Festina lente, O discipulus Boddi!

My Latin to English translation: Hurry slowly, O disciple of the Buddha!

Recently, on a nice discussion in the Theravada section of the E-sangha Buddhist forum, someone had offered good advice to practicing Buddhism: relaxed urgency. This reminded me of the Latin phrase, “hurry slowly” or festina lente, hence the title.

I’ve struggled in the past between either giving up, or striving way too hard. Recently I had some very good advice from a monk on e-sangha by the name of Huifeng (different discussion than what was cited above), and his advice helped me to have a clearer picture of where I want to focus my Buddhist practice, and a good idea of how to understand it. So, I feel quite a bit better the last few days and know more about how I want to carry my Buddhist practice in the long-term. It’s not a question of which sect to follow (which was a big part of my understanding), but rather, what do I want to become through the Buddhist past.

So, with all this in mind, I am taking the advice about “relaxed urgency” to heart. That’s the right approach to Buddhism.

As for the Latin used above, the phrase “festina lente” is pretty famous and need not be explained further here. The word “discipulus” is likewise a real Latin word. However, trying to decide how to render “Buddha” into Latin was tricky. On the Latin Wikipedia page, it’s rendered straight from Sanskrit as “Buddha”, which would be 1st declension, fem. That makes sense, but I decided a different approach.

I know for a fact* that in the Greek kingdom of Bactria, the word Buddha was spoken as Boddo (ΒΟΔΔΟ), which based on my notes is a masculine, singular ending. Now, Latin borrows heavily from Greek, and always has, so rather than borrowing from Sanskrit (the Romans had no direct contact with India), I assumed the Latin word would be a transliteration from Greek, therefore, I transliterated Boddo to Boddus (2nd decl, masc.). From there, it is a simple matter of changing Boddus to the genitive case Boddi, or “of the Buddha”.

I spent a while last night reviewing Latin dictionaries at home, and determined that if Boddus was a reasonable choice for “Buddha”, then “Buddhist” would be Boddistus, and Buddhism would Boddismus in Latin. I am pretty certain that these endings are correct, but people with more experience are encouraged to confirm or correct this. I am still very much the amateur.

That is how I arrived at my translation. It’s not necessarily right, but it has a clear etymology.

* – Based on Greek coins and artwork bearing the word.