There’s plenty of advice being offered to us constantly, some of it intended to capture our money and some of it to capture our attention. Advice about politics and who to vote for fills my messaging app. Which non-stick pan to buy, what sort of insurance I need, where to turn for household help, why this or that vaccine is good or bad; the avalanche of opinion is endless.
Providing personal and spiritual advice quoting the Buddha and Jesus Christ is also very popular. Mostly, it appears to be offered with good intentions, not to indoctrinate or convert but simply to help soften the blow of our sometimes harsh reality, but I find myself increasingly bothered by it. I imagine asking, had I the chance, “Oh yes? Did you hear him say that? I didn’t know the Buddha (or Jesus) spoke English.” The truth of the matter is that what’s being quoted are the translated words of the undoubtedly wise, but something always gets lost in translation.
Translation is interpretation, a process of making deliberate choices about word meaning and intention. Cultures and their languages permeate each other with idiomatic context and any attempt to translate meaning through another, often radically different language, alters the intent. There are words and ideas that cannot be adequately translated.
The language of the Buddha, for example, is said to have been Pali, a language not spoken since 1400 AD. Derived from an Indo-Aryan litergical language, Pali itself was not originally a language at all, but referred to a line or passage of text. Like Sanskrit, meaning in Pali was associated with inflection; how a word was pronounced changed its intention. In an oral era before widespread literacy, words had to be heard before they could be spoken, and the pronunciation of the speaker carried a precise meaning.
Jesus Christ probably spoke several languages; Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek were all spoken regionally in his time. He did not speak English; 2000 years ago nobody on Earth spoke English. And yet, the English Bible is quoted as if it literally contains the actual words spoken by Christ. Originally translated from Aramaic to Greek, the King James Version of the bible in English only bears a similarity to the original at best. Who exactly said what when is unverifiable. As as to who wrote it, well, there’s plenty of debate about that, too.
I’m not saying that the sentiments or spiritual advice we’re given is ill-intended or of no value, only that it’s not what was actually said and none of us knows precisely what those words were or how they sounded. We cannot escape the boundaries of our own lexicon; what we hear and how we think is culturally determined.
The validity of any opinion can only be verified through a process of examination, a combination of experience and understanding. Understanding is a process of getting into the space between words, establishing the context of what we hear or read to accurately gauge its intention. Words themselves are all above ground yet their affects sink deeply into the soil of hearts and minds, potentially changing how we feel and what we do. Thus it pays to be careful.
“Don’t follow leaders, pay your parking meters.” Solid advice about the value of skepticism and paying close attention from Bob Dylan.
Be First to Comment