Major Translations Forthcoming

[Nicholas]

New Year’s Kalavinka Press Announcement


Three First-Ever[1] Translations by Bhikshu Dharmamitra
Completed on Lunar New Year’s Day, 2014:


The Greatly Expansive Buddha’s Floral Adornment Sutra

Mahāvaipulya Buddha Avataṃsaka Sūtra (Śikṣānanda’s 699 ce. edition).

T279 - 大方廣佛華嚴經 - 實叉難陀譯

(39 chapters in 80 fascicles – 3000 pages)



The Ten Grounds Sutra

Daśabhūmika Sūtra (Kumārajīva’s circa 400 ce edition.)

T286 -十住經 - 鳩摩羅什譯

(Ten Chapters in 4 fascicles – 275 pages)



Nagarjuna’s Commentarial Treatise on the Ten Grounds Sutra

Daśabhūmika Vibhāṣā Śāstra

T1521 - 十住毘婆沙論 -鳩摩羅什譯

(35 chapters in 17 fascicles – 700 pages.)


The Avatamsaka Sutra translation was finished at 12:01 am, January 31st, Lunar New Year’s Day, 2014, at West Seattle’s Kalavinka Translation Aranya, by Bhikshu Dharmamitra, a.k.a. Bhikshu Heng Shou (釋恆&#25480.


Kalavinka Press is planning to publish all 3 of these texts in the Fall, 2014.
(BDK-Numata will also issue an edition of Dharmamitra’s translation of the Avataṃsaka Sutra.)


Although this three-text project was begun in 2004 at Turtle Mountain’s Prajna Translation Aranya, it was interrupted by publication of ten other books, a liver cancer operation, a liver transplant, etc., only to be begun again, 6 months post-transplant, in late 2010.

Bhikshu Dharmamitra is one of very first American disciples of the late Ven. Master Hsuan Hua (since 1968).

He was also one of the group of three American monks who were the very first Americans to ever take full bhikshu ordination in the Chinese Buddhist tradition (Hai Hui Monastery, Chilung, Taiwan, Nov., 1969). He is the author of approximately 25 translations of Chinese Buddhist Canonical Texts, most of which originated from Sanskrit.


[1] Although Thomas Cleary claims to have translated the Avatamsaka Sutra, he did not in fact do so.(For immense parts of the text, Cleary cuts out the Avataṃsaka text, grafts in other texts, and and otherwise violates in a host of ways the sanctity of the Śikṣānanda translation from Sanskrit.)

 

[Nicholas]

More details from Ven. Dharmamitra, whose health now permits more translation work:

This is my current regimen: On the weekends, I go fulltime on a triplet of texts consisting of:

1) Hanshan Deqing's (One of the three great monks of the Ming Dynasty with Zibo and Zhuhong) commentary on the Diamond Sutra. Hanshan's work is so beautiful and powerful at the same time that it is so subtle, it must, must, must be out for the English reading Dharma audience.

2) Vasubandhu's commentary on the Diamond Sutra. Hanshan said that, as of the Ming Dynasty, of all of the spectacularly numerous commentaries on the Diamond Sutra in the Indian and Chinese traditions, only Vasubandhu got this right, so given such a high and definitively authoritative recommendation, how could I not translate this?

3) And, of course, the Diamond Sutra itself, this via Kumarajiva's translation.

Then, during the week, my full-on Monday-Friday "day job" is the backlog of nearly a dozen manuscripts. The order I've decided to take up on these is:

1 and 2) Ten Grounds Sutra & Ten Grounds Chapter of the Huayen - I'm already very far along with these.

3) Nagarjuna's Dasabhumika Vibhasa (commentary on the ten bodhisattva grounds)
4) "The Avatamsaka Gandavyuha"
5) The Huayen itself.
6) The Conduct and Vows of Samantabhadra
7-9) The three diamond sutra works mentioned above.

Then a large cluster of works sitting on my hard drive:
10) Hanshan Deqing's "Direct Explanation of the Heart Sutra"
11) The Bodhisattva Precepts of the Brahmajala Sutra via Kumarajiva, and add comments from the commentary of Fazang and perhaps also No-yi.
12) The Amitabha Sutra
13) The Pumen Pin
14) Yong-jia's Song of Enlightenment
15) The Lotus Sutra

Then, for the weekends, after the diamond sutra related triplet, I've got my eye on another triplet:

16) Vasubandhu's treatise on the Amitabha Sutra,
17) The Sukhavativyuha, and
18) The Amitabha Contemplation Sutra.

 

[Nicholas]

In Oct. of 2022 Dharmamitra released the first complete version of the Avatamsaka Sutra, in three volumes. Printed versions or free PDFs are now available.

Kalavinka Press

 

[Nicholas]

Chapter 8 of the Avatamsaka Sutra gives many versions of the Four Truths, for this Saha realm and others. Dharmamitra explains why his translation of the chapter title, "Four Truths of the Aryas" is not typical:

For those who may wonder why I do not translate si shengdi (四聖諦) as
“the four holy truths” or as “the four noble truths” this is because “holy
truths” and “noble truths” are both mistranslations. These truths are
not now and have never been “holy” or “noble,” or at least that is not
what is meant by the term. Rather, these truths are only truly realized
as true by those who have realized the fruits of the path and that is
why they are called “the truths of the āryas.” Everyone else, including
even a monk who has been meditating hard for forty years but still has
not attained any of the fruits of the path is what is called a pṛthagjana
(凡夫), or “foolish common person” who still has only understood the
meaning of the four truths intellectually, that is to say, as a theoretical
proposition the truth of which is only directly known by those who are āryas.

 

[Nicholas]

Here is how chapter 8 begins - with the first two truths:

At that time, Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva-mahāsattva informed the bodhisattvas, saying:

Sons of the Buddha, in this Sahā World, the āryas’ truth of suffering
may be synonymous with karmic offense, with coercion, with
change, with grasping conditions, with the aggregates, with [the
piercing of] thorns, with the roots on which it depends, with
deception, with an abscess, or with the actions of the foolish common person.

Sons of the Buddha, in this Sahā World, the āryas’ truth of the
accumulation of suffering may be synonymous with the fetters,
with destruction, with the concept of cravings-based attachment,
with erroneous awareness, with pursuit and involvement, with
definite certainty, with a net, with conceptual proliferation, with
subsequent actions, or with being based on inverted views.

 

[Nicholas]

The rest of the four truths as this Saha world knows it:

Sons of the Buddha, in this Sahā World, the āryas’ truth of the
cessation of suffering may be synonymous with non-contention,
with separation from defilement, with quiescence, with signlessness,
with non-submersion, with the absence of inherent existence,
with the absence of obstacles, with cessation, with reality of substance,
or with abiding in the inherently existent nature.

Sons of the Buddha, in this Sahā World, the āryas’ truth of the
path to the cessation of suffering may be synonymous with the One
Vehicle, with progression toward quiescence, with guidance, with
becoming ultimately free of discriminations, with uniform equality,
with relinquishing burdens, with having nothing one pursues,
with accordance with the intent of the āryas, with the practice of the
rishis, or with the ten treasures.

Sons of the Buddha, in this Sahā World, in speaking of the four
truths of the āryas, there are four hundred myriads of koṭīs of designations
such as these by which, adapting to the minds of beings,
one enables the training of them all.

 

[Nicholas]

Then going to Dharmamitra's summary of chapter 8 in volume three:

Mañjuśrī goes on to list terms synonymous with the four truths in the
Secret Training World, in the Most Victorious World, in the Immaculate
World, in the Overflowing Abundance World, in the Attraction World, in
the Beneficence World, in the Rarity World, in the Joyous Delight World, in
the Gate Key World, and in the tenth of these worlds, the Shaking Sound
World. He then concludes by saying that, just is this is true that there are
so very many different synonymous terms for each of the four truths in all
these worlds, so too is this true throughout all the worlds of the ten directions
in which there are countless different designations synonymous with
the four truths, all of which are adapted to the beings in each of these places,
and all of which serve to enable their training.

It is clear here that, although the four truths are fundamentally the same,
the buddhas must adapt the terminology with which they teach them to
the different mentalities of beings everywhere in all worlds in order for the
four truths to become most powerfully effective in facilitating the spiritual
liberation of all those different types of beings in each of their different sorts
of circumstances.