{"id":940,"date":"2009-12-01T16:01:44","date_gmt":"2009-12-01T16:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2009\/12\/diamonds-in-the-birch.html"},"modified":"2009-12-01T16:01:44","modified_gmt":"2009-12-01T16:01:44","slug":"diamonds-in-the-birch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/12\/diamonds-in-the-birch.html","title":{"rendered":"Diamonds in the birch"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><i>by Greg Zwahlen<\/i><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>Lately I&#8217;ve been reading <a href=\"http:\/\/tibeto-logic.blogspot.com\/\">Tibeto-logic<\/a>, a fascinating and helpful blog by scholar Dan Martin. It was there that I discovered this interesting interview with Prof. Paul Harrison, one of the world&#8217;s leading scholars of Mahayana sutras.<\/p>\n<div><\/p>\n<div>&nbsp;<object width=\"560\" height=\"340\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/p4PE_svxlcw&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;\" \/><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\" \/><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/p4PE_svxlcw&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"560\" height=\"340\"><\/object><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>Williams talks about all of the considerations involved in translating Mahayana sutras&#8211;in this case, the <i>Vajracchedik\u00c4\u0081 Praj\u00c3\u00b1\u00c4\u0081p\u00c4\u0081ramit\u00c4\u0081 S\u00c5\u00abtra<\/i>, popularly known as the Diamond Sutra. His work, among other things, involves&nbsp;consulting Sanskrit written on fragile birch bark fragments in the 5th century and haphazardly unearthed in recent decades in Afghanistan&nbsp;and Pakistan, then comparing it with various Chinese and Tibetan versions.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Particularly interesting to me were these remarks:<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<blockquote class=\"webkit-indent-blockquote\" style=\"margin: 0 0 0 40px; border: none; padding: 0px;\">\n<div><i>I have the idea that until one actually commits to memory texts like these and performs these operations you can&#8217;t quite understand what&#8217;s going on. So they actually don&#8217;t work like books in the way that we understand books. They&#8217;re more like performance pieces or scores for pieces of music and I think until you play them&#8211;its no good reading the score&#8211;you&#8217;ve got to play the piece of music and then you&#8217;ll see how it works and the kind of effects it has on your mind when you do that.&nbsp;That&#8217;s the kind of perception I&#8217;m coming to have about Buddhist sutras like this one.<\/i><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Thanks to Profs. Harrison and Martin for all of their efforts in helping us to revive the symphony. Enjoy the interview.&nbsp;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Greg Zwahlen Lately I&#8217;ve been reading Tibeto-logic, a fascinating and helpful blog by scholar Dan Martin. It was there that I discovered this interesting interview with Prof. Paul Harrison, one of the world&#8217;s leading scholars of Mahayana sutras. &nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":193,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-media"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Diamonds in the birch - One City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/12\/diamonds-in-the-birch.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Diamonds in the birch - One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"by Greg Zwahlen Lately I&#8217;ve been reading Tibeto-logic, a fascinating and helpful blog by scholar Dan Martin. It was there that I discovered this interesting interview with Prof. Paul Harrison, one of the world&#8217;s leading scholars of Mahayana sutras. &nbsp;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/12\/diamonds-in-the-birch.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-12-01T16:01:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Greg Zwahlen\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Diamonds in the birch - One City","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/12\/diamonds-in-the-birch.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Diamonds in the birch - One City","og_description":"by Greg Zwahlen Lately I&#8217;ve been reading Tibeto-logic, a fascinating and helpful blog by scholar Dan Martin. It was there that I discovered this interesting interview with Prof. Paul Harrison, one of the world&#8217;s leading scholars of Mahayana sutras. &nbsp;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/12\/diamonds-in-the-birch.html","og_site_name":"One City","article_published_time":"2009-12-01T16:01:44+00:00","author":"Greg Zwahlen","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/12\/diamonds-in-the-birch.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/12\/diamonds-in-the-birch.html","name":"Diamonds in the birch - One City","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-12-01T16:01:44+00:00","dateModified":"2009-12-01T16:01:44+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/6aede7186f63611a529a4a16cce5df54"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/12\/diamonds-in-the-birch.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/12\/diamonds-in-the-birch.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/12\/diamonds-in-the-birch.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Diamonds in the birch"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/","name":"One City","description":"The Interdependence Project","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/6aede7186f63611a529a4a16cce5df54","name":"Greg Zwahlen","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/706\/7066c07c9d69ab14d18489c3b85d90d2x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/706\/7066c07c9d69ab14d18489c3b85d90d2x96.jpg","caption":"Greg Zwahlen"},"description":"Greg Zwahlen began practicing meditation and studying Buddhism in 2000 and joined the ID Project at its inception in 2005. He lives in New York City, where he is also a member of the Shambhala Meditation Center of New York. He has undertaken advanced study over the past few years at the Rime Shedra Rime of New York City, the Mipham Academy under Khenpo Gawang, and the Nitartha Institute for Higher Buddhist Studies.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/author\/gzwahlen"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/193"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}