[woman vocalizing] [drumming] [cheering] Cindy Blackman Santana: Sometimes, in the midst of a drum solo, I have a little epiphany.

A satori, or breakthrough, in my awareness.

The revelation where something new is revealed.

It turns out that most of the world's religions started through a dramatic shift in consciousness, a mystical revelation.

Welcome to "Global Spirit."

I'm Cindy Blackman Santana.

Man: Navigating through the ancient Chandni Chowk bazaar, the oldest street in Delhi, it is humbling to experience such a dazzling expression of the human will to survive, especially here in India, with almost 1/5 of the human race striving to live together in peace.

Behind the bustle of the commerce, one can only be impressed by that timeless dimension of India, its religious passion and fervor.

On almost every street you'll find a wildly colorful Hindu temple, each one dedicated to a specific deity who receives and releases its own special blessings through devotional prayers and rituals.

The kaleidoscopic colors and bells of the Hindu temple lie in dramatic contrast to the peace and expansiveness of the nearby Mughal-era mosque, where we are invited to face the Kaaba and feel the devotion of the afternoon prayer.

[woman chanting] A couple of blocks from the mosque, as we pass the delightfully imposing guardian, I decide to follow my traveler's instinct and visit my first Sikh temple, or gurdwara.

In the center lies the Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, resting under a golden canopy.

This "Global Spirit" program will explore the often mystical origins of some of the world's foundational sacred texts and trace how they have been chosen, translated, and interpreted over the centuries.

For this multifaith journey, we've asked 3 esteemed translator-teachers to join us.

Willis Barnstone is a poet and the renowned translator of dozens of seminal texts, including the revised New Testament.

The Reverend Cynthia Bourgeault is an Episcopal priest and the author of "The Mary Magdalene Story."

They will be joined by Ken McLeod, a Buddhist practitioner, teacher, and Tibetan text translator.

Welcome to "Global Spirit's Inside Sacred Texts."

Welcome to "Global Spirit."

I'd like to begin with what is it about these great sacred or holy or revered texts through time, ranging from the Old Testament to the Upanishads to the Tibetan work.

What is it in them that has gripped our imagination?

Willis, what is it about these texts that you've devoted your life to?

Well, I like them the same way I like any other texts.

Because they're literary, they're beautiful.

If they weren't beautiful, I wouldn't be interested.

And when they're beautiful, beauty is, Plato and other people have said, is rather important in our lives, and, uh, they're rich, and they live.

And they sing.

Beautifully said.

Cynthia, what's gripped you over the years?

I do a little bit with Middle English, which is my field, but I--I basically work as a practitioner having to work with the people that are receiving these texts and forming their lives according to them, so I'm in the interface between the-- the translation and where the rubber hits the road in practice.

Ken, how about you?

Well, like Cynthia, I'm, uh, primarily coming from the practitioner point of view.

I originally learned Tibetan, uh, simply because I wanted to be able to communicate with my teacher.

And that opened up the vast treasury of Tibetan Buddhist instruction, which is huge.

The majority of the texts that I translate are instructional, and I have seen so many people misled by bad translations that, uh, I'm putting my two cents' worth in and saying this is how I understand the text and this is what has been fruitful to me.

Because--I think the reader is utterly at the mercy of the translator and has been for thousands of years.

Cousineau: What is it about a text that makes it sacred or holy or revered?

Cynthia?

Well, I think it's a mutual feedback loop in a way that--that... since the--since the texts have been a grounding and a centering for a tradition and have, uh, proved themselves valid and proved themselves rediscovered and honored and revered within the tradition, people bring their energy-- of faith, of devotion, of creativity to it, and it becomes more and more of a stream through which... a river of--human yearning and aspiration and desiring flows.

As a Christian, of course, my classic sacred texts are the Bible in whatever version we happen to have, but people are finding living water in the "Gospel of Thomas."

Uh, I would say that probably more Christians are reading Rumi nowadays than are reading the canonical New Testament.

Uh, Dylan Thomas, Gerard Manley Hopkins.

I think we're--it's an ongoing living dynamic, and I--I think it's wrong to think when you have sacred texts that it's something frozen and locked in a book that can't move.

Cousineau: Ken, what do you think about this?

The living dynamic of a text?

Is that-- Well, I think that's a very interesting question, because one way or another, all of the texts were written by human beings.

And we can't get away from that.

Uh... some of them were written as moments...coming out of inspiration or mystical insight.

Some for political or religious reasons.

Some for poetic reasons.

And in the course of this, in--the Tibetan tradition, for instance, we have what are called, um, tertons.

That's a Tibetan word.

It means "treasure revealers."

And these are people for whom a whole text will just appear in their mind.

I translated one of these recently.

And so in a certain sense, they're regarded as having a superhuman origin.

But in fact, they are of human origin.

Uh... but they speak--to people at a time or maybe 100 years or 200 years later, they speak to people, so they come to revere that text.

The Greek scriptures, which I spent so many years translating, none of that was written as sacred texts or-- they were just letters from Paul that became revered because Paul founded Christianity more than anybody else.

Poetry is largely from the--what Jesus is supposed to be saying.

And--it's wisdom speech, because that was the only way he could speak marvelously.

That was the only way he could speak.

He spoke wisdom verse.

Everything was--now, you can call that holy, but I think that was simply talking to the people.

Now, we revere it, and therefore to us, we add very pleasantly, subjectively that this has been chosen.

They are the chosen.

But is any verse from Homer less sacred?

That was the bible of the Greeks.

How about Sappho?

There's not a poem by Sappho which does not have a god in it, but we don't consider that holy verse.

I think those words are very relative.

Other people's, other people's miracles we call--what?

Uh... fantasy.

Our own, we consider history.

[McLeod laughs] Well said.

Cousineau: Ken.

Yes?

What would the Tibetan notion of a sacred text be?

Oh, so many.

Uh, there are the Sutras, which are regarded as the words of the Buddha.

That's quite apocryphal, of course.

They were written hundreds of years later.

There are commentaries by various masters which are highly revered.

One of the great things about Buddhism is that the writings and the teachings of any contemporary master are regarded as having equal authority as the scriptures of the past, which is quite different from o--other religions, I believe.

It's a perfect moment to, uh, segue into some of your work.

Could you give us a flavor of one of your own translations?

Well, these were 6 short phrases written by a 10th-century Indian mystic named Tilopa, and they're rather enigmatic meditation instructions.

They're called in-- the six nails, because they were hitting those key points.

The Tibetan is "mi mno, mi bsam, mi sems, mi dpyod, mi sgom, rang sar bzhag."

That's the whole thing.

And the most concise English translation, reflecting the concision in the Tibetan that I've been able to come up with was, "don't recall, don't imagine, don't think, don't examine, don't control, rest."

Now, I did another translation just to give a little bit more to go on, which was, "let go of what has passed, "let go of what may come, "let go of what is happening now, "don't try to figure anything out, "don't try to make anything happen, relax right now and rest."

And this goes to Cynthia's point that this is really experiential-- this is not doctrinal; this is not philosophical-- that Tilopa's trying to convey how to have a certain kind of experience, and he's speaking right out of his own experience in doing so.

Cousineau: What would make it sacred or holy, revered?

Choose your adjective.

That--what makes it, uh, revered, and that's the adjective I would choose, is that people have found these words resonating with them throughout the centuries.

Let's turn to our first video sequence, which is going to focus on the sacred texts of the Sikh religion, the Guru Granth Sahib.

Sikhism is the fifth largest religion in the world.

Founded by Guru Nanak's mystical revelation in 1497, the Sikhs have been and remain a people of the book.

Their sacred text is called the Guru Granth Sahib, which is always raised, fanned, and often covered out of respect for its holiness.

And while we couldn't get close to filming the actual book here on our spontaneous drop-in visit, we made it a point to follow up with the Sikh community in San Jose, California.

[man singing in native language] Cousineau: Inder Mohan Singh is a local authority on the Guru Granth Sahib.

The text is still fairly recent.

It's what, 500 years old?

We believe it's a direct revelation from God through Nanak, got this revelation directly from the source, yes, and that divine light of his then passed to the other gurus and now comes to us in the form of the Guru Granth Sahib.

So we think of it as the eternal living guru.

And we treat it in the same way as we would treat a very high spiritual leader or a king or an emperor.

Cousineau: What English translation would you use to describe the-- the reverence of it?

[speaking foreign language] the guru's word.

[singing in native language] Singh: The word "guru" itself has a much, much deeper meaning in Sikhi than the usual word of a spiritual leader or a teacher.

"Guru" refers to the divine.

The divine revelation.

"Gu" is darkness and "ru" is light.

So it's going from darkness to light.

And the person who takes you there is the guru.

And the Guru Granth Sahib itself is-- is the actual words written by the different authors, and this includes the gurus, the Sikh gurus as well as about 38 other saints from different faiths whose, uh, writings are included in there.

[man singing in native language] So all that music has words from the Guru Granth Sahib, and the various names of the divine are repeated there constantly in different contexts and different metaphors, different imagery.

Beyond the music, we can hear there's the sound of spiritual music that--that's only a mystical experience.

It's something that has to work at the deepest levels of your spirit, of your being.

There are times when you just get lost in it and when you do get that touch of those moments, you just know it was something beautiful, but you can't really describe it.

Inder says that the Guru Granth Sahib, the great sacred text of the Sikhs, was written to be sung.

And that brings up something that fascinates me with sacred texts everywhere.

Is it the theology and the ideas that ultimately move us, or is it the poetry, the rhythm, the music, the sound underneath the text?

Or a combination of both?

Bourgeault: So many of the great sacred traditions are oral traditions before they're written traditions, and they began with the great chanted, you know, the Psalms, which we say.

The word means "song."

You know, that, uh, that we don't hear the--the--the color palette of music, and when you hear the music, you get a couple of things.

You get rhythm, which aids in memory.

You also got the modes, which are the--the emotional color palettes.

We only have major and minor left in--in the West, but these subtle, emotional things that can consciously elicit responses.

You also have the sounds of the--the vowels themselves and where they reverberate in the chest and in the being, the "o" of the throat sound, the "ooh," the "ah," and all of these convey not only meaning but energy.

And I also think that understanding is very important.

When you--when you hear, for example, hymns, in--or churches, melodies and the song--the songs that people sing... on page, sometimes, it's rather banal, but when the whole congregation is singing it, because you also understand it.

If you didn't understand it, it would be much less.

Let's turn to origins, because so much of the-- the argument or the dynamic around translation has to do with going back to what was originally said.

As a mystic, what's the role of the revelatory experience with some of the-- the mystical texts that we have?

And is important--is it important for a translator to know those original experiences?

Well, you know, it's very interesting that the word "original" has two, uh, different meanings and we get hogtied in them, that when you use the word "original," uh, you would tend to think on this level as, uh, meaning "earlier."

So you're going back to the original text.

Goes back to the-- the earliest time we know they were com-- composed or the oral history behind it, if you can find it.

But in terms of, uh, spiritual practice, which is the realm I take my reference from, "original" means being in alignment with the origin, and the origin is considered, if you've got a sacred text, to be outside of space-time.

So you do have these people, these--these-- these treasure revealers, uh, who receive what you could only call downloads, uh, that--downloads from, uh, the--from another realm that--that Henry Corbin referred to as the imaginal realm, uh, which was assumed to sort of convey and cover and--and hold this realm, sort of like those Russian nesting dolls.

And in imaginal reality is the origin of sacred experience, which is why it tends to look objective and uniform from tradition to tradition.

And the ones who become the great prophets, you know, Mohammed being a great example of this, are ones who, because of a certain sort of permeability and receptivity and alignment of their own being, are able to catch and match what actually objectively exists, uh, as a coherent energetic field in that other realm, and bring it alive so that they convey it, so that others have access to it.

Ken, you said something fascinating to me about the--the pitfalls of faithful translation, that faithfulness to the original is often regarded as the highest value.

However, we can miss something vital.

What would we be missing?

Oh, maybe everything.

The-- when--when we use the word "faithful," we're coming from the perspective that there is something immutable in the original that has to be somehow expressed, and once you have that notion of something being immutable, you've already got something fixed and--and things just die.

So rather than the idea that there's some fixed meaning that has to be rendered in the, um, new language, you translate all of these ambiguities, the plays on words the best you can, so it--this gives the reader a way of waking up or being present with the text.

Bourgeault: I think there is a point for a faithful, uh, not academic but simply straight-up translation that just puts the text in simply as a kind of base text.

And then out of that, I think that they're geniuses.

Uh, I love what Coleman Barks does with Rumi.

I think more than almost anyone else, Coleman Barks has made Rumi a sacred text for American seekers.

[man singing in native language] Man: All religions, all of us singing one song.

The differences are just illusion and vanity.

The sun's light looks a little different on this wall than it does on that wall, and a lot different on this other one, but it is still one light.

We have borrowed these clothes, these time and place personalities, from a light, and when we praise, we're pouring them back in.

We have borrowed these clothes, these time and place personalities, from a light, and when we praise, we're pouring them back in.

I have some much more straight-up Islamic translator friends who tear their hair out because they say there's very little resemblance to what was on the page.

But I see that he's got the spirit of it and that he knows how to convey it in such a way that people's lives are changed by it.

The depth psychologist James Hillman once said that literalism is the sin of the 20th century, because it robs us of symbolic thought.

It robs us of simile and metaphor and music.

Are you looking for the spirit of the text when you are translating in the way that Coleman appears to be looking not for literal translation of Rumi in the original tongue but the spirit that could touch us today?

Well, very definitely.

Um...

I think that's what all 3 of us are talking about.

But I--I want to comment on literalism, because it's a relatively recent, uh, phenomenon, and as--as Karen Armstrong points out in "The Battle for God," the literal interpretation of the Bible particularly, but also other texts in the Abrahamic tradition, uh, this is oversimplifying it a bit, but it began in about the, um, 18th century.

Makes it relatively recent.

Because religion was taking a bit of a beating from the advent of science.

And--and so they started to look at what does science do that we're not doing?

And what science does is insists on an absolute literal reading.

When you read somebody's experiment, you don't interpret it symbolically, you don't interpret it as metaphor, you interpret it absolutely literally.

And Karen Armstrong argues that this is the basis for the literal interpretation of the Bible.

It is the misapplication of a modern method to religious texts, and it is--it's disastrous, of course.

Barnstone: It's a silly thing, literalism, assuming there is such as thing as literal translation.

There are--there have been debates on whether you should recreate the original grammar in English, and I will not-- I'll refrain from saying the famous people who thought that was a silly idea.

And, you know, teachers, my own teacher, Bruno Barnhart, one of the wonderful monks of New Camaldoli, says-- he says that-- that--that all forms of fundamentalism today are--are--are a misplaced literalism.

There's the fundamentalism of the right that says every word in the Bible is God's personally-dictated message for your personal salvation to be followed to the letter.

There's the literalism of the left that says, Well, Jesus couldn't possibly have risen from the dead.

He must have been absconded.

He couldn't have been buried in a tomb.

He must've been laid in a grave.

There couldn't have been a virgin birth.

Jonah couldn't have taken place.

It's a sort of divesting and a mistaking of truth for facticity, one of the tragic mistakes of our time, and I think literalism feeds into that tragic mistake.

And so you have this Italian saint that I know you've cited that translate-- a translator is a traitor.

[Laughter] He's way ahead of us.

Cousineau: He's way ahead of us.

Ha ha!

Ken.

McLeod: Yes.

D--does this issue resonate for you about loyalties?

Does this come up for you when you're translating?

Do you have audiences in mind?

Where do your loyalties lie?

That's a very interesting question.

Uh, one can be loyal to the words.

One can be loyal to the rhythm.

One can be loyal to the understanding.

One can be loyal to the experience.

This is exactly what Willis was saying.

And I found that when I'm translating, I have to choose what I'm going to be loyal to, and my own-- my personal choice-- and I'm not advocating this as a philosophy of translation at all.

I'm just saying this is my own choice-- is to be loyal to, um, the experience that the author that I'm reading was trying to convey to the extent that I can appreciate that.

Uh... and so that is what I'm trying to make as transparent and as clear as possible.

Cousineau: Cynthia, I'd like to go back to something that you wr--wrote about so powerfully in your book on Mary Magdalene that the, uh, the scholar Karen King has written that the master story of Christianity somewhat arbitrarily chose the four Gospels to be the main text.

That means that others were left out.

Others were vetted.

Others were gleaned that may have benefited us over the last 2,000 years.

Who got to choose?

When did this happen?

Well, it was one of the tendencies that happened in the-- in the fourth century, and up till then, what--what people don't really understand about Christianity is the--the extreme variety and depth of the tradition, that there was no such thing as a New Testament.

There was no canonical scripture.

You know, it's--it's amazing that Christianity lived its first four and arguably its best centuries with neither a canon nor a creed.

But, uh, the--the selection of the texts that made the--the--the-- what became the New Testament, uh, was really closely intertwined with what many of the scholars nowadays call the triumph of the proto-orthodox party, which then became the-- the orthodox party, and therefore were able to-- to history goes the power to write the story.

That was a story.

That was the master story.

The short list, we know that about 367 A.D., C.E.

that the-- that Athanasius, the bishop Athanasius, published a short list of the contenders for the-- the short list for who would be in the-- in the New Testament, and that it was not long thereafter that the urn was placed in the desert in Nag Hammadi.

They were the texts that had been part of the beloved sacred texts of early Christian tradition, which were now out.

But I think we've known certainly since that groundbreaking book of Elaine Pagels that the Gospels-- what we call the New Testament tradition-- was put together less by divine inspiration than by human machination.

Cousineau: Willis, this brings us to one of your most influential works, the restored New Testament, in which you finally include what has been left out, much of what's been left out-- the Gnostic Gospels of Thomas, Mary, and Judas.

Tell us what the Gnostic Gospels are and why you felt so compelled to restore the New Testament.

Those 3 Gnostic texts are, first of all, they're magnificent.

And they offer an alternative version to what became the Christian tradition.

I mean, in Judas, you have Judas, which means "the Jew," "Yehuda," in Hebrew, not being the villain, but he is actually the hero, because Jesus commands him and he reluctantly fights him over it, but he agrees, "You must have me arrested so that my soul will go immediately to heaven."

And what they will be crucifying on the cross will just be a mere body which is not Jesus Christ.

That's very revolutionary.

We know exactly about that from-- Borges wrote about that in his "Three Ways of Judas" back in the fifties.

Uh, we know it from Augustine, from Irenaeus, from all the great church fathers who wrote against the heretics, and they did it very thoughtfully.

They gave us a full idea of what they were attacking as wrong.

Therefore, nothing of this is really new.

But now we have it.

And it's kind of magnificent.

And--you know, women have a very bad time in the New Testament.

In great contrast, there are so many women heroes in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew Bible.

In the New Testament, women are put down.

Cynthia, does this resonate with you, and how does it connect with your devotion to restoring the Mary Magdalene story?

Especially this-- the curious, baffling transition between the early description of her as being the apostle to the apostles and then this wide abyss when she's now regarded as the penitent whore.

What happened?

Well, I think there was a--a deliberate move.

And you can sort of locate this--this quarter amongst the disciples that it-- that it emanated from.

All you have to do is read the "Gospel of Mary Magdalene" and "Thomas" to realize that Peter was pretty threatened, and the people that were there, and they--I think they closed up-- they closed ranks.

And you see the story deliberately, increasingly edited so that she's made voiceless.

The--the idea that's dominated the popular imagination that she's a whore was not introduced until 594 by Pope Gregory I.

It's not in the scriptures at all, but nowadays, it's--it's dominated the-- the tradition.

Uh, certainly Luke handed it to--to Gregory on a silver platter.

So I--I think that-- I think that Willis is absolutely correct that-- that one of the things that happens when we have these restored texts is we have a much more balanced vision of women.

We also have a much more balanced vision of the transformational tradition of Jesus.

And these-- of course, these texts have come to us at exactly the right time to break open this little, hard knot of what ossified as the New Testament for-- 1,600 years ago and say this is how the first generation and second generation of Jesus followers received this beautiful, beautiful, puzzling gift that had fallen into their midst.

Willis, could you in--indulge us with your definition of Gnosticism?

I can try.

Gnosticism essentially rejects the notion of external, uh, things happening to us.

We are not delivered to another world.

We are delivered to ourselves when we join that spark, which is also in everybody, and when we can become that spark, that inner light, very much like the Quakers, then, uh, we are actually saved, and so death before our life and death after our life means nothing.

Cynthia, I suspect you have a different apprehension of Gnosticism.

Can you share it with us?

Bourgeault: Yeah, I would say that the term "gnosis," if you go back to the Greek, uh, actually means "knowledge," and in the first people that are working-- that are talking about the-- the problems-- these folks weren't called the Gnostics.

They were called the heretics.

I think it's the perennial philosophy in disguise or taking ever-different forms throughout the ages.

And they're quite different, one from another.

But there is this thread that you have mentioned, of knowledge, and the basic aspect of knowledge is, uh... is that we must know, understand reasonably, before we can then have faith.

Faith comes before knowledge in Christianity.

In Gnosticism, knowledge comes first.

And that is a huge difference.

A huge difference.

Cousineau: Cynthia, do you have a passage, say, from Thomas, that you would like to read?

I can do a lot of Thomas by memory, but I particularly love this very short, little quote that--his students-- Thomas is all done in dialogues.

His students ask him, or say, "24 prophets have spoken in Israel and they all spoke of you."

Yeshua says, "You have disregarded "the living one among you and have spoken of the dead."

In the other words, "Hey, guys, "why are you taking your cues "from a tradition of sacred texts?

"Why do you not just pay attention to the one that's right here in your presence?"

And I think we have this wonderful, koan-like, challenging, immediate, uh, energy of Jesus flowing through that very short passage.

It'll give you a flavor.

Thomas is so marvelously... critical of standard thought.

It's so refreshing and it's so, in the best words, philosophical.

It's an astonishing text.

I see, for example, in translating Biblical texts, that there is a total mistranslation-- intentional, all the time, to sway it to whatever is popular in the spirit of that religion.

So if it says in "Mark" many times, "Rabbi Jesus," it always comes out as "Lord Jesus" in the King James.

McLeod: Oh, I didn't know that.

Barnstone: If it says "agape," which means love, still does in modern Greek, for "love," Jerome translates it into Latin as "caritas," charity.

Doesn't mean charity.

It's good for the tithing booth, but that's all.

Speaking of translators' biases-- different ways of looking at sacred texts-- let's turn to another Sikh scholar that we met in San Jose recently, Dr. Nikky Singh, who brings another perspective to the Guru Granth Sahib.

[man singing in foreign language] Nikky Singh: The Sikh sacred space is called "Gurdwara," which is the door to the guru.

Door to liberation.

There, you have the recitation of the Guru Granth Sahib.

[singing continues] Nikky Singh: The Guru Granth Sahib is the center focus of Sikh life and ceremonies, and it's also the center of Sikh philosophy.

That's where all the community's ideals, ethical paradigms, are derived from.

Everything takes place in the presence of the Guru Granth Sahib.

[men singing in native language] Nikky Singh: For the wedding ceremony, there are no vows taken by bride and groom.

There are no rings exchanged by bride and groom.

All you have is the circle, circling of the holy book.

So the bride and the groom go around the book 4 times, and the hymn by the fourth guru, called "Laavan," which is literally called "Circles," that is sung in the background.

And each time after each hymn, they come and they put their heads together in unison in front of the holy book, and that is kind of admitting that they are both to serve, take up the principles of the Sikh faith and live it together.

Sacred works work at a very personal level.

It's very simple text.

Uh, one of the verses... [says verse in foreign language] "Between you and me and me and you, what difference can there be?"

Unfortunately, and this is where, you know, this is kind of universal in all translations, who had the access to the texts?

It's the elites in every language.

It's the males.

And so they have seen things from their own angles and their own intellectual habits.

Thous and thees have been imposed.

Uh, very kind of patriarchal, androcentric, and kind of creating a dualism which is really not there in the original text.

They kind of very clearly make it into something out there and not body.

Somehow, I don't know what it is, the body has kind of gotten very negative.

Whereas for the gurus... [says phrase in foreign language] "Whatever is in the divine, the transcendent one, that is in the body."

Pind.

Right here.

Guru Nanak celebrates the womb.

This is the mother's womb.

This is where life begins.

This is where we are given spirituality.

This is where no caste or class happens.

Everybody's equal in the mother's womb.

You will see translators not using the word "womb."

They're just kind of-- and sometimes, the word "heart" is there.

They use the word "heart" and "womb" is, uh, eliminated.

And sometimes the womb is translated as the belly.

That's not a belly.

[men singing in native language] Nikky Singh: You know, you have katha in the Sikh gurdwaras, and they are the ones-- do we ever hear it from female lips?

It's always the male lips.

It's the male hands who are taking care of the Guru Granth Sahib.

So even though, originally, at the heart of Sikhism, anybody can read the book, anybody can, uh, analyze the holy text, the divine is one, but they invariably use the word "God."

The relationship is with you.

You, the divine one, you-- inside me, outside me.

But instead, we make it into a lord almighty, out there, you know?

So it's that kind of monotheistic world that's coming in and the interpreters, and later exegetes, somehow, I feel, are unable to grasp the simplicity of the gurus.

[men singing in native language] Cynthia, do you agree with Nikky Singh's strong, bold observation that there has always been a gender bias and a kind of dualistic thinking when it comes to translations?

And are there parallels in the Christian tradition?

Bourgeault: Oh, heavens, yes.

I mean, her-- her translation of-- "What's wrong with calling it the womb?"

But you know, you come up against this male squeamishness and it caught in earlier on when Willis was talking about, Why do we have charity instead of love?

Because, uh, the guys got increasingly afraid that there could be any sort of, uh, expression of their own embodied sexuality.

And so they push it away, and they push the woman away in the same dose, uh, and her--concepts about, I was--I was horrified and yet in a deep way gratified to hear that even in Sikhism, you have the same issues.

Only the males read.

The translations have a male skew.

What is it about religion?

I mean, it gives us sisters a common, worldwide complaint.

Ken, what is it about religion?

McLeod: I don't think it has anything to do with religion.

I think men have historically always had problems understanding their own sexuality, and they projected that, uh, lack of understanding onto--as the mystery of--of women, but it is their own mystery that they haven't got in touch with.

We have wonderful examples in the Tibetan tradition, where, uh, in--in the Tibetan tradition, we have, uh, meditation deities, yidams, and they're--they're surrounded by, uh, dakinis and dakas, which are male and female spirits, but the names of the dakinis are very, very revealing.

Uh, the murderess, the shape-changer, and so forth.

But all of these are reflections of how men experience women.

It's very, very obvious.

And they don't know what to do with that.

So they project it outwards, and that's where the fear comes from, and this has been terribly detrimental, uh, not only for women but for the--shaping of societies.

I agree with everything you say.

However, in the New Testament, it is much more slanted against women, because there really are no women heroes except for maybe that part where we don't know which Mary is in the garden and recognizes what might be Jesus.

That's a very strong, beautiful statement.

However, in the Hebrew Bible, women are constantly heroes.

I mean, there are so many famous songs of women.

The book of "Exodus" ends with a woman's song and Moses' song.

It--it goes throughout the-- you quoted beautifully, connecting Sappho and the "Song of Songs."

The "Song of Songs" is magnificent and the woman is much more important than the man in that.

It's--it's--no poem has been more influential in the world's poetry than the "Song of Songs."

And it is really a song of women.

By women.

[Chuckles] And by women.

And by women.

Cousineau: Willis, could you read one of your own translations?

I'm going to read something from the Biblical "Song of Songs."

"My lover's voice.

"My lover's voice is coming.

"Hear him.

O, hear him "leaping on the mountains, "dancing on the hills.

"My love is like a gazelle "or a young stag.

"Here he is standing behind our wall, "gazing in through the window, "peering through the lattice.

"My lover answers and speaks to me.

"'Rise, my love, my beauty, and come away.

"'Winter is past.

"'The rains are over and gone.

"'Wildflowers appear on the earth.

"'The time of the nightingale has come.

"'The voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.'"

Cousineau: Thank you.

Cynthia, what do you think?

What's the task of the translator?

Bourgeault: Clearly from what Willis has said already, the protagonist in the--in the song, in the dialogue of the song is so clearly a woman.

Uh, and there are many who think it--it actually did have a woman's composition.

Uh, we don't--we don't know that for sure, but it certainly does bring an authentically woman's slant to that wonderful topic of transformation in love.

This seems to be one of the roles of incantatory verse, not just flat prose on the page, but incantatory, rhythmic prose that transports us slightly out of ourselves.

Yeah, which is what "ekstasis" means, ecstasy, to stand outside of yourself.

I think that--that we shouldn't oversentimentalize or romanticize it.

It doesn't mean necessarily that you're going on a mystical trip or a drug high or that--but that what-- what is kindled in all good-- all good poetry, and I think it's the reason all 3 of us are seated in chairs here today with you, is that--is that poetry that's right, uh, rekindles a sense of the numinous, a sense of awe, the scale of the things, and if it's--if it's simple, is saying, "Ah!

That's beautiful.

That's--that's right," and it's the feeling the translator knows when you've got the right phrase that does it.

It's the phrase the poet knows, that the institutional church took this extraordinary transformational method of Jesus and turned it into lead, you know, it just doesn't go anywhere.

Uh, and that it seemed to shoot down all the people that were really trying to rekindle the fire.

And I--I think that-- that we're quite right in saying that the-- the Gnostics or the--or the ones we call the Gnostics-- were trying to keep that fire of transformation alive.

Cousineau: Beautiful.

Willis, let's--let's turn now to another form of reevaluation, of the--of the ancient texts, and that's this extraordinary project you've had over the last few years of allowing us to see Jesus as a poet.

Is your motivation for this because you think it's possibly easier for believers and nonbelievers to understand what they were saying if we look at it as poetry rather than theology?

Well, he only spoke wisdom poetry.

I mean, how could we--that's it.

I mean, look, anything that you heard in any church in the world was chanted.

It was never spoken.

And chanted in part because we learned to sing before we could read prose.

We didn't read--I think it was the fourth century that someone found another monk reading silently.

It was the first time it happened.

It was in Augustine's presence.

I think the other thing that you've been-- you've been sort of edging towards many times-- is that--that Jesus in particular has been held hostage by the theological translations and--and even when you get to the 4 canonical Gospels, you've already got very strong theological biases, institutional party lines in place, and that translations like Willis' by--by a fellow who's not a practitioner... [indistinct] is--but who senses in his own heart, in your own heart the poetry, and convey it so that the way...

But it's a marvelous poet.

Bourgeault: It's liberating-- ...one of the major poets of the world.

Yeah, and it liberates Jesus from the--from the hierarchical control and releases him as a-- a common property for humanity, and I think this is a big movement in our time.

You quoted the tran-- the Italian phrase, uh, "translate-- translator traitor."

Well, I think in a certain sense, it underlines the fact that all translation is political.

Well, I'm not going to object.

[Laughter] Barnstone: Because politics implies "of--of the city," and we are influenced by our times, so there's no way we can avoid imposing our own values on things.

Is it too much to say, then, that the way that you are translating now and using others' translations is considerably different than it would have been, let's say, for 19th-century translators who tended to be translating for a very elite, more academic crowd?

McLeod: Well, I think you're speaking about changes in the education system here, aren't you?

Yes.

That there are many more educated, literate people who are able to read.

And, uh, this, I mean, you take it into some very interesting territory.

And McLuhan argues that democracy is the product of two technologies.

One--the phonetic alphabet, two--the printing press, which made possible the standardization of knowledge.

And now we have the Internet, which has actually, as McLuhan predicted, led to the fragmentation of knowledge, because everybody can produce it now!

So--and it opens up a very, very different notion of translation, because people will now pick translators that fit with their own particular perspectives.

And I think it's-- it's far harder for an individual to have greater influence in today's world.

As a word lover, I find it fascinating that "translation" means to carry over, to carry across from one language or time or culture to another.

And on the role of culture, I'm remembering the way that food was served to us at the Sikh temple in San Jose recently and how our teachers and our Sikh friends there described how intimately food was connected to their holy book, the holy text, the Guru Granth Sahib.

[man singing in native language] [Indistinct chatter] Thank you.

Cousineau: So eating is also a spiritual practice.

Absolutely.

It's a statement.

I say... Cousineau: Even when eating, we're listening to the singing, the text.

I think they've started that chanting session that we talked about, the first part of this.

Cousineau: Out of respect.

Inspired by it, yeah.

Ahh.

Beautiful.

That whole concept.

Nikky Singh: The 1,430-page Guru Granth Sahib ends with an epilogue.

The scene to the Guru Granth Sahib, so to say, is...

So what he's doing is he's offering the Guru Granth Sahib, this text, this holy, sacred text, as a platter, as a plate, with 3 dishes on it.

And the 3 dishes are sat, "truth"; [san-TOKE] santokh, "contentment"; and third one is [VEE-char] vicar... which is "reflection."

So these are the 3 dishes, and we must take them, we must consume them, we must partake of them...

So it's not only just to-- khavai is "to eat."

So not only to eat but bhuncai.

Those who savor it, they are the ones who are liberated.

I know this is the summation, the epilogue of the Guru Granth Sahib, but it can be applied to a wider audience, to a wider readership where we all have our texts, which instead of just paying homage to them up on pedestals, take them, partake of them, eat them, enjoy them.

I think the savoring is very important, and they are full of truth, they are full of contentment, and they need to be reflected upon.

And when we reflect together-- not just one person, not just the male elites doing it-- but when men and women and people, upper class and lower classes and when Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, Muslims read together, one another's scripts, we learn so much.

They come from the same matrix.

They come from the same source.

They open us up to that one reality.

Let's read one another's texts.

I think we would really understand one another and we would understand, we'll be richer ourselves personally because we would have more angles to look at within our own tradition, our own scripture.

Cynthia, what did you think of Nikky's profound statement that sacred texts come from the same matrix?

The same source.

Is that a useful notion?

Do you think that reading other people's sacred texts, not just our own, can refresh our idea of humanity?

Bourgeault: The--the classic traditions say that truth begins to get more and more objective, and look more and more alike the higher up you get.

Uh, that doesn't mean that it all becomes a monochrome, but it means that the traditions in a deep way, uh, download the same essential evolutionary picture.

Barnstone: You know, there are many ways to Rome, and not one is necessarily correct if you get to Rome.

[Laughter] Barnstone: And that's the way it is with translations.

Ken, how about you?

Whatever is written in the various texts, I feel each person does find their own way.

And so I see the translator's task as one of creating possibilities for the reader.

Cynthia, what do you think?

Is our far-ranging acquaintance now with each other's sacred texts giving us more hope for the future?

Well, I think we're moving along, but we've got another hurdle to get over, and that--that really the--the motto of at least the liberal-- the liberal echelon of our world is "coexist."

I think we--we have to move to the next step, which is coalesce, to recognize that-- that the spiritual leaders, the heroes, the pathfinders in all the traditions are a universal human treasure and that they need to be collectively cherished by the people of the earth.

What a beautiful summing-up of our wonderful conversation.

So I want to thank you, Cynthia.

I want to thank you, Ken, I want to thank you, Willis, for building bridges around the world for us.

Thank you very much.

I'm Cindy Blackman Santana, and thank you for joining us.

And we hope you return to "Global Spirit," the first internal travel series.

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