r/Buddhism • u/KudzuPlant • 1d ago
Academic Should I learn Chinese to study sutras and if so, which style of Chinese should I learn?
A bit of an odd question but I have recently began to search for what tradition of Buddhism I really want to "identify" with. I am very drawn to Mahayana in general and have recently become really fascinated with Tiantai Buddhism. I like Tendai as well but want to focus on the Chinese traditions more prominently (I have a lifelong friend who could accompany me in China if I visit as they are a native to Beijing and would make traversing alot easier than visiting Japan).
I want to learn source materials and study beyond what is filtered back into English thru academia and general translations. Would it be worth actually learning Chinese for this or are translations sufficient? I ask because when it comes to Tendai, there is more available in English but for specifically Tiantai, more in still in Chinese than English.
Thank you for your time and if you have any resources for learning more on the Tiantai tradition generally, I'd love to hear it.
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u/SunshineTokyo vajrayana 1d ago
The sutras are written in Classical Chinese, so modern Chinese is not enough. But it's not required at all unless you wanted to become an academic or a professional translator. In that case, you would also need to study Sanskrit to compare sources. Most academics are trilingual or quadrilingual, but it's a daunting task. You don't need all those languages to learn about the Dharma, and most teachers are monolingual or bilingual.
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u/Jayatthemoment 1d ago
It’s going to be very hard work if you’re an English-first-language beginner who knows no Chinese characters. Sutra Chinese is different from modern Chinese and the vocabulary for dharma terms is tricky to pick up — it’s either transliterations from sounds of old Chinese or terms that mean different things in everyday usage.
Not trying to discourage you, but it’s going to be a long time before you are reading sutras. I do it but I’d been reading modern Chinese for years when I started and already knew the characters. You could have a look at ‘Chinese Buddhist Texts’ by Lock and Lineberger (Routledge) to see if it looks manageable for you.
Chinese is a beautiful language though. I totally encourage you to learn it. Why not have a go so you can understand your friend’s language and you can go to Beijing and enjoy it more? I lived in Taiwan and China for a major chunk of my life and it’s so much more rewarding when you can chat to people there. You’ll be able to talk to people in temples, read some of the inscriptions in temples, understand who the stairs are, and so on.
Good luck!
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u/Groundbreaking_Ship3 1d ago
Unless you are interested and motivated to learn Chinese, I don't recommend that. Being a Chinese myself, I can understand roughly 70% of the sutras if read them raw, on certain sutras I can only understand 20 to 30% because the words are so obscure, succinct and outdated. The language barrier is extremely high for foreigners. But of course there is modern Chinese translation for most sutras.
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u/zeropage 1d ago
The sutras are difficult to read even for native Chinese. I'd recommend a top down approach. Learn enough Chinese so you can understand Dharma talks and commentaries from Chinese sources, rather than go directly into the sutras.
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u/Bookkeeper-Full 1d ago
Learn Chinese if you want to, just for the sake of your personal interest. But as for the purpose of learning about Buddhism? Most Buddhists believe there are very real dangers to getting caught in specific words/translations/concepts, and the only way to truly understand the teachings comes from lived experience.
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u/Old_Indication_8135 1d ago
Learn Chinese to learn Chinese. It’s a cool language and a great challenge. It’s not necessary to learn Chinese just to study the Dharma. I am still studying Chinese, ten years later, and it is now the language I speak the most at home. Well, maybe more like an English Chinese pidgin. I have a very hard time with Buddhist texts in Chinese as they become confusing, quick. Esoteric, even.
It helps a bit when trying to read Chinese sutras, but sutras are often full of Sanskrit words directly represented by Chinese characters so you still need to know some Sanskrit or have a reference handy. Also, the grammar is often closer to classical Chinese so your modern Chinese won’t get you far. It does open some door in terms of being able to access modern Buddhist literature in Chinese, however.
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u/minatour87 1d ago
BLIA.org has a good US organization to teach the sutras in English, Allot of good commentaries on Sutras in English
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u/amoranic SGI 1d ago
The kind of Chinese in which the Sutras are written in is closer to Classical Chinese than modern Chinese. For this reason it doesn't really matter if you learn Mandarin, Cantonese or any other form of modern Chinese.
You can find some echos of classical Chinese in modern language especially in the form of Chengyu expressions but I'm not sure how much modern Chinese will help you understand sutras. You might as well study Japanese since they have kept a lot of the original meaning of the words, although Japanese might be a harder language to learn.
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u/sunnybob24 15h ago
There's a lot of detail here. As an Australian that follows LinChi Chan Buddhism and who has occasionally translated texts from ancient Chinese to modern English, and who has lived in Taiwan and Japan, let me make a bunch of random notes. Ask if you want more detail on a few aspects.
Some sutras benefit greatly from direct reading rather than translation from Pali, Tibetan, sandscrit, or Chinese. This is especially true is the case of Chinese because the characters are often pictures of the things they describe and not merely sounds.
In such cases, the key ideas are often expressed in a few words that a good teacher will walk you through.
The Chinese characters often used in sutras are a lot less than the 10s of thousands used in ancient literature. If you learn a few hundred words, it will get you a long way to 'feelong' the meaning and understanding the elegance of the texts and especially the beautiful 4 character sayings and short poems.
You can get a lot out of reading the many ancient commentaries. They explain the words, context, implications and connections of the text. Your desire to read the text is noble and ambitious, but if you want to dip your toe in the water and get somewhere with it right away, maybe pick a text and some commentaries and then focus of some critical phrases and sayings. It's a big payoff for not a lot of work.
Lots of Buddhist ideas are represented by 2 characters. If you learn these, and a few prepositions you are halfway there.
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u/raztl 13h ago edited 13h ago
You could try to reach out to Thomas Dhammadipa: https://www.dhammadipa.cz/en/ He was a monk for 37 years, practiced Theravada with Pa Auk, lived in China (Honkong?), is fluent in 12 languages including Sanskrit, Pali, and Chinese, teaches also Mahayana, including Zen, has ties to Tibetan Buddhism, teaches all over the world, and translates. I believe he studied Tiantai, at least someone says so here: https://www.dharmawheel.net/viewtopic.php?t=36098 and he taught a samatha and vipassana according to Tiantai in Czech last year: https://www.dhammadipa.cz/en/recordings/nedualisticka-meditace/
At a short retreat this summer, I met one of his Zen students who started learning Chinese and it seems that ven. Dhammadipa was encouraging him in that. Good luck, it's not an easy endeavour! I started learning Sanskrit this summer and sometimes I think that the time would be better spent meditating:)
Here he refers to the 4 kinds of breath described in the Tientai tradition: https://youtu.be/_c5XDbao9pA?si=W_I5aAOz-oDug2xc&t=184
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u/ozmosTheGreat nondenominational 12h ago
pali or perhaps Sanskrit will be easier to learn as the syllables can be represented in roman script
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u/TheIcyLotus mahayana 1d ago
Learn Mandarin. After that, you can rely on Chinese commentaries to get by without fully learning Classical Chinese. But of course, learning Classical Chinese is great too.
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u/AlexCoventry reddit buddhism 1d ago
At this point, AI is going to keep getting better at foreign languages way, way faster than I can. So I don't do any language study unless I have an immediate need.
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u/Boethiah_The_Prince 20h ago
Japanese is even further from Classical Chinese than Modern Chinese. The grammatical structure and vocabulary are completely distinct, and that’s not even bring up hiragana and katakana. They aren’t even from the same language family.
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u/Boethiah_The_Prince 19h ago
In the example you cite, the Japanese sutra is actually written in a classical literary form of Japanese that is distinct from modern Japanese. In fact, most "Japanese sutras" are written like this. That's why the vocabulary looks close to classical Chinese; if it were written in modern Japanese instead, there would be a lot of difference. The relationship between this literary form of Japanese and modern Japanese is exactly the type of relationship between classical Chinese and modern Chinese. Hence, if OP learns Japanese, he would be no closer to understanding classical Chinese than if he had learnt Chinese instead. That is, unless he learns classical Japanese rather than modern Chinese, but this would be highly redundant; why learn classical Japanese to learn classical Chinese when you can just learn classical Chinese directly?
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u/Sensitive-Note4152 1d ago
Chinese and Tibetan are the only two languages in which all of the Mahayana teachings are available. And in addition to the Sutras, both languages also have long traditions, continuous to today, or commentaries and other secondary literature. I recently made a video of me writing the title of the Heart Sutra in Traditional Chinese characters (my Chinese handwriting it terrible, but I have old arthritic hands, so sue me):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsB15ZfkXxQ