals to highly educated westerners is not necessarily what appeals to others. But you know very well the difference between the Buddhacarita or the Anuttara Bodhi hymn and the MMK. Again, this is beyond my point: which is not that there should be one form or another, but that the kind of closed mindedness to creativity that is often displayed stifles localization and makes what is fun to read and sing in one language dry in another—so, while I expressed my own preference, I have little care that you don't agree with it, that's not what is at stake. Moreover, my second point is that any kind of scholastic study of a text shouldn't be using a translation but the source language—translation is useful for scholars as an index only. Hardly anyone presents at a conference or publishes a paper in Buddhist studies citing a popular, let alone highly reputable, translation.

[Caoimhghín]

The wikipedia article gives source's for the "net" of Indra, but not necessarily "Indra's Net" as it is known.

It quotes the Atharvaveda 8.8.6

Vast indeed is the tactical net of great Indra, mighty of action and tempestuous of great speed. By that net, O Indra, pounce upon all the enemies so that none of the enemies may escape the arrest and punishment.

& 8.8.8

This great world is the power net of mighty Indra, greater than the great. By that Indra-net of boundless reach, I hold all those enemies with the dark cover of vision, mind and senses.

It then continues

The net was one of the weapons of the sky-god Indra, used to snare and entangle enemies.[16] The net also signifies magic or illusion.[17] According to Teun Goudriaan, Indra is conceived in the Rg Veda as a great magician, tricking his enemies with their own weapons, thereby continuing human life and prosperity on earth.[18] Indra became associated with earthly magic, as reflected in the term indrajalam, "Indra's Net", the name given to the occult practices magicians.[18] According to Goudriaan, the term indrajalam seems to originate in verse 8.8.8 from the Atharva Veda, of which Goudriaan gives a different translation:[19]
This world was the net of the great Sakra (Indra), of mighty size; by means of this net of Indra I envelop all those people with darkness.[19]
According to Goudriaan, the speaker pretends to use a weapon of cosmical size.[19] The net being referred to here
...was characterized there as the antariksa-, the intermediate space between heaven and earth, while the directions of the sky were the net's sticks (dandah) by means of which it was fastened to the earth. With this net Indra conquered all his enemies.

This does little to arrive at anything similar to a source for how Indra's Net is described in Buddhism.

[Caoimhghín]

And this is a copy-paste from the Chinese Buddhism Encyclopedia, implying that Indra's Net may have once been the reigns of Indra's chariot in the vedas?

Proto-Sāṃkhya and early Buddhism

The earliest materials from which this metaphor were drawn can be found throughout the oldest of India's works, the Vedic Saṃhitās, Brāhmaṇas, Upaniṣads, and Sūtras, so that "Indra's net" has its philosophical roots in early "proto-forms" of Samkhya, one of the six Hindu darshanas. Indeed, some scholars have speculated that Buddhism is itself a branch of these early forms of Sāṃkhya.
Cognition

The Sāṃkhya hermeneutics, associated with Yoga practices, teach that cognition is a vertical "protam" (the thread that runs vertically through a loom, the "warp"), and that phenomenal (i.e., spatial) nature is the dynamic, visible, horizontal "woof" or "weft" that shuttles back and forth across the loom, in three "colors", of white/yellow/gold, red/brown, and blue/black. These three colors correspond to the triguṇa theory, composed of sattva (goodness/quiescence/existence), rajas (passion/activity), and tamas (darkness/morbidity).
Indra

Earlier phases of this view are less discrete, but can be glimpsed in descriptions of Indra as the vertical skambha, or world column, which is also associated with the motionless timeless center of the universe, the axle of the world-wheel. Approaching the felly of the wheel, one experiences the passing of Time, but approaching the center, no experience passes at all, a state in Sāṃkhya called (kaivalya) (isolation). This isolation is said to free one from duḥkha (literally, a 'broken or disjointed axle', but which comes later to simply signify "suffering" in all its varieties).

It is also likely that Indra's depiction as a chariot-driver, reins in hand, helped to reify the image of the threads that comprise the net, since it is with these reins that Indra causes the world to revolve.

Buddhism

During the Upaniṣadic period (c. 1000 BCE – 200 AD), the Vedic god, Indra, was semiotically displaced by Viṣṇu (often translated as "the all-pervading one") and Śiva (the "auspicious one"), likely owing to the former's early associations with both the cyclical year (the felly of the world-wheel of Time) and its central axis, probably owing to the latter's early associations with Mt. Kailāśa, a beautiful, but virtually unscalable mountain in the Himalayan region thought to be the world-pillar.

But as Buddhism branched off and developed its sectarian form about halfway through this period, later Buddhists, such as those living in the 3rd century CE, tended to identify more so with the older elements than with any that rose up afterward. This is, of course, not universally true, and numerous other elements of Hindu/Buddhist philosophy continued to interpenetrate throughout the course of South Asian history even up to the contemporary period.

Time

The "vertical" element of Time (kāla) emerges from the tendency to regard the north as identical to the celestial north (uttara, literally, "upper"). For Indians, living in the lower half of the Northern hemisphere, the world was regarded as a mountain, around which the sun travelled on its daily course. This revolution constituted one of the fellies of the wheel of Time, and designated the northern axis as the universal axis, sometimes called the world column, or "spine" (skambha). This vertical direction was at some point associated with the pinnacle (kūṭa) of reality, a motif that can be seen again in the Tibetan Buddhist kālacakra-tantra, the "loom of the wheel of time".

As Time is here regarded in its psychological sense, that of having a notion of past, present, and future, and as "persistently standing in the present", this vertical column was also associated with consciousness (the Sāṃkha system uses the term, kṣetra-jña (knower of the field), or just jña (knower)). In effect, this allowed for the identification of psychological time with World-Time (mahākāla). For South Asian metaphysicians, this explained how the soul (ātman) was able to live eternally, being but one of the measureless strands of eternal Time. Yet in Buddhist metaphysics, Time's non-phenomenality, along with its role as a limiting, destructive factor with respect to all spatial entities implied that the ātman itself was "empty of any permanent phenomenal content" (śūnyata).

Conceptually, the "vertical world axis", understood previously as the un-fatiguable, eternal master of mortality, gave way to "Time, the emptiness of all phenomenality".

[Malcolm]

In other words, it is a fail.

Well, I think it did what it was intended to do brilliantly, namely, be a somewhat awkward and unworkable yet clearly recognizable limerick rendition of the opening.

You do realize there are karmic consequences which result from taking license with Buddhadharma?

[Caoimhghín]

In other words, it is a fail.

Well, I think it did what it was intended to do brilliantly, namely, be a somewhat awkward and unworkable yet clearly recognizable limerick rendition of the opening.

You do realize there are karmic consequences which result from taking license with Buddhadharma?

I am already must likely going to several vajra hells. Several vajra hells is synonymous with "not being a Buddha" itself. If you think that my limerick has profoundly insulted the Dharma, I would direct you to the literature of Stephen Batchelor, which you enjoy skewering on public media.

[Malcolm]

Well, I think it did what it was intended to do brilliantly, namely, be a somewhat awkward and unworkable yet clearly recognizable limerick rendition of the opening.

You do realize there are karmic consequences which result from taking license with Buddhadharma?

I am already must likely going to several vajra hells. Several vajra hells is synonymous with "not being a Buddha" itself. If you think that my limerick has profoundly insulted the Dharma, I would direct you to the literature of Stephen Batchelor, which you enjoy skewering on public media.

Making jokes with the teachings generates obscurations for oneself. Rather than taking my observation as a rebuke, understand it to be a kindness.

[Caoimhghín]

You do realize there are karmic consequences which result from taking license with Buddhadharma?

I am already must likely going to several vajra hells. Several vajra hells is synonymous with "not being a Buddha" itself. If you think that my limerick has profoundly insulted the Dharma, I would direct you to the literature of Stephen Batchelor, which you enjoy skewering on public media.

Making jokes with the teachings generates obscurations for oneself. Rather than taking my observation as a rebuke, understand it to be a kindness.

Well, thank you then. Unfortunately, I have done far worse in my life already than slandering the Buddhadharma. A harmless limerick rendering of a surface level reading of the MMK is the least of my problems.

[Malcolm]

Unfortunately, I have done far worse in my life already than slandering the Buddhadharma.

There is nothing worse than slandering Buddhadharma. Slandering Buddhadharma is like killing your parents, etc.

[Caoimhghín]

For instance, is it off-topic, but this is my OP, so I figure it applies.

I went to a very old-school babysitter. She hit us. She disciplined us. It was ultimately good IMO but it was abuse. Most people where I grew up were abused as a child, me included. Families hit each other in the country, its a thing. My dad hit me. My mom hit me. I hit my sister. She hit her brother.

My babysitter hit me, my babysitter hit Luke Suttcliff. My father hit me, his father hit Luke Suttcliff. Luke Suttcliff grew into a teenager much like me. He hit me. He teased me. He made my life a hell as a young child.

But I took my revenge. Years later, I fabricated a story to my mother and school. I said he hit me. I said he bullied me on the playground. None of that happened. This was revenge, pure and simple. Long after the fact. I keep grudges.

I got him suspended. I got him expelled. I sent him to jail. All as a child. He did not deserve that.