[Buddha-l] Best translations of DIAMOND SUTRA?

[Richard Hayes]

On Dec 9, 2009, at 9:47 AM, Richard Nance wrote:

> You might want to compare Conze's translation with two more recent
> translations by Gregory Schopen and Paul Harrison.

Excellent advice. In fact, a good idea would be to compare Schopen's  
with Harrison's translation and forget about Conze's altogether.  
Conze's work was important for getting other people interested in the  
vast corpus of literature, but his translations are not worth using as  
anything but doorstops. Or footstools. I am quite sure that everyone  
would agree. (I'm trying my best to follow Lusthaus's characterization  
of what he calls the buddha-l methodology of having a subjective hunch  
and assuming it is widely accepted by everyone as absolute truth.)

Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes
rhayes at unm.edu