Thirty-Seven Practices-The Title

Transcript

1. The Title
2. ༄༅། །བྱང་ཆུབ་སསྤྱོད་ཚུལ་སསྙིང་པསྤྱོར་དསྙིལ་བ་རྒྱལ་སྲས་ ལག་ལལེན་སསྤྱོ་བདུན་མ་ཞལེས་བྱ་བ་བཞུགས་སསྤྱོ། ། Is the full title of the text in Tibetan. • Tibetan texts always start with ༄༅ ཡསྙིག་མགསྤྱོ་ the beginning letter, • Followed by ། ། གཉསྙིས་ཤད་ two full stops. • བྱང་ཆུབ་ means enlightenment. བྱང་ is related to the aspect of purification, while ཆུབ་ shows that all qualities of wisdom and compassion have fully expanded.
3. • སསྤྱོད་ is conduct. ཚུལ་ is way or manner. So together སསྤྱོད་ཚུལ་ means how you act, how you conduct yourself. • དསྙིལ་བ་ as a verb is to distil, to sort of roll together as one. It is also the same word as used for ringing a bell. As a noun it is what has been distilled- distillation. • སསྙིང་པསྤྱོ་ is essence or heart. By adding the grammar particle ར་ it becomes 'to the essence' or 'into the essence'.
4. • So together སསྙིང་པསྤྱོར་དསྙིལ་བ་ is 'distilled into its essence'. • རྒྱལ་བ་ means victor i.e. Buddha. སྲས་ means son or heir. རྒྱལ་སྲས་ then are the heirs of Buddhas- Bodhisattvas. • ལག་ལལེན་ is practice. ལག་ is hand. ལལེན་ is to take or accept. Literally this is something like 'taking in hand'; very practical.
5. • སསྤྱོ་བདུན་ is short for སུམ་ཅུ་སསྤྱོ་བདུན་ which means thirty- seven. མ་ makes it a noun- the thirty-seven. • ཞལེས་བྱ་བ་བཞུགས་ is something put at the end of every Tibetan title. Sort of like the Old English “Herein lies...” But it's never really translated. • སསྤྱོ་ is a final particle or རསྤྱོགས་ཚཚིག There are eleven of these: གསྤྱོ་ངསྤྱོ་དསྤྱོ་ནསྤྱོ་བསྤྱོ་མསྤྱོ་འསྤྱོ་རསྤྱོ་ལསྤྱོ་སསྤྱོ་ཏསྤྱོ། They simply repeat the suffix of the preceding word.
6. The version I'm using of this translates the title as: The Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva: A Distillation of the Essential Conduct for Awakening to Enlightenment • After studying the vocabulary, try to figure out for yourself how someone might have arrived at this translation. Then I will explain what I understand. Please remember to dedicate whatever study you do. Thanks!