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 itās own condition.
Conditioned by other? It isnāt.
Neither in combination nor eschewing causation
No thing has ever arisen.
So I know youāre kidding around hereā¦ And I applaud your humour and also thank you for it. And Iām also taking my hat off to your translation because I wouldnāt really know where to even begin with such an endeavour!
But I hope you donāt 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.
I think it is fine- Iām not well versed in sanskrit but my Sinhalese and Pali helps with this. I canāt see the initial verse which meant āConditioned by other? It isnāt. Could you point it to me, if not was it just you being original?
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 āneither coming nor goingā from the beginning.
All in all, the OP is an adaption of
anirodham anutpÄdam anucchedam aÅÄÅvatam |
anekÄrtham anÄnÄrtham anÄgamam anirgamam ||
yaįø„ pratÄ«tyasamutpÄdaį¹ prapaƱcopaÅamaį¹ Åivam |
deÅayÄmÄsa saį¹buddhas taį¹ vande vadatÄį¹ varam ||
na svato nÄpi parato na dvÄbhyÄį¹ nÄpy ahetutaįø„ |
utpannÄ jÄtu vidyante bhÄvÄįø„ kva cana ke cana ||
āConditioned by other? It isnātā is an idiosyncratic rendering of the Sanskrit ānapi paratoā, which I think means more properly: ānor from anotherā.
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 āonlyā a MahÄyÄna notion). I am going to made a post asking questions about the paper in a bit.