@Snowbird @sujato
No, please, numbers cannot convey how very badly Matty has misspoken for many famous bhikkhunis and misrepresented the enlightened voice in general. Although his short poems tend to be similar to the original, perhaps close enough to pass, Matty’s longer poems are off the rails. This can be conveyed through concrete examples.
Compare, for example, the respected Harvard translation by Charles Hallisley of Mahapajapati Gotami’s words (Thig 6.6) with Weingast’s verses re-written in Mahapajapati Gotami’s name:
Harvard ed. by Charles Hallisey pp. 85-87 (18 paragraph breaks removed for convenience)
Praise to you, hero among Buddhas, best of all beings, you freed me from suffering, just as you did so many other people.
All suffering is known, the craving that is suffering’s cause has been destroyed, the eightfold path of the Noble one has been traveled and cessation reached:
The four noble truths/ each one done/ all done by me.
I had already been a mother, a son, a father, a brother, and a grandmother, but not knowing things as they really are, I was reborn and reborn, never having enough.
As soon as I saw the Bhagavan, I knew that this is my last body, that the realm of births is finished, that now there is no rebirth for me.
When I look at the disciples assembled together, energetic, resolute, always making an effort, I see that this is how Buddhas are rightly worshipped.
Mahamaya gave birth to Gotama for the sake of many, to drive away the mass of suffering of all those struck down by sickness and death.
Weingast’s supposedly same verses pp. 77-78 (39 paragraph breaks removed for convenience)
I know you all. I have been your mother, your son, your father, your daughter. You see me now in my final role – kindly grandmother. It’s a fine part to go out on.
You might have heard how it all began – when my sister died and I took her newborn son to raise as my own.
People still ask, Did you know then what he would become? What can I say? What mother doesn’t see a Buddha in her child? He was such a quiet boy. The first time he reached for me. The first time I held him while he slept. How could I not know?
To care for all children without exception as though each will someday be the one to show us all the way home. This is the path.
Not only did MPG not say Matty’s words, she absolutely never would have said most of them, nor would any enlightened person speak such worldly non-Dhamma. Matty’s wholesome mundane sentiments posing as MPG’s voice may cause readers to sigh and feel good but won’t help break them out of samsara.
The Therigatha was the first EBT from which I read, handed to me by a Buddhist monk at a Burmese monastery I was visiting. (He saw me reading Jataka tales, shook his head, and brought out a few other scripture books which he placed in front of me, ordering, “Read this!”). After perusing the Therigatha a little while [edit: for about an hour], I picked up another book, the PTS translation of the Majjhima Nikaya, and opened it to “Simile of the Snake” (MN ). <— (will add citation later)
Then I set the book down and pondered, with dissatisfaction, “Why were the Buddha and those enlightened nuns so down on sense pleasures? What’s wrong with them?” [edit: ie, “what’s wrong with these supposedly enlightened people?”] Then the thought hit me: “Maybe they were right; maybe sense pleasures really are that dangerous!” Goosebumps arose on the back of my neck, my shoulders and arms, then whole body. In that moment I became an avowed celibate for life. About a year later, in late 1997, I left home seeking a monastery that would give a woman a chance.
You think Matty’s version of the Therigatha would drive a woman from ordinary lay life to seek a solution to the rounds of rebirth?
So not only is Matty fooling women’s studies departments, history buffs, and lovers of poetry by passing off his new poems as translations, he is teaching a false Dhamma in the name of the elder enlightened bhikkhunis, causing incalculable loss of potential wisdom.