there's this mahayana buddhist text by Śantideva called the bodhicaryavatara, which means something roughly like how to bodhisattva - and people often describe it as a manual, but we own five different translations of it into english (because we can't read sanskrit and we think having different translations is a good way to approach an historic text without getting too prissy about What It Truly Says™) and we feel it reads way more like a journal, yer man is describing his own experience of having this state arise in him and then what he does about it after, and it's way more fun to read as a journal than as a "bodhisattvahood for dummies"
anyway we're not going to get into it here, we mainly just wanted to write something in support of having different translations by explaining that right at the start, Śantideva writes about why he's writing this book and one of the things he says in the only translation we knew for two decades is "I do this to perfume my own mind", which is a lovely evocative phrase isn't it
but then we got another translation and instead of "perfume" it says "I do this to season my own mind" and as someone who loves all the potential meanings of words, we love that "to season" can mean both to mature like timber, and also to add flavour to - both of which are nice things to do to one's own mind and somehow different from perfume, which is also a nice thing to do to one's mind we guess
anyway no big deal, we certainly don't know what exactly the original sanskrit said and meant nearly two millennia ago, we just wanted to say: please do enjoy comparing translations and notice which you're more drawn to and wonder why, and also don't ever assume you have The One True Version - translation is an art and it's always at least a little impressionist school
