Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 132-minute class, Kyabje Rinpoche addresses a fundamental obstacle: students naturally translate Tibetan left to right like English, but Tibetan reads backwards—subject-object-verb. He teaches the solution through detailed analysis of a complex sentence with five nested quotes, demonstrating how grammatical particles (ni, te, quotation markers) function as precise operators—dropping a single particle renders two pages incomprehensible. The lesson emphasizes identifying these particles to unlock long sentences, with specific methodologies for short, middling, and long constructions. The class works through Lama Chöpa, a foundational Guru Yoga text. He illustrates how misreading particles causes catastrophic errors, sometimes translating the opposite of the original meaning. Pitched at intermediate practitioners who have completed basic Tibetan grammar. Combines rigorous grammatical analysis with anecdotes about precision in traditional monastic training.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2011-03-17 – KR.mp3
UUID: adb11d63-d9b8-4fdc-a6cd-44c8ccdab8b3
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Tibetan Language
Date: 2011-03-17
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~9,743
Either my voice is so strong it beats the system or the system is so soft. So you remember that the verb at the end rules the totality of the quotes, the four or the five quotes which we have, and that it is not necessary to repeat it, so it’s given once. It’s actually repeated once as we said, although it’s not really necessary to do so and after that, like down here, it is not repeated anymore. Yeah, the song on page 42. And then as you remember, we also pointed out that in this sentence in particular we had quotes within quotes, and how to identify them.
Length of the verse meter is generally a very sound indicator. So the quote from the 50 verses of Guru devotion, as you remember, entails a quote within a quote. And then I think there was not a lot more which we covered. Do you from your side have any questions about this? Topic.
Mhmm. Uh-huh. Topicalizers. Yes. No.
I mean, name of the text is here. Right? That is a topic if you want, the name of the text. Topicalizes the grammatical particles, knee particles, which always come at the end of a topic. It very often is a subject, but not always.
It can also be used by some authors, especially Ngawang Drakpa, who wrote the commentary on Bodhicitta Vivarana, which Rinpoche gave, as indicating the words in the root text he is going to be commenting. So in that case, obviously, it’s not the subject. But if let’s say you have let us assume, meaning emptiness in the root text, and he wants to comment on it, he would say, and then comes his commentary, because there was no such thing as bold letters or hyphens in Tibetan. So that then is a topicalizer, which for him, and it’s not uncommon, indicates the word in the root text he’s commenting. Here that’s not the case.
Here it basically is the entire subject of this sentence. Okay. And then, while waiting for Richard, one thing I wanted to mention to you is I put some thought in how we were going to about go about integrating Geshe Sopa’s lectures in this class. And it seems with your workload a bit unrealistic to do both Lama Chöpa and Geshe Soppa together, and they’re also quite different. So what I would like to propose is since from the next time onwards we’re dealing with the root text of Lama Chöpa with which you are very familiar, I’d like to increase the amount of Lama Chöpa we cover.
Ideally we’d be doing one page a week. If that is impossible, three fourths, three quarters of a page a week. But I think we can do a page a week. Well, I I would love to think none of you is gonna look at the English translation. You know, some people are amazing.
Oh, is that it? Mental familiarity, what a nice term. But anyway, I think it’s difficult to demand that. So what we’ll do is, as of next week, we’ll try to cover a page a week and as soon as we have finished, we will start directly into Geshe Sopa. Does that sound manageable for all of us?
And also did you get my email about the dictionaries? No. Oh, I see. No. I checked today, it has happened today.
Okay, I said that three, four days ago. Well, there is one dictionary I’d like to suggest if you don’t have that you get, and it’s Tenpa Rigdzin’s Dictionary of Buddhist Terminology. Do you have it? Yes, okay, that’s very good. If you don’t have it, I really would suggest it is like $20, postage included from India.
Yes. It’s really nice. She should actually. She should. So those of you who do not have it and who would like to have it, I chased it on AbeBooks for $20 some dollars.
If you want, we can order it as a group. Have to tell me how many of you are interested. You know? Would you be? One, two, three, four, five, six.
Six persons. Okay. Can I order it? You know? And when it arrives, you know, I’m afraid I can’t offer it to you.
So $20 $25 is okay? Okay, six copies. It’s good for Buddhist terminology. Very good. Then today we’re going to move onwards and we’re going to move on from the end of the sentence last time.
So starting with what is it line one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, the very end of line seven. Right here. And I would actually like very much that we work directly, for those of you who can see it, from the screen, from the board and try to leave the vocab which you have written down there because we can see structure better like this. Have you have you come up with a translation? Who would like to who would like to volunteer?
Certainly this section we translated together all the way to the knee. That we did. Right? Okay. Who who wants to who wants to translate from page 40?
Shy Shyna, would you like to start? Yeah. We will start. We’ll do the whole thing. So every one of you makes the same mistake.
Start from the beginning. Yes. So I’m not gonna do it. We can do part of it together. Moreover yes.
Mhmm. Mhmm. Yes. So this is quite easy, your shares tell you where to start. Remember we have appositions, we covered all of this.
The source? Yes. Excellent. Move onwards. Now, again, you’re starting at the beginning.
Exactly. Yes. And here you have to go all the way to the knee backwards. Close, it’s good enough. For practice for the yogis of the supreme vehicle.
Right? So the tantric vehicle. That’s very good. Very good. So remember, all of you have this natural instinct to start at the beginning of the sentence.
That is not at all how the Tibetan sentence works. You start at the end of the meaning block. Melissa, would you like to continue for us a little bit? From the knee onwards. So how do you translate when you have to do something like this?
I’ll give you a hint. You first read your whole sentence Yeah. Keeping it in mind, and then you move backwards having read it. Otherwise, it’s very difficult to do. Reliance is okay, but you’re missing an adverb.
The correct reliance or relying appropriately. So relying appropriately upon? Yes. Yes. Excellent.
And then perhaps, Jasmine, would you like to take it from the continuative onwards? So where would you go at this point? You go to the next page actually. Do you remember? If you go to the verb at the next page, where is it?
Exactly. Right here. Because as is said, right? So that’s the problem, you go to the verb and then you come back to page 41 and you start aligning your quotes. And you remember, we’ll go through this quickly, but I think it’s such a paradigmatic sentence it makes sense.
You have quote one, quote two. Quote two stops here. Code three. So this should help a little bit. They should be there.
I didn’t put them all because it just clutters. So, because, as Jasmine said to us, right, because as is said on page 42, and then the best way to do this is to give the names of your texts and the quotes one after the other. From the blue calfskin volume or the blue vellum volume, The head which summarizes or the basis which summarizes all oral instructions is not abandoning the holy spiritual teacher, who is the treasury which is the source of all qualities such as faith, bodhicitta and so forth. And second quote, as is said by the noble omniscient one, It’s Je Tsongkhapa, you remember. From that, since putting effort in the holy spiritual friend who teaches the path and who is the foundation of the excellent dependent arisings which are whatsoever collections of exterior excellences there are.
One must rely on him through thought and action correctly and seeing this, not abandoning him at the cost of one’s life, Please him through making offerings in keeping or please him through making the offerings of practice in keeping with his instructions. I, the yogi, have practiced in this way. You who wish for liberation, do likewise. So we are down here. I’m doing what I shouldn’t be doing, which is I’m translating for you.
It’s helpful though because it could Yes? It’s helpful. We’re at the end of that bracket. Yes. Yes.
Yes. So I’d like you to take it on from here because my translating, it doesn’t really help a lot. So, line from the bottom. Who wants to continue with the second quote from the Song of Realizations of Je Tsongkhapa? And it is said.
So this is the third quote in the list of quotes, second quote of Je Tsongkhapa. Noble, compassionate one, root of all the qualities. So give me that one again. Adrian from the beginning. Just that quote.
So you remember last time when we explained this, we explained it as an apposition. Right? So I read it a bit differently, but if you want to be really precise, you read it as an apposition, which is you start with root, the root of all qualities of the excellent virtues, which are both mundane and super mundane, is so give me a precise translation. Is the noble, greatly compassionate one. In Tibetan the adjective qualifies which qualifies a noun comes after the noun.
So great qualifies compassion. Right? Okay, now moving onwards and so we have here a series of quotes which give the reason for what was said above as you remember. As I said in the 50 verses of Guru devotion, So how do you translate this? You remember we have an embedded quote here?
So as is said in the 50 verses of guru devotion, what is our subject here? Is your verb. Indicates you have a quote here. So the 50 verses is quoting from another text. As is said, quotation marks, siddhis follow the Acharya.
It’s actually. Sticking to the text, have on the next page. So this Vajra Acharya is known as the holder of the Vajra, in other words Vajradhāra. He who grasps the Vajra, knowing this, with all things What does one do? One pleases thoroughly the guru.
Okay? Takes delight completely. So Yossu, you remember, is one of these Sanskrit intensifiers we talked about in the intensive. So n, but you said nipple with the things? Things.
It’s got many meanings, but here the meaning is to please the spiritual teacher with offerings, whatever offerings are appropriate. Then moving onwards, so who wants to continue from here? Richard, you want to try? Sorry. Where are we?
We are here. Line two. Line two. Right here. So yeah.
So what was the starting from Shay. Shay is the end of the previous quote. So then we start here. This is a Oh, that is a quote from the 50 verses of Guru devotion which starts on the previous page. See we have a quote which straddles two pages, right?
It starts on the bottom line of page 41, and in addition in the 50 verses of Guru devotion. And then our quote starts here. Does everyone see that? Moving to the next page, Che. That’s the first verse of our quote.
So the she on the next page indicates it is actually a quote within a quote. So it is said, or between hyphens, siddhis follow the Vajra Acharya. Right? So far, so good. Move to the next page.
Who is called? Spoken words. Means really. Now here it could be added for the meter as well. Really?
But it re it is really. He is really. Can I start with the with the first part of the quote there? You’re saying cities follow the teacher? Mhmm.
It it can’t be followers of the teacher. No, because jettre really works as a verb here. It would be very difficult to have it as anything else. And then the problem is what would you do with siddhis? If you try to read it as a noun, then followers of the teacher who what?
No, this is a very sort of straightforward Tibetan sentence. If you have subject verb at the end of the sentence and then you have direct or indirect object after the subject but before the verb. The only thing missing is a particle, but that they couldn’t do because of the meter. You know? They should have.
So we said several times already now. So moving to the next page. And then the last two verses, through knowing this, right? Things all, key instrumental, all things, the Guru is to be pleased. So understanding that the spiritual teacher is Vajradhāra in actuality, he is to be sated or pleased with all offerings.
What’s the meaning of the quote? And then moving onwards, in addition, so the hearer means that you’re lining up the quotes, right? In addition, each of the khan is saying in addition, the series of quotes which are proving one point. As is said in the summary of precious qualities, I have the Sanskrit name for those of you who are interested. So does anyone want to try this one?
So we said last time the quote probably goes all the way down to here and then there’s an embedded quote inside which we basically broke last time. We have 11 meter verses, right? Therefore the fact that when the share is included this verse has 11 feet clearly indicates that this here is the quote. So taking our quote here, we have an instrumental, right? Lama kepa namna tattütten parjé.
You can break your stanza here and read it as follows, seeing this entire verse as the agent, good students, with faith or with respect for the teacher, for the guru, Wise always always rely skillful. So I yes. I’d like something accurate. I know we can get at the meaning, but let’s try to be accurate. Always rely very good on?
Now that’s we stop here. Then we move onwards. So you could best break it here. Does anyone know what that means? For what reason?
For what reason? Very good. Very close. If you were to try to be a little bit closer than that, If one were to ask why. If one were to ask why.
We want to be very close to the text. Then later on you can put it in good English. What does that mean? The qualities of wise. Wisdom.
So now listen. To go somewhere in Tibetan, you have to be accurate. So the qualities of now you have a decision to make. How do you translate kappa? You have two possibilities.
What are they? Yes. Exactly. That is a decision you have to make. Very nicely put.
It’s either the qualities of wisdom or the qualities of the wise. Kepa can be translated both ways. Normally here it would be the wise. Yeah, yeah, that’s possible. But Jasmine’s point is really very strong, that’s a distinction you have to make.
The qualities of the wise. What does mean? It should be easy, I’ve broken it up for you. Arises from that. Then moving onwards, yes Richard.
So moving onwards. So here, you have to break it up. Will be your subject. So I’m pushing a little bit because we did most of this last time. So those the question is, who does those refer to?
Now what does mean? To to indicate the talk. Yes. Those teach what? Supreme insight.
Yes, Melissa. The perfection of wisdom. Yes. Those teach the perfection of wisdom. So those means the gurus.
The wise ones. The Gurus, right? Those who teach the perfection of wisdom. This verse explains the previous verse. If you ask why, because the qualities of the wise ones arise from that they teach the perfection of wisdom.
And then we have a quote here embedded within this quote. And you would have to put, to translate this correctly, you have to add as is said. It’s not in the verse, but this quote is invoking another text to justify it. As is said, so this is your subject. So the Buddhas teach dharmas in the plural to spiritual friends.
Right? And the final verse, how would we translate this? You’re just trying in the words without paying any attention to the grammar and that doesn’t work. You have to get your grammar here. There’s one case which tells you how you can crack this verse.
What is it? Close. What there’s a case. What is your agent in this verse? Yes.
Conquerors. Yes. What is the agent in Tibetan? Functions as a subject. Right?
So this is a problematical verse because the order isn’t a normal order in Tibetan. The agent is the conquerors, the Buddha’s. The Buddha’s say this speech or utter this statement and it’s actually what is being uttered. Means to have, It’s a classical form of the verb yopa. They have or they are the owners of the supreme of all qualities.
So the Buddhas are saying of the spiritual friends, the spiritual friends have all the qualities. So that is basically, I think, how this verse has to be correct. Now the reason the grammar is so contrived is because it’s translated from Sanskrit. It’s one of the perfection of wisdom sutras, you have to find what was going on with the Sanskrit grammar. So, to summarize, it’s not wasted time to go over this one again because it’s a difficult one.
We have a subject clause which is very long ending in a topicalizer. Subject clause is one, two, three, four, five lines long basically. Then we have a predicate ending in a te. What the subject is. The subject is the summary of all, all instructions, etc.
Is relying correctly upon etc, etc, the spiritual teacher. And then we have a reason for this predicate. This reason is given on the next page, line seven. Because it is said and then we have a series of quotes justifying the fact that the summary of the essence of all oral instructions for the yogis practicing the great vehicle, the root for all of all of the measureless siddhis of the common and supreme vehicle, the source of the supreme collections without exception, the basis of all of the perfections of those striving for liberation is none other than relying correctly upon the spirit of the virtuous spiritual friend who teaches the unmistaken path to oneself because, as is said in the Blue Volume volume, The head which summarizes all of the oral instructions is do not abandon the holy spiritual friend. From him arise faith and bodhicitta and so forth, he is the treasure which is the source of all qualities and is said by Je Tsongkhapa, second quote, and as is said by Je Tsongkhapa, third quote, and as is said in the 50 verses of Guru devotion, fourth quote, With an embedded quote, right?
So here we have siddhis follow the spiritual siddhis follow the Acharya, he is called Vajradhāra in reality. Understanding this, sate him thoroughly sate the Guru thoroughly through offering all substances and as is said in the summary of precious qualities. And then we have a long quote and within it a quote almost certainly from a sūtra. So we have five quotes and this is by Tibetan standards a short, elegant and simple sentence. People who’ve gone to the monasteries would consider this pretty, you know, run of the mill basically.
Pretty run of the mill because they go through this a lot. But you see the problem is our thinking patterns, like all of you, and it’s normal, are systematically translating from the beginning of the sentence. It’s almost unavoidable for us. So that is something we have to basically try to revert. And the way to do it is when you have a sentence like this, starting on page 40, you have to read through until you get to a particle which can function as a clause marker.
So it’s a lot of reading you may have to do. You start. Okay. And then you start translating backwards from here. That’s how you would do it.
Then when you have done that, if you were sight translating, which is why sight translating is very difficult, you would move onwards and you would keep on reading, reading, reading, reading until you get to a particle which can be a clause marker. You would stop here and translate backwards from here. Then you would continue and you would keep on reading. You go to the next page. You have to go all the way to the chi.
They see they don’t they don’t go through the process we’re going through. Right? I mean, for them, the verb is at the end of the sentence. There’s no need to switch to a situation, to an SVO structure. Remember we talked about the SOV SVO structures.
This is a typical SOV sentence you have. And that’s why you really need your grammar for a sentence like this. Sorry for standing in the light. Subject. Object, then this would really qualify as your reason all the way down to the next page where you have.
Is a dead giveaway. The te, I think I mentioned that last time. You have a te chir structure in Tibetan, which is very common. It’s flagged. Your is telling you such and such is this that’s and that you are expecting a because.
So then you go looking for the because. Yeah, it’s we have this in many languages. You have, you know, either or in English. If you have either, you expect to meet or at some point, right? So in Tibetan you have the te, chir pattern.
Te can stand alone without a cir, but in a text like this it’s very common. You have te, then you have a series of quotes which seem to be justifying what’s before. You are going to find a cir at some point. You look for it. And it will be with your verb.
You don’t. You could translate it by a comma. The summary is relying upon, then you can put or not a comma depending on English syntax, you have your quotes, and then becomes. It’s a continuative. So does this happen a little bit?
Mhmm. Okay. So Nothing. Do you remember how much I hammered the grammar in during the This is why. If in this sentence somebody makes a printing mistake and you drop this and this te, you cannot make sense of a sentence.
You have two pages which are incomprehensible. So this is something I wrote to Jeffrey Hopkins, his emphasis on the topicalizers and the continuatives, you know, which led many Tibetan scholars, Western Tibetan scholars, to absolute howlers, like Alex Wayman for instance, who very foolishly tried to translate the insight section of Lamrim Chenmo, section of Lamrim Chenmo on emptiness, precisely because he didn’t understand these points in Tibetan grammar. Not only did he mistranslated, he actually translated the opposite of what Je Tsongkhapa is absolutely astonishing. You know? And it was literally due to grammar.
You know? Because he his work was done in a very early phase in the sixties when some of the nuances of Tibetan grammar were not clear. You know? So it’s a beautiful language because so much depends on so little. You know?
So I think we can take our tea break now, and then after we will start with the new material. You know, Jeffrey Jeffrey used to do this to me. And once I was working with him on Quite sure where he’s not doing. I was working on I was working on Prasannapadā. I had the I had the Tibetan to the left left of the Sanskrit.
There’s four of us. There’s myself, George Dreyfus, Allen Cohen, or five of us, McGee and John Powers. And Jeffrey was it was my turn, and Jeffrey was just giving me hell. He’s like because I I knew the Tibetan, but he was just breaking my back on the Sanskrit. You know?
It was like every single bloody form I had to crack. It’s I’m giving you an easy time of it. You know? It was like every every form. Is it is it an it an aorist?
What verbal class is it? Is it a dual? What conjugate what what declination is this? Why do you say it’s an ablative and not a locative or whatever? It’s just, oh, no.
At a certain point, I I really one hour like this. I said, Jeffrey, stop harassing me. Then he blew up at me. Said, you should be grateful that I give you a hard time. I expect to hear an apology from you.
One hour. Then I asked Bill McGee when I left. He has really good advice. I said, listen. He said, I know, Jeff, he’s really giving you a hard time, but if you want to stay here, you’ve got to you know?
So I thought a couple of days. I was like, yeah. And then I rang him up. I said, professor Hopkins, you know, he said, it’s okay. No problem.
You know? But it was thanks to his kindness that Jeffrey taught us something, which is actually one of Je Tsongkhapa’s oral instructions. Je Tsongkhapa said, Geshe said to me that the meaning of the Kadampa tradition is that every knee has meaning. And that is that was Jeffrey’s approach. So that I learned from him.
Here in this sentence, if you do not get the knee or the, you are lost. You are lost. Well, there are rules, but the rules are there to be broken. Yeah. They seem to be.
The rules are there to be broken. Oh, no. No. No. No.
I I I couldn’t treat you like that. I had a teacher at Sera Je. You know? He was one of my best teachers. I would come.
I crammed, crammed, crammed. I was sitting tenets with him. I’d come. He’d ask one question. If I wasn’t dead on, he said, you’re wasting my time.
Go away. He said, you’re wasting my time. Go away. Come back when you know something. And I would go back, keep the books.
He was right. He became the disciplinarian of Treichen’s and a fantastic Geisha, you know, but so harsh. You know? Then I would came back. I’d ask one of the students.
I’d say, how is he today? Oh, he’s not in a good mood. Oh, I’d say, okay. Then I would go in. He would look at me.
You. Again. It was very difficult. There was one teacher who was kind. Different form of kindness.
Kindness doesn’t mean being gentle. True kindness is something which reveals itself down the line. This hurts me more than it hurts you. That’s not like parenting. Thank you.
Thank you, Richard. I had forgotten that one. It’ll be passing thank you. And if you want to bring an old relic from Aesop, I’m game. Right.
So the in the longer sentences, the ablatives are more important. Abjectives and instrumentals. In the very normal sentences, it’s marked as a flow of syntax. So not things like Kyang. Not so much. Kyang.
If kyang is really important really important, it’ll be conveyed otherwise because it’s too ambiguous. Okay. It can mean even also moreover if it’s really important, there are other Tibetan terms which are used instead. It’s it’s fun when we get into it. It’s it’s fun.
That’s what you need. You have to go over what we did today. I won’t do it next time, but go over it at home. I was I mentioned this when everyone is here. Perhaps you could gather everyone.
Exactly. You read up to, you find it. Topicalize is a very good sign you should start translating from there. Best is to read a page or two before you start translating because without the context it’s loaded in Tibetan. Okay.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Alright.
No problem. So what I mentioned to Chris and I think it and Richard and it might be helpful to all of you is I can see that you don’t see the forest for the trees. Your pages are cluttered with notes. Make several photocopies of the text and if you can perhaps write on transparencies or how do you call them Richard? Overhead The projected transparencies or tracing paper.
And on one tracing paper you put the vocab, on another you put the syntax. Because what you have to work towards now is understanding how Tibetan syntax works. You have all the grammar, more than enough, and vocabulary takes years to acquire what one needs. But what many people study Tibetan for ten years for and never get is how the Tibetan syntax functions. So you have to have a separate trace piece of trace paper on which for every sentence you put your main syntax flow markers, the ni, the te, the quotation markers, these particles.
So what I’m going to give you now is very empirical. I’ll give it because, basically, it doesn’t always work, but it’ll help you. So I said to Molly earlier, thought sentences, middling, and in Tibetan, you basically go immediately to very long sentences. For short sentences, the most important particles tend to be the So the in short sentences are critical for meaning. Middling sentences you will find it really this is just this is a real rule of thumb, so don’t turn this into something rigid, but it will help you.
Middling sentences you will find that the ablative markers, in other words, the and are extremely helpful in getting the flow of the sentence. Very long sentences, you are looking at the topicalizers like You are looking at the family of continuatives. And last but not least, you are looking at the quotation bracketing particles This is really a rule of thumb, but it works pretty well. Then in Tibetan sentences, are always going from the general to the particular. You have to get the overhead structure before you go into the nitty gritty.
As you’ve seen, one can go dramatically wrong otherwise. You can have all the words and translate the opposite of what is said. So for very long sentences, which is what we had today, you start here and then you move back to this and then you move to this. You don’t start here. You will get lost in the clutter.
It’s a couple of them. Yes. Yes. Thank you. So can I erase this now?
No. It’s very helpful. The it’s a rule of thumb. It’s really a rule of thumb, but it works. Another thing you want to keep in mind is as we said in Tibetan, you don’t have to mark a number.
Right? You don’t mark singular or plural. You don’t have to. When number is marked, it gives an important indication. In Tibetan, when you have for instance, have remember we had at the beginning of the sentence.
Now number is not marked. They added or the author added The tells you it is those striving for liberation and not the striving for liberation. The number alone tells you that. Otherwise, it will be ambiguous. You know?
Or as Jasmine pointed out, kippa. Kepa can mean either the wise or wisdom. In that context, it means the wise. You know? If there was a num which was added, it would be for sure the wise.
There’d be no ambiguity. Okay. Is it okay now? So we will move onwards to some new material. I didn’t put them.
They’re present in oral. They are important. They are important. The thing is, basically, when you have a normally it’s pretty evident. I put the continuatives in the top epilizers because they’re so often missed.
When you have a normally, it’s a really important part of the meaning of the sentence. Always, always, always, always. So moving onwards from line one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, the very last syllable on line seven. Marley, would you like to take us from here? So everyone knows where we are.
We are here. And what I’d like you to tell us is where the unit of meaning starts. So here it is to the end of that line. End of which line? How far do you want me to go?
To the tip. Which one? On the following line. Where is the the the sec? This one here.
Yes. That’s exactly it. Now why would you do that? Can anyone give me the rationale? Because basically what you just said.
Yes. There are several reasons. Look at what’s coming just after. What is coming just after? If you look, what is this here?
It’s a quote. Exactly. So it makes a lot of sense to stop as you did at the the continuative here because it looks as if the quote is explaining what was before the continuative. So that’s an excellent reading. Yes.
And then would you try to translate it for us? I assume all of you have the words here. Do you want me to go through them? Or would you? Yes.
Okay. You’re doing it from the end, which is a good way to do it. All? Yes. Mhmm.
And? Where do you have and? Shing. Are you sure that’s what it means? You have look at what you have here.
You have shing do. Shing. What is the do? What is its what is the case here in your opinion? It’s a locative.
So we have to read it as field. If you read it as and, you would yeah. If it’s exactly. If you had if you read it as and, you would have a big problem because you couldn’t account for the the ladder in here. So it has to be filled.
Then moving backwards. Anyone has another reading? Yes. Cleanse. Purify.
Exactly. Cleanse. Cleanse. Definitely. Cleanse obscurations.
Yes. Accumulate. Mhmm. Collection. Mhmm.
So you’re just transferring all your genitals as of. So far, so good. We just will leave it at them. And then? Exactly.
Means therefore. So so far so good. You start with therefore. This is very much how you would translate a sentence like this. You start with a linking particle or group of particles.
Therefore is linked to what? To the chair immediately before. Because? Therefore. Therefore.
And then you go directly where? Yes. Do you have a verb here? Do we have a verb here? Well, at the end of the sentence, the verb ruling the whole clause, do we have one?
Not at the end. At the end, however, do we have one? No. No. What’s happening?
We don’t know. But, I mean, when we don’t have a verb in Tibetan at the end of a sentence, what is often the case? Is. Apposition, there is. Exactly.
Is exists often is. So we put this in the background of our mind. You know, we can’t say that for sure now. Then what would be the subject of our sentence? Where is the subject in a Tibetan sentence?
So it would have to be this. It is what is Zocba? Collections. Collections. What is being talked about here?
The? No. No. The Collections of Merit and Wisdom. No.
Why there a why is there a Now why would why would you know that it’s a Collections of Merit and Students? Because of the verbs coming after. You are you are accumulating collections of what? Collections of merit. So There’s something I I haven’t heard from any one of you which I’d like you to point out.
What is this sentence all about? No. What do you think? I I don’t know. Does anyone have an idea?
Superior. Yes. Superior. Superior. Superior.
Isn’t it about Is it Vajra? Is it like that? Dojilopan. Dojilopan. Shortened form.
Vajra. No. Dojilopan is the Vajra The Vajra master. Yes. The Vajra Acharya.
So who is this? So what is what is our Vajra master. No. But what is our construction here? It is a comparative.
You have an ablative here, and then you have which indicates, in this case, superiority. So the Vajra master is superior even to No. No. No. Don’t rush, Adrian.
You rush. You rush. You rush. Superior even to all of the Buddhas. And how do you translate as?
Well, I’ve given it to you. You’re my big mouth. As field for can anyone take it from here? So field four. The accumulation of the collections of the students and the purification of the defilements and here what we actually have to read is Well, I will you have to do it like this actually, but basically DRIPA qualifies LOMA.
So it is the purification, the accumulation of the collections of the students. Collection or collections, you have to decide. The collection, the collections of merit and wisdom, right? But now you have to decide if it’s one collection, only the collection of merit or both collections. The the grammar does not tell you, you know, of the students and the purification of the obscurations of the students.
Normally you would basically have the genitive qualifying both of these clauses but because different verbs are involved, sokpa to accumulate and jongwa to purify, it’s not possible. No. What is this sentence saying? If you want to summarize it. Superior to even Yes.
The Buddha’s. Exactly. That’s it. The Vajra master is superior. So this sentence is basically fleshing out what sentence which came before.
The verse from the 50 verses of Guru Devotion. And it’s saying that therefore it is explaining the five quotes, the five quotes which came before but specifically this one up here. Therefore the Vajra Acharya is superior even. So your even here is really important. Even to not one Buddha, all the Buddhas as field for, you translate this genitive as for not of.
It’s a genitive which qualifies two verbs, right? Sokpa and jongwa. So if you wanted to put it, you could try to put it like this. Would be a nice way of presenting it. For the purification of the obscurations of the students and for the accumulation of the collection or collections.
You know, normally it would be the collection because you don’t accumulate the collection of wisdom on the basis of the spiritual teacher. Normally. Yeah. Unless you meditate on his being empty of inherent existence. And perhaps, Merewyn, you would like to continue for us.
So is extremely difficult to translate. It can mean even, it can mean although, it can mean in addition, it can mean moreover. So here what’s the meaning? It’s even. Context dictates.
Mhmm. Where does your block of meaning or your clause stop? How far would you go? Down to chasing the Excellent. That’s it.
Mhmm. Why would you do that? Well, so is a follow-up. Right? Yes.
That’s it. And you have a verb, and you have an end of quote marker. Yeah. So it is as clear as it is going to get. It?
Yeah. Before we go in the back. It’s about Well, could. But once you have a quotation marker, what does that tell you about the? It’s in the quote.
Yeah. Right? So how would you translate all of this? Yes. Exactly.
And you notice that it’s something in reverse all lines of it. Very good. So as is said, you have to give the name of your treatise, so you have to go at the beginning for that. Right? Yeah.
Which I can get. Does anyone know what Domjung is? Domjung. So le is your ablative, which indicates from from Domjung. Does any has anyone found Domjung?
No? Nobody? Any ideas? It’s not better. Dong means to arise.
Dumpa means what? Yes. One of the meanings. It’s a root tantra of Heruka. Heruka is called Korlo Demchok in Tibetan.
Korlo Chakrasamvara. Chakra, Korlo is wheel. Samvara to bind. He who binds the wheels. Dom is just typically Tibetan way of quoting, instead of putting normally it would be written like this.
Root tantra is in the Heruka root tantra. Instead of writing all of this in Tibetan, one just writes, and you will see this again and again. So Domjung, when you see Domjung, it is always the root tantra of Heruka. The root tantra of Of Heruka. Heruka.
Now if you were to translate this, how would you translate it? Why do you see the Vajra master? Where do you have that? So think carefully. Symmetry works for you here.
What did you have in the previous sentence? You had a Oh, yeah. I’m sorry. You had you had grammatically. You had a comparative.
Exactly. So it happens here that you have the same look carefully at the end of the quote. You have superior and you haven’t instrumented it before. You can assume you may be working with a comparative. That’s a big point because the grammar is very packed.
So if you were to try to translate this, you start from the end, just you have to start somewhere. Dorje Lopon, tewel So the Vajra Acharya, which you’ve met before, Dorje Lopön. Tewe, and normally you would have tele from that. Here, an instrumental is used to create a comparative. Is superior to that?
Now what is that? Context tells us from the previous passages we were talking of all Buddhas. So something like that may be afoot here. Then we go to the beginning to see if we can make sense of what’s happening. We have to really stick to the grammar here.
What is the knee? The knee. It’s a topicalizer. Right? Yes.
What is a this, in your opinion, in this sentence? Now read onwards. So what does do grammatically? It introduces a topic. Right?
So this comma, two points, what does mean? Sepharism. Is? Exactly. So this self arisen Bhagavan move onwards to the next verse.
You have to keep track of your knees here. Otherwise, you can’t translate this. So what you have is this. This is this is packed. It’s translated from Sanskrit.
It’s in Sandhya Bhasha, the the secret language of the Tantras. So it is really packed. As is said in the Heruka root tantra, this self arisen Bhagavan, Supreme of Supremes who is alone. If I were to give an instruction for the sake of giving an instruction, you have to add a verb, I will say is superior to that. Okay?
It’s very packed. It’s very packed. So what you have in the three first verses is a praise of the Buddha and yet as a secret instruction the final verse says actually the third verse says if I were to give a secret instruction I would say the Vajrajaya is superior even to that. It’s very beautiful, really. So this is very difficult to crack.
You would crack something like this relying on a commentary because otherwise you could get it all wrong as you can see. You could easily read this if you didn’t know and think that the comparative means that the Buddhas are superior to the Vajra Acharya very easily. What is the big? Well, context number one. Context number one.
Then I mean this is very clear, is superior to that. That has to be, we have to know what the that qualifies. That qualifies what is explained in the two first verses. Well, why not? I mean, it’s some Guru Yoga, isn’t it?
Yes. But why use the expression Ah. As opposed to guru. Because you have three types of gurus. Right?
You have, as you remember, the elder who is the teacher from the standpoint of the Prātimokṣa, the vows of individual liberation. Then you have the Kalyana Mitra translated in our texts as Geway Shenyen. We’ve met this many times, right? Geway Shenyen here. That’s the teacher according to the perfection vehicle, the Pāramitāyāna.
And then you have the Dorje Lopön, which is basically mentioned in the 50 verses of Guru devotion. This refers to the teacher in the tantric sense of the term who can bestow initiations and so forth. Three different categories of teachers therefore are mentioned here. Now let’s move onwards a bit with the Tibetan. Melissa, would you like to volunteer?
I would like it to happen. It’s like in the US Army, you know. We need a volunteer. You look like the sort of person. Where are we?
We are three Yeah. Six lines. Exactly. Right here. Would you read it for us first, and then tell us how far you have to go?
So so Oh, Yes. Are you sure? I’m not. But it is a knee. It is an e.
But if you were to go a little bit further, you would get to a real end of sentence. So how would you translate this for us? Well, that’s a bad habit. It’s a polite way of speaking. It means, it is said that.
In Tibetan, you never say things are. You always say it is said that they are said to be like this. You know? So is that all is that a finalizer there? Yes.
Yeah. Exactly. So what you have in this text is you have a series of reasons, like up here we had a because, and after that you have a therefore, and another reason and is advanced. And here it’s the same thing. You’ve just had a quote from the Heruka root tantra and you have a short line which means or what does that mean, Melissa?
So, like, reason or evidence of that. Sort of. Yeah. Like that cause? Like that reason?
Yes. Means to see. Then you could translate it very nicely in English as in the light of that reason. Seeing that reason. Literally, you were to translate the now, you would say if, but you don’t have to.
In the light of that reason. And then having translated that, where would you go for the next unit of meaning? So not to the knee? Yes. You would go to the knee exactly.
Yeah. And then we’ve got cultivation practice? Yes. So be careful now, translate from the end, the practice. Means to complete, to fulfill.
Means key points. Key points. Okay. So the yogin who practices the Why are you saying the yogin? Well, Close.
Any proposals? Meditating on the Guru Yoga which completes the key points of the path. And you have to inject a genitive here which is very common in Tibetan. Genitives are not always put when they are self evident. It just overloads a sentence.
Meditating on the Guru Yoga which completes the key points of the path. And where do we go from here? You want to move onwards. You need to find another grammatical particle. Keep in mind, what is what is a knee saying here?
It’s a topicalizer. We said it often introduces the subject of the sentence. So could this be the case here? So where would we go from here? I actually helped you when I read it.
Here you have an instrumental, which is an instrumental of meaning. Because meditating on the Guru Yoga which completes the key points of the path is The supreme means of taking the essence and we would translate the la here as a genitive in English. In Tibetan, it’s not a genitive. It could probably be a dative. Of leisure and endowment, in other words a precious human rebirth.
And then the rest is very easy. Means like such, in this way, I will practice. So here to make sense of this sentence, which is not a difficult one, you have to catch two particles. You have to catch the knee and you can see the importance they play in this text and you have to catch your instrumental. Your instrumental gives you the verb which actually is a clear indication that what precedes the is a subject.
And then if you wanted to be really accurate in your translation, you would try to translate the correctly as becoming, but it gets very awkward in English. It sounds very nice in Tibetan, but in English it’s very awkward. Without the instrumental, the knee would then have to be read as relating to this verb. But then we would have a problem, we would have to say, well, this yoga must be practiced. You see, however here the knee throws us, because it’s often a subject marker, throws us to a verb which can indicate a subject Then we have a reason, you know.
So translating like this is a really nice way of doing it. It’s because of this that we must practice in this way. You will notice that if we do this, we have accounted for every word in the sentence except the which is not bad. For language which is as alien as Tibetan, it’s not bad at all. Then Jasmine, would you take the next sentence for us?
Mhmm. You can stop here because this sentence goes on a long way. Do you have any idea how far it goes? It goes you have to break it to make to to produce a decent English sentence, you have to break it here. But technically it actually goes to the knee which introduces this text.
But if go after to the following page to see if you can find some sort of a verb. You find that there is no verb and the verb you have to use is a verb which is actually part of the root text. Therefore, you’re better off stopping here, and then treating this as a different block with a knee at the end and injecting an implicit verb inside, a verb to be or a verb to exist. So if you were to translate this in in addition, and what would you start what would you give immediately after that? As is said.
Exactly. Exactly. In addition, as is said and then just translate the first bit you read for us. That we don’t know. We don’t know if Te Young is part of the quote alluded to here or not.
We don’t know. You would have to check that in the root text. It’s not in verse. You can’t count the meter to now. We’re getting there.
What is a? What is a? From I can’t remember. Within. Within.
It actually means from among several. It it is synonymous with nangne. Nangne and nangne have the same meaning. It can mean within several virtuous minds. Here, it is within.
How would you translate? What do you think? We have a quote. So the quote ends here and I think perhaps we would have to check perhaps starts here. It might also start here, we have no way of knowing.
Moreover, as is said, within Kye pa che a special virtuous mind, Special virtuous mind refers to bodhicitta. Right? Generally. You go to the end of the sentence. Right?
And how would you translate this? What does mean? Yes. Many meanings. What does mean?
Yes. Yes. Actually is a verb with a huge range range of meanings. Here it functions as what is known as a verbalizer or an auxiliary. Tibetan loves these.
It enables the language to transform forms which are not verbal into verbs. So you have a constructed verb constructed from a verbalizer and an adverb. What does that mean? Do previously. Do previously.
That means meditate previously. Literally throw previously, but that’s obviously not, that can’t be translated. So here is a generic verb which transforms previously into doing something previously. It’s a composite verb in other words. So do previously what?
Meditation. Meditation on what? Four Immeasurables. bodhicitta. And?
Refuge. Refuge. Exactly. And then moving onwards, Shaya, I think. Oh, you you did it already today.
Who else didn’t? Chris, do you want to try? I have an answer. Okay. Today, I will basically do it with you.
So what do we have if we look at the general structure here? You’re looking for symmetry. Do you see a pattern in this quote? Yes. Exactly.
That’s exactly it. So what are your verbs? So starting here, you’d have I put it in green, number one. Then number two. Then number three.
Then what is the fourth? Comprehend. Think. How would you translate these? Syntactically, not the details.
By series of appositions. Exactly. And you would put them in the imperative. They’re not in the imperative in Tibetan, but you would put them in the imperative. That’s exactly the meaning here.
You could put them in the past tense, which is actually the tense they are in, you could say having sought, having emanated, having purified, but you could just as well put them in the imperative. Think, emanate, purify. Starting from here, emanate what? Light. Light from From?
Yes, exactly. From the body. With The the yoga of what is? Any? Deity.
Deity. Which is the kind of Which is the supreme deity? Supreme deity. Deity. Any And then.
No. So, I emanate light from a body, this is how the Tibetan puts it, we have to get it in good English, endowed with any of the yogas of the supreme deities, the three, So this is how the Tibetan language functions. I’ll put it up here so you can see. So Sangwa Dupa. Assembly secret, secret assembly.
Sum. The three, Then instead of saying, say, Sum, four syllables. You take the first syllable of each word. So visualizing my emanate, in other words, myself radiating light from a body which has a yoga of any of the supreme deities, such as Guhyasamāja, Heruka or Yamāntaka, means etcetera. Etcetera in other words means it is limited to these.
You have other deities from which you can practice in this way. So your subject here carries through, I what do I do? Purify. What? What is?
Up here. Madakpa. I purify all impurities of Tamche. Don’t jump. Don’t jump.
Or? What is? Vessel. And what is? Up here.
What is cu? Essence. So all the impurities of the vessel and the essence. The vessel in other words is the world and the essence is what is in the vessel, the living beings. That’s the thing.
The thing. That’s environment and its inhabitants. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a it’s a metaphoric expression.
Mhmm. But it actually means the vessel and the essence. In other words, the world and the beings which live within. So we will work through it together, you can’t stop here, you have no verb. I, right, the subject carries through.
Look at the board. Think. What do I think? So we’re going from the second line to the end of the third line. Yeah.
So we’re looking at the third oh, I think. I think. I think that what? That the vessels become what does bashik mean? Pure.
Exclusively. Infinite. What does dapa mean? Pure? Pure.
Pure. In nature. So this sentence you must understand by considering that the genitive here qualifies the remainder of the sentence. I think that one, the environment and two, the essence. So the environment becomes exclusively and infinitely pure in nature and then you put this in apposition.
The celestial mansion. So here you have to see all environments and all essences, all beings. And then you have to consider that it is qualified by all this as well. Become exclusively, infinitely, pure in nature gods and goddesses. So that is exactly how a Tibetan syntax functions.
Were you able to crack it? I knew what’s the meaning. I know you all know the meaning, but you have to go to the grammar because this is easy. But what happens when you have a text, you have no context? You know.
So Tibetan likes this sort of structure very much where you have a genitive, I should really do it like this so it is clearer, which qualifies an entire clause. And then you have, you see the symmetry here, and both of these are to be read as such. Symmetry is your friend in Tibetan. When you have symmetry, it’s a real pointer like Okay. Something is going on.
Then you have You can think that this is becoming this and this is becoming this. Nice, isn’t it? So I think we’ll stop here for today. And next for next time, we didn’t do too much today, but please go again over this long sentence we did last time and we did again today. Don’t focus on the vocab, try to get the syntax.
See how the syntax works, you know. Use it as a template and then go over what we did today. It was much less difficult than last time. What I’d really like you to do is to do page 43 all the way down to the middle of page 44, the end of the root text which ends with Nyams su len pa’i rgyur gyur cig. So this is much easier.
You you know the meaning. Try to flesh out the grammar. There are some things we talked about in the intensive. I won’t mention which ones, but some very strange usages of the genitive and so forth you want to be mindful of. Keep in mind that the miniscules are always the commentary.
Right? I think that’s about all there is. Thank you very much. Yes. Well, have the standard way explained in Hajj with the ablative.
The non standard way is with the instrumental. With the instrumental. It’s non standard, you meet it a lot.