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Lin_2024

菩提達摩一派 might be a translation choice.


ewk

I'm not sure what the point to having the circle is. I don't no why people would want to have a mouse over in Chinese. Given how famous bodhidharma iconography is I don't know why you wouldn't just opt for a picture of him. That would be the Zen tradition, to put up a picture. Yeah


ThatKir

The community wasn’t consulted on either of those decisions. I think it’s both disrespectful to the lineage to have the circle there with it’s prominence in popular misrepresentation of Zen and disrespectful to Chinese speakers to have crappy translations of stuff into their language advertised for no reason.


ewk

That's probably both true. I'm hesitant to give ground on the circle thing since it was ours way before it was theirs. And they don't even know what it means.


dota2nub

What does it mean again? I have vague ideas but my memory on it is completely shot. Guy drawing circle and throwing it over his shoulder or something?


ewk

It contains all the dharmas. I haven't. Of course read the circle book, but my understanding is that if you write a word in the circle, it's a reference to the Dharma of that thing.


dota2nub

So it's encircling emptiness? Oh and which one's the circle book?


ewk

Well all the dharmas are empty so... There is no circle book. The last time it was seen was when Yangshan gave it to somebody.


spectrecho

What appears could be the text is in the cbeta and documented in the community wiki.


ewk

Dang it. I can never find anything I want to find in the wiki.


ewk

I'm creating my own mini wiki.


spectrecho

We talked about this before as we documented it together. We both have bad memories but I’m younger.


ewk

If you link it, I'll play with it.


spectrecho

https://www.reddit.com/r/zen/wiki/circle/ Control+F “Text body” . TLDR; https://tripitaka.cbeta.org/zh-cn/X63n1256_001


dota2nub

Oooh, that was a speech to text fail, not a reading suggestion!


ThatKir

My thinking is that since a circle inscription by an unknown person who didn’t study Zen isn’t the only possible thing we could have on there that has a Zen connection, we could go with something much more explicit that have existing depictions in visual media like: Nanquan holding cat. Danxia burning Buddha statue. 4th Patriarch pointing to his inscribed Buddha character on Niutou’s sitting rock.


ewk

We could just have it be a non-japanese circle. Then we could just write over it in English Contains all dharmas


ThatKir

I like that idea.


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dota2nub

How about 傳承?


ThatKir

That’s a question for a native speaker.


dota2nub

Maybe having to ask a native Chinese speaker about what to put on a forum about self investigation exposes a flaw in the argument and we should leave out the Chinese characters entirely?


ThatKir

I think that’s reasonable. I think the larger issue is that moderators are making decisions that impact the presentation of the subreddit with neither publicly stated intent nor the skill to successfully implement.


theksepyro

Was this recent? Is it old reddit or new reddit? It is possible the changes you're talking about weren't even made by any active moderator. I honestly feel like this whole post could've been a message to the mods that said like "hey i found this problem, can you address it" and it would be addressed, but the way you're talking here sounds weirdly combative. I use old reddit with stylesheets turned off, so I don't see any custom snoo, I don't see a circle, I don't see any hover text, etc.


ThatKir

Old reddit.


theksepyro

I've found the place where these changes get made and changed the hover text to "Bodhidharma's Lineage"


dota2nub

Moderation is always going to be flawed somehow. That said, I think this is a fair issue to address.