ITT: Translate this book?

[Anonymous No.644667]

It's time for another "stupid westerner" moment.

See this book? Bought it at the local yard sale for about 25 cents. It appears to be written in some dialect of chinese, and may be a buddist prayer manual. Even as an athiest, I still have this romantic image of buddists. So I've bought it and it is completely useless to me, maybe /lit/ can help me out here.

does anon wish to translate it for me? There is bound to be a chinese-speaking /lit/erate somewhere. I'll post the first three images in the book.

[Anonymous No.644675]

>>644667
This is the first written page of text. The big colour picture of old golden buddha tipped me off to the book's intent. At least... I think

[Anonymous No.644685]

>>644675
there was another image of buddha on the page after the last one, but I skipped it in favour of jumping straight to the text. Notice that the spine is mounted on the right-hand side, it took some getting used to

[Anonymous No.644690]

>>644685
stupid westerner? Really? It's quite nice that you're curious enough about another culture that you'd try to pick up their literature, even if you can't understand it. I'd say you're the farthest thing away from stupid and ignorant.

Wish I could help!

[Anonymous No.644696]

>>644690
If it is not for the fact that he bought a book in a language he doesn't understand. I don't know about you but i usually buy books to read them.

[Anonymous No.644700]

>>644690
was thinking the same

[Anonymous No.644711]

>>644690
heh, maybe. It's more just that idiots like me waste time and money on completely irrelevant and basically useless trinkets to lug around. I don't believe in the religion, so why should I need to have a collection of buddha statuettes and a prayer book? It gets me sometimes.

At any rate, looks like we don't have many chinese-speaking anons here. I might have to try /int/

[Anonymous No.644769]

>athiest

You're not allowed to be an atheist if you can't spell atheist.

[Anonymous No.644774]

>>644769
Maybe he means he's the most athy?

[Anonymous No.644777]

>>644769

[Anonymous No.644802]

>>644667
>>644675
>>644685

Holy fuck, chinkfag here, I have the same book. :3

[Anonymous No.644809]

>>644802
The exact same book?

ARE YOU ME
AM I YOU
OR IS IT ALL JUST A DREAAAAAAAM

[Anonymous No.644813]

>>644809
昔者莊周夢為蝴蝶，栩栩然蝴蝶也，自喻適志與，不知周也。俄然覺，則蘧蘧
然周也。不知周之夢為蝴蝶與，蝴蝶之夢為周與？周與蝴蝶則必有分矣。此
之謂物化。

Also, too lazy here to do any translating.

[Anonymous No.644822]

>>644813

Hey, thanks! Probably a bad google translation, but good enough

"Formerly, disillusioned dreams as a butterfly, butterfly Xuxu however, compares himself to fitness blog and I do not know Zhou. I was conscious, then Qu Qu"

[Anonymous No.644834]

>>644822
> fitness blog and I do not know Zhou. I was conscious, then Qu Qu
Haha, Google Translator. I'm not making a reference to the text.

>>644809
Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream, did OP dream me or did I dream OP?

[Anonymous No.644840]

>>644834
prehaps the man in the book dreamt us

[Anonymous No.644854]

>>644840


Maybe the author is WRITING your life!

Oooo-EEEE-oooo....

[Anonymous No.644865]

>Even as an athiest, I still have this romantic image of buddists
what a fucking idiot

[Anonymous No.644877]

>>644865
Meh. It is one of those stupid things, probably traces back from my father as a traditional thing. He ws not religious either, yet studied zen and buddism very intently. Add to this the positive portrayal of buddism in popular culture, and you get me having respect for the practices.

[Anonymous No.644880]

>>644877
So you're an atheist because of its popular too?

[Anonymous No.644887]

>>644880
shove it

[Anonymous No.644894]

>>644877
I don't think it's stupid. I love the tone of Eastern religions. It's beautiful, quite honestly.

[Anonymous No.644900]

>>644894
wow... way to romantisize the exotic.

[Anonymous No.644901]

>>644900
Uh, people do that anyway. I'd rather romanticize something that actually has intellectual value than belly dancers or something.

[Anonymous No.644912]

>>644894
agreed, there are many interesting things in the eastern religions

[Anonymous No.644920]

>>644901
man, you really don't know much about the old tradition of belly-dancing (not what they serve tourists at Gizeh Blvd) and what culture is associated with it.

[Anonymous No.644927]

>>644920
I was talking about Westerners obsessions with stupid shit, and saying "dark skinned girls" as being exotic just seemed a little coarse.

[Anonymous No.644941]

>>644920
hmm, this turned into a pretty interesting thread, even with the trolls. Learning new stuff everyday, it seems

[Anonymous No.645402]

>>644667

Get the fuck out white bwoy, we niggas owning dis board now.

[Anonymous No.645425]

>>645402
Black folk? Lit?

[Anonymous No.645483]

>Even as an athiest, I still have this romantic image of buddists.

This is because you don't know anything about Buddhists. Populist Buddhism is almost parallel with populist Christianity in it's teaching (Shinran Buddhists believe that only by the grace of Amida Buddha will they attain entrance into the Pure Land.) The history of the Buddhist Church is just as sordid as that of the myriad Christian Churches.

And esoteric Buddhism is as far removed from this as more esoteric forms of Christianity.

[Anonymous No.645508]

>>645483
Correct. That would be why I mentioned it as a romanticized , and the whole "stupid westerner" thing.

[Anonymous No.645545]

>>645402
a dinge on /lit/?

[Anonymous No.645570]

>>645483
This is true. Monasticism exists across all creeds and is quite a profound and humdrum search for meaning in existence. Plus it is only one of the many esoteric strands of spirituality that truly do what they should.

[Anonymous No.645578]

What you could do is to scan it as a document.

Then translate the document via google translate.

[Anonymous No.645589]

>>645508
If you acknowledge all that (and we can't know everything so I'm not riding your ass on that particular issue) then are you satisfied with having romantic "romantic" idea of Buddhism or do you actually want to know something about Buddhism? If you declare yourself a stupid westerner, I read that as either 'I admit I don't know much and would like to know more' or 'I admit I don't know much and find bliss in my ignorance'.

I went with the first interpretation, hence the bit of info on Buddhism. Was I wrong?

In other words, do you want to chat about Buddhism or does your interest stop at "what did I just buy?"

I would help you on that point if I could but my Chinese is terrible, and while I can recognize individual symbols I can't put them together into any sort of coherent translation. Sorry.

[Anonymous No.645685]

>>645589
ah, sorry for the late response. I do have interest in buddist religious practices, yes. More from an anthropolgical point of veiw than anything else, but It does hold interest to me. Yes.

If you want to enlighten me, that would be great

[Anonymous No.645821]

>>645685
>veiw
seriously you have got to work on you "i before e's" man

[Anonymous No.645827]

>>645685
Unfortunately my academic concentration was in Japan and not the Buddhist religion, so I can point you in some directions but am way to ignorant myself to do any enlightening.

If you're atheist I would steer clear of any Pure Land Buddhism. It is overly simplistic and Shinran is kind of the Buddhist Jesus, who is persecuted, is the focus of miracles, gains followers among the little people, etc. The more I read about him the more I figured I might as well go back to the Church if I believed the stuff he said. If you do want to get a good idea about the basics of Pure Land Buddhism You Were Born for a Reason is a decent intro, though it is proselytizing in tone. Perfect Freedom in Buddhism is much more in depth and academic than the simple "Amida loves you" of the other title, but it's out of print.

If you really want to start learning about Buddhism the Theravada/Mahayana split is a good place to start. For a very vague and general parallel, imagine Theravada as the Christianity of Christ and the early church and Mahayana as the Church started to absorb foreign concepts and practices into itself and adjusted its tenants for greater spread.

And then Chinese Buddhism, Japanese Buddhism, Bali Buddhism etc... all have their own quirks and interesting tidbits.

[Anonymous No.647630]

My Traditional East Asia professor handed one of those out for everyone to see, except it was a giant sheet of paper attached to two hardcovers that accordioned out. I was the first to handle it and of course it dropped out of my hand and went all over the place.

Damn Buddhists and their prayer manuals.

[Anonymous No.647632]

>>645821
Except in "atheist"! That's what got him in trouble in the first place.

[Anonymous No.647702]

>>646033
Where can you get that? I have never seen anything like it.

[Anonymous No.647724]

Once, for a fleeting moment during meditation, I was able to experience non-existence, but once I became aware of it, I became aware of my awareness and the feeling fleeted. Then I suck "Fuck this!" and went to bed.

I've tried twice since, but I haven't gotten there again.

[Anonymous No.647731]

>>647724
>I've tried twice since
Good to know you're really dedicated. You realize people dedicate their entire lives to this feeling, starting from pre-pubescence? And you think a couple tries for a half-hour every few months is going to do anything for you? Typical idiot 4chan arrogance and ignorance.

[Anonymous No.647733]

>>647724

I just used "fleet" twice in the same sentence. I'm a terrible writer at 6am.

[Anonymous No.647770]

>>647731

I meditate when it is time to meditate. Wei wu wei.