Dear Jim and friends,

thank you, Jim. I hope our group's little work has not upset some bigger ego out there.

I hope to address some of the concerns which were raised over the last few posts.

I like to say that "pretending to understand" is different from "trying to understand". I do not claim to be an expert in classical Pali grammar. And, this is not the first occasion I spend time typing something like this, but I shall make it the last. If people do not like how we conduct our discussions, it does not bother me anymore.

As George noted, it took me 8 posts to cover 40 lines, when it took him just one post to cover 37 lines. If I had left them untranslated, I could have covered 40 lines in one post, and we would be completing the first chapter in no time. However, this is not a commercial project with some dateline. The moving is slow not because of any of the reasons anyone has listed so far. I am the only one making the postings for chapter 1, and I am still trying to get use to the style, so I set the pace.

Each post, I give my best attempt to provide a good rendering. The last post was even a rework of the previous, as I would also do for some of the sutta translations, when I believe that I did not get most of the text right the first time. I am abhorred if that is being misconstrued as "pretending to understand".

After this episode, I have decided to take a break for as long as a year, which I hope to catch up on other stuff. So, I will stop further postings of the 1st pariccheda for the next twelve months.

Jim, I am grateful for your assistance so far, and I am glad that you offer to start the 25th pariccheda, which isn't available on CSCD, meaning that you would have to type out the text.

I do not have the text, but I like to make an appeal to everyone to consider helping Jim with the typing.

Thank you.

metta,
Yong Peng.

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, Jim Anderson wrote:

My suggestion would be, that when one comes up against a passage that is too difficult to translate, to leave it untransalted and to explain what one does make of it and point out the difficulty. If one doesn't understand it, it is certainly going to show in a translation. Pretending to understand it is counter-productive. We have to be honest about it and not be afraid to admit our lack of knowledge.

I would also suggest that in addition to work on the 1st pariccheda that a start be made soon on the 25th pariccheda, the aakhyaatakappa. The concise sutta style is very different from the verbose style of the 1st pariccheda. I wouldn't mind making a start on this kappa by posting 1 sutta a week. At that rate it would take 5 years to go through all 249 suttas unless others chip in to speed things up.

Learning Pali takes a lot of hard work and perseverance. There is no easy way. One reason why the project is moving so slow is the low interest (globally) in traditional Pali grammar and the fact that so very few are willing or able to put in the time and effort needed to learn it.