It is basically short stories with Buddhist themes, aimed at a teenage reading audience, though anyone who enjoys light fiction would enjoy it as well. Unlike my other translations, this is not specifically a dharma text, and thus the challenge was to be less academic in translating this work while taking out a poetic license to make the language work.
Publication details:
Nakamura Gyōmyō, Buddhist Tales for the Soul. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Pvt.Ltd., 2012. (ISBN 978-81-207-6841-3)
The work is available on Amazon as a Kindle edition.
Print copies are available from the publisher.
4 comments:
For the soul? What soul?
There is no soul, but this is fiction, so we can make stuff up. That's the beauty of it. Actually a lot of Buddhist teachers throw the word soul around. Even Ajahn Brahm does with caveats.
Throwing the word soul around strikes me as a failure on several levels: a failure to come to terms with Buddhist metaphysics and doctrine, a failure to come to terms with Buddhist terminology, and a failure to fully commit to a Buddhist world view.
It is confusing to both vehemently deny that a soul exists, as Buddhists do, and then to irrationally sneak it in through the back door as a "fiction".
Even as fiction the word soul speaks of our tacit western eternalism and monism.
The word soul in a fictional context can just refer to one's inner sense of comfort and well-being. I think the author had that idea in mind.
This book isn't a dharma text. It isn't even strictly Buddhist, but just Buddhist-themed.
In any case, it is light reading and to be taken lightly.
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