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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I'm getting a lot out of this book.
It's got an unusual layout. Each small section of Nagarjuna's poem is shown in English, then you get the Sanscrit, an explanation of the Sanscrit and a short commentary on the section. This makes it easy to focus on one section at a time and not get lost, bogged down or overwhelmed trying to look at too much at once. This format is helping me to work on the text slowly and methodically. I like it.
I've been surprised by some of the other reviews I've read. Some of them seem to be little more than personal comments on the people involved in producing the book. Others are opinions on the cover or title of the book. I think that it's a shame to review a book without focusing on the content, writing and the thoughts within it, or how the contents of the book affect the person reading it.
Personally, I'm finding the contents of this book very useful. Useful enough to give it 5 stars.
It's got an unusual layout. Each small section of Nagarjuna's poem is shown in English, then you get the Sanscrit, an explanation of the Sanscrit and a short commentary on the section. This makes it easy to focus on one section at a time and not get lost, bogged down or overwhelmed trying to look at too much at once. This format is helping me to work on the text slowly and methodically. I like it.
I've been surprised by some of the other reviews I've read. Some of them seem to be little more than personal comments on the people involved in producing the book. Others are opinions on the cover or title of the book. I think that it's a shame to review a book without focusing on the content, writing and the thoughts within it, or how the contents of the book affect the person reading it.
Personally, I'm finding the contents of this book very useful. Useful enough to give it 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
There are two fundamental issues with this book.
The first one is the idea that somehow Nagarjuna needed help in explaining himself. In the Jay Garfield translation you can read the poem in it's full translated form and ignore any commentary. The poem has it's own internal consistency and explains Buddhist philosophy as much as such an explanation can be written and is worth writing. The text is not so much an explanation as a deconstruction. One that is verified or vilified by personal experience. It doesn't ask you to add or subtract anything from that. It doesn't ask you to adopt any particular belief. It doesn't feel ilke Jay Garfield has had to help Nagarjuna.
The second one is that it's not really a translation. It's more of an interpretation. You are left with the impression that Gudo Nishijima is trying to put his words into Nagarjuna's mouth. It comes across as "What Nagarjuna ACTUALLY meant is exactly the same as my personal Buddhist Philosophy". It's not something you can personally verify, it's something that you have to believe or disbelieve - and that is a fundamental issue.
For in the end the heart of Nagarjuna's work is that beliefs and opinions don't matter and that your personal interpretation of and explanation about reality and what is real and what is important do not matter.
For a 'translator' to claim that his interpretation of the text is the correct one just goes against the fundamentals of the text. The whole point of Nagarjuna's text is that whatever reality is cannot be fully comprehended and that attempts to do so might well be futile. To seek to fit the text into a personal philosophy is to misunderstand it.
The Gudo NIshijima approach leaves you with the warm fuzzy feeling that there is something that can be understood and grasped at. The Jay Garfield translation leaves you with the feeling of disappearing down a rabbit-hole where there is nothing that can be grasped at and nothing to grasp. This at least fits in with the spirit of the Heart Sutra with it's "No ignorance and no ending of ignorance".
Maybe you shouldn't believe reviews. Maybe one approach is to buy both this and the Garfield translation and to read both sided-by-side. Then ask yourself "Is this text encouraging me to adopt or to relinquish a particular view?" "Is this text asking me to believe that what i think is important?" "Does this text encourage me to cling to intellectual understanding or encourage me to move beyond intellectual understanding?"
Sometimes it's not a question of whether one text is more correct than another but where it leads you.
The first one is the idea that somehow Nagarjuna needed help in explaining himself. In the Jay Garfield translation you can read the poem in it's full translated form and ignore any commentary. The poem has it's own internal consistency and explains Buddhist philosophy as much as such an explanation can be written and is worth writing. The text is not so much an explanation as a deconstruction. One that is verified or vilified by personal experience. It doesn't ask you to add or subtract anything from that. It doesn't ask you to adopt any particular belief. It doesn't feel ilke Jay Garfield has had to help Nagarjuna.
The second one is that it's not really a translation. It's more of an interpretation. You are left with the impression that Gudo Nishijima is trying to put his words into Nagarjuna's mouth. It comes across as "What Nagarjuna ACTUALLY meant is exactly the same as my personal Buddhist Philosophy". It's not something you can personally verify, it's something that you have to believe or disbelieve - and that is a fundamental issue.
For in the end the heart of Nagarjuna's work is that beliefs and opinions don't matter and that your personal interpretation of and explanation about reality and what is real and what is important do not matter.
For a 'translator' to claim that his interpretation of the text is the correct one just goes against the fundamentals of the text. The whole point of Nagarjuna's text is that whatever reality is cannot be fully comprehended and that attempts to do so might well be futile. To seek to fit the text into a personal philosophy is to misunderstand it.
The Gudo NIshijima approach leaves you with the warm fuzzy feeling that there is something that can be understood and grasped at. The Jay Garfield translation leaves you with the feeling of disappearing down a rabbit-hole where there is nothing that can be grasped at and nothing to grasp. This at least fits in with the spirit of the Heart Sutra with it's "No ignorance and no ending of ignorance".
Maybe you shouldn't believe reviews. Maybe one approach is to buy both this and the Garfield translation and to read both sided-by-side. Then ask yourself "Is this text encouraging me to adopt or to relinquish a particular view?" "Is this text asking me to believe that what i think is important?" "Does this text encourage me to cling to intellectual understanding or encourage me to move beyond intellectual understanding?"
Sometimes it's not a question of whether one text is more correct than another but where it leads you.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Gudo Nishijima who I worked with in the 1980s could be incredibly blind and stupid, and that tendency did not seem to diminish with age, as evidenced by his blind and stupid insistence that when the Indian patriarchs described the world as empty (shuunyaM lokam) they were saying something about the human autonomic nervous system. For all I have criticized Gudo Nishijima's blindness and stupidity over the years, and for all the effort I made to protect our Shobogenzo translation from his faults (as he from mine), I have absolutely never accused him of being lazy, because the Gudo Nishijima that I knew absolutely never was lazy. For several years now Brad Warner, in contrast, has been talking a very good talk. But by attempting to re-write an old man's translation from Sanskrit into English, without being bothered to study Sanskrit (though apparently encouraged to do so by Gudo Nishijima himself) Mr. Warner has shown himself to be too lazy -- so far at least -- to walk the walk.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
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Some people are definitely experiencing reactions to the book so much that they have had to share that with others,(me too now). Read more
Published 6 months ago by G. Windham
NON-DUAL LOYALTIES
As one of Nishijima Roshi's students and 'Dharma Heirs', I would like to comment a little bit on how this book came to be published ... Read more
Published 6 months ago by J. Cohen
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