How much negative karma have I accrued?

I did something terrible to a wonderful work.

Neither stopping, nor starting, nor ending.
Neither endless, nor single, nor many.
I salute he who taught, the Buddha Full-wrought,
of dependent origination.

No thing is itā€™s own condition.
Conditioned by other? It isnā€™t.
Neither in combination nor eschewing causation
No thing has ever arisen.

How many Hail Mayaā€™s do I need to say?

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That depends on your intentions. Whatā€™s the source? :smile:

Hi Coemgenu

:grin: :joy: :laughing:

So I know youā€™re kidding around hereā€¦ :wink: And I applaud your humour :clap:t6: :clap:t6: :clap:t6: and also thank you for it. :sunglasses: And Iā€™m also taking my hat off to your translation because I wouldnā€™t really know where to even begin with such an endeavour!

But I hope you donā€™t mind if I take your translation, and your question, as inspiration. I would like to link to another topic here and attempt to answer your question as if it were serious! You have got me reflecting on something that I normally process implicitly and I want to give you credit for being the one to stimulate a more explicit verbal response! Also, I think, even though you have asked in jest, this is a question asked by many and so perhaps it might be nice to try to share my current answer to it. :slight_smile:

With many thanks and much metta :heartpulse:

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Itā€™s just a limerick! :sweat_smile: But thank you!

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Mūlamadhyamakakārikā Opening

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Lol! Is it not from a Sutta then? :slight_smile:

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Oh lol againā€¦nevermind that questionā€¦just saw your response to Mat!

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anirodham anutpādam anucchedam aśāśvatam
anekārtham anānārtham anāgamam anirgamam
yaįø„ pratÄ«tyasamutpādaį¹ƒ prapaƱcopaśamaį¹ƒ śivam
deśayāmāsa saį¹ƒbuddhas taį¹ƒ vande vadatāį¹ƒ varam
[link]

I think it is fine- Iā€™m not well versed in sanskrit but my Sinhalese and Pali helps with this. I canā€™t see the initial verse which meant ā€˜Conditioned by other? It isnā€™t. Could you point it to me, if not was it just you being original? :slight_smile:

with metta

There are TONS of issues with the OP translation. It is, after all, a limerick, more intended to be funny by virtue of it being the MMK in a limerick (my spouse insists that limericks in-and-of-themselves are not innately funny, but I defer!) than to be a serious effort to render the MMK in that metre.

For instance, the ending of the first quatrain should have been something more like

The goodly, I laud, the D.O. he taught,
for the ending of reification.

if it were to follow the original more closely.

Similarly, it is missing the ā€œneither coming nor goingā€ from the beginning.

All in all, the OP is an adaption of

anirodham anutpādam anucchedam aśāśvatam |
anekārtham anānārtham anāgamam anirgamam ||
yaįø„ pratÄ«tyasamutpādaį¹ƒ prapaƱcopaśamaį¹ƒ śivam |
deśayāmāsa saį¹ƒbuddhas taį¹ƒ vande vadatāį¹ƒ varam ||
na svato nāpi parato na dvābhyāį¹ƒ nāpy ahetutaįø„ |
utpannā jātu vidyante bhāvāįø„ kva cana ke cana ||

ā€œConditioned by other? It isnā€™tā€ is an idiosyncratic rendering of the Sanskrit ā€œnapi paratoā€, which I think means more properly: ā€œnor from anotherā€.

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No, but, I think that I am not ill-informed to say that the text, in its original form, rather than my limerick-rendering, has something of a good reputation with the EBT crowd? Ven Huifeng published an article concerning Early Buddhism and the coterminous linkage of dependent origination with emptiness (something usually considered ā€œonlyā€ a Mahāyāna notion). I am going to made a post asking questions about the paper in a bit.

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10,000 strokes of the cat!

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ā€œConditioned by other? It isnā€™t,

ā€¦sounded a lot like self-existent, in other words!
lol!

Canā€™t comment on your poetic rendering- my Sinhalese poetry is horrendous, not to mention Pali or Sanskrit!

with metta

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