Life and Work
Cleary "got into Buddhism... in teens", and was driven to research Buddhist texts because he "wanted to learn". He usually translates texts that are not yet available in English; however, he has made some exceptions for books he felt had English translations that were "too limited," such as Sun Tzu's The Art of War. Cleary received a PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University as well as a JD from the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law, but has had minimal involvement with the academic world, claiming that "there is too much oppression in a university setting," and that he wants "to stay independent and reach those who who want to learn directly through books." He reserves some praise for his alma mater, though; "a good thing about Harvard was language training was done by native teachers. You did not find that everywhere."
Cleary's first publication, with his brother J.C. Cleary was the translation of the Zen koan collection, The Blue Cliff Record (ISBN 1-59030-232-X). Cleary also translated the monumental Avatamsaka Sutra (Huayan Jing / Flower Ornament Scripture).
Cleary's most widely disseminated translation has been of the Chinese classic The Art of War (Sunzi Bingfa) by Sun Tzu. Another major translation is of the commentaries of the 18th century Taoist sage Liu Yiming, who clearly explains the often impenetrable metaphoric coding of the main Taoist texts dealing with the transformation of consciousness and the fusion of the human mind with the Mind of the Tao.
In 2000, Cleary's various translations of Taoist texts were collected into 4 volumes by Shambhala Publications as The Taoist Classics. Following the success of these publications, a five volume collection of Buddhist translations was collected as Classics of Buddhism and Zen Cleary's recent translation of the Qur'an has been praised by Muslims who know English and Arabic. Another outstanding translation from the Muslim wisdom tradition is Living and Dying with Grace.
Read more about this topic: Thomas Cleary
Famous quotes containing the words life and, life and/or work:
“It is high time we realized that the havoc wrought in human life and ideals by a technological revolution and too long ignored has caught up with us.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)
“Many older wealthy families have learned to instill a sense of public service in their offspring. But newly affluent middle-class parents have not acquired this skill. We are using our children as symbols of leisure-class standing without building in safeguards against an overweening sense of entitlement—a sense of entitlement that may incline some young people more toward the good life than toward the hard work that, for most of us, makes the good life possible.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“Most childhood problems don’t result from “bad” parenting, but are the inevitable result of the growing that parents and children do together. The point isn’t to head off these problems or find ways around them, but rather to work through them together and in doing so to develop a relationship of mutual trust to rely on when the next problem comes along.”
—Fred Rogers (20th century)