FWBO News in Spanish - and the Dharma in translation...

Visitors to the FWBO News website can scroll down below the latest story to see – among many other things – an ongoing list of where the site’s visitors have come from. This currently stands at a little over 23,000 since November 2007 – from no less than 134 countries. That’s not surprising, given the international nature of the internet and the fact the FWBO/TBMSG have centres or groups in some 25 countries.

However, of course many people who are part of our Sangha don’t speak English – including many from the Spanish-speaking world. And so Moksananda, an English Order Member who has lived for many years in Spain, has begun translating selected stories from FWBO News into Spanish. Recent posts include Arte Dalit; Hacer que el Dharma trabaje; and En Krakow - polvo, ruido, sudor y alegría...

FWBO News would be very happy to hear of any other translation initiatives going on at FWBO/TBMSG centres.

FWBO News maintains a substantial database which attempts to list all existing translations of all FWBO Dharma of all sorts into all languages world-wide. This is available on the Resources tab of the site - see FWBO Translations here. This can be downloaded for ease of reference, and again, updates are welcome.

FWBO Home page now available in Russian

A new translation of the FWBO's main website, www.fwbo.org, has been launched, this time in Russian. The address is -

http://russian.fwbo.org/

As with the other versions of FWBO.org, the site carries information on basic Buddhism, meditation practices, and the FWBO's distinctive approach, as well as a short biography of Sangharakshita, founder of the FWBO.

Russian is of course not the only languaged into which the FWBO's website has been translated; below is a list of some others -

Chinese
Dutch
Finnish
French
German
Polish
Russian
Spanish

The FWBO's Wildmind meditation website is available in many of the above languages plus Portuguese.

See our contacts section for a fuller list and for details of the local centres in each country...

Change to wording of Heart Sutra

Following some months of consultation, Mahamati, the International Order Convenor of the WBO, has announced a small change to the wording of the Heart Sutra as recited in the FWBO.

The new wording is

All things are by nature void
They are not born or destroyed
Nor are they stained or pure
Nor do they wax or wane.

These replace the well-known line "all things are the primal void” and the section immediately following. A full copy of the text of the new version can be downloaded from the Resources section of FWBO News here.

The change was approved by Sangharakshita in order to avoid the danger of referring to "the void" i.e. making sunyata into a 'thing', while keeping the rhythm and flow of the original.

Windhorse Publications will be reprinting the English Language edition of the FWBO Puja book soon, with the new version of the Heart Sutra included.

Those of a nostalgic disposition are reminded that the 'primal void' lives on in Kavyasiddhi’s beautiful rendition of the Heart Sutra – sung at last summer’s International Order Convention and posted on Videosangha.