I noticed that the first book of the month discussion was going to use one of Charles Luks translations. Certainly for me he is a sentimental favorite. I remember way back when I was still in high school and the Kung Fu t.v. show was very popular (I am talking about 1974 or so) and I got interested in Daoism and the first two Daoist books I ever bought were D. C. Lau’s translation of the Daode Jing and Charles Luks Secrets of Chinese Meditation (which covers both Buddhist and Daoist methods).

So I thought I would look around a bit and see what I could discover about him. The first problem was figuring out what his name actually was. You see in Chinese this:

Lu Kuan Yu (Charles Luk)

is largely useless because those english words could be a dozen different Chinese names. I could not figure out what his actual Chinese name was so I had to turn to a more skilled word-master; my wife Elizabeth Nai Jia Guo. After a couple of minutes she figured out his real name was
陸寬昱.

Mr. Lu carries a Buddhist title of Upasaka居士, which is a kind of a standard honorific for a Buddhist lay follower who has taken certain moral vows. As to what I found out, not much is the answer to that. He was born in Canton in1898 and died in 1978. He has done more Buddhist translations than anything else. I checked the Chinese language internet and found a very few references to his books but not much about him. Too bad, as I suspect he may have had an interesting life.

I did find one photo of him:



The photo proves that real translators are always extremely stylish and serious.

Take care,
Brian

hahah O.K.

A story of Charles Luk is that when he translated the Shurangama Sutra, he left out the Shurangama Mantra thinking westerners are not ready to get it, and that they have reserves for Mantra cultivation. After the publishing, some time later he became sick, got cancer and died. He should have left the Mantra in the Sutra.

Peace and Blessings,
Lin

Brian, always interesting tidbits! Thanks!

Awesome pic!!!

Wow, thanks for putting a face (and a bow tie) on one of the bigger influences in my life.

Hello Lin,
brother.
You seem to imply that if he left the Mantra in he would not have had cancer.
Do I read you right? If this is so, could you please explain this ignorant daoist what crushed him. Was it internal obligations or external paranormal forces? Or am I totally off track.

Pietro