REL 1300 Spring 2009 Highlights and Lowlights of Second Paper

How Not To Paraphrase:

From Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism, Volume 2, Page 3:

“On the one hand, Japanese Zen is cast completely in the mold of Chinese Zen Buddhism; on the other it adopted its own native materials to transform what it had inherited from China, producing something new and different.”

A student’s paraphrase:

“On one side, Japanese Zen is combined completely in the mold of Chinese Zen Buddhism; while on the other side, it accepted its own native materials to completely change all it had gotten from China.”

Dumoulin’s version is perfect English. The alterations either change the meaning, or render the English imperfect. “On the one hand…on the other hand” is a standard English idiom. “On the one side…on the other side” is not: it is an awkward and artificial expression. Molten metal is poured into a mold where it sets to form a statue, or some other object. This is called casting. That is what Dumoulin means when he writes about Japanese Zen being “cast completely in the mold of Chinese Zen”. It makes no sense to write instead of Japanese Zen being combined in the mold of Chinese Zen – you would have to introduce some third entity that was combined in the mold with Japanese Zen (the metal is not combined with the mold). Dumoulin writes of Japanese Zen adopting native materials – like a family adopting a child that isn’t their own, and inheriting materials from Chinese Zen – again, a family metaphor. This is lost when “adopting” becomes “accepting.” Finally, notice how the second version includes two uses of the word “completely”. This is not a grammatical error, but it is better to vary the vocabulary in English.

You cannot take something written in perfect English, change a word here and there, and hope that the result will also be perfect English. When a good writer has gone to a lot of trouble to choose just the write word substituting another word will produce a bad piece of prose. More importantly, with this kind of “paraphrase”, I can’t tell whether you have understood the information. I would paraphrase Dumoulin’s passage this way:

“According to Dumoulin, Japanese Zen uses Japanese thinking to transform the ideas it received from Chinese Zen, creating something new.” This is less elegant than Dumoulin’s version, but he is writing a two volume book and has the opportunity to write long elegant sentences. In an essay for REL 1300, it is necessary to be much more concise.

The above attempt at paraphrase was too close to a direct quotation. Some students use direct quotation too much. For example, one essay contained a selection of bullet-points taken directly from www.religioustolerance.org, such as the following:

“The concept of a personified deity is foreign to them, as is the concept of the creation of the universe. Thus, they do not pray as Christians do; there is no God to hear the prayers or to act on them.”

First, I consider this an over-simplification. There is in Daoism a contrast between exoteric and esoteric teaching. As far as the laity are concerned, priests offer prayers to a whole range of gods. This is the exoteric – that is public aspect of the religion. Since priests perform these public rituals, one could hardly describe the concepts, including that of personified deities, as ‘foreign’ to them. The laity also know that there are further rituals carried out in private, and deeper teachings not revealed to the laity – esoteric teachings. However, according to the information contained in Part III of Michael Saso’s Taoism and the Rite of Cosmic Renewal, this esoteric teaching also involves reference to personified spirits. It is true that, according to Taoism, everything is an aspect of the Tao, but this does not seem to exclude invoking spirits in personal terms, even in the esoteric rituals.

However, this is not my main complaint. Oversimplifications are inevitable when introducing a religion. My complaint is that the passage I quoted explains Taoism by contrasting it with Christianity. This makes sense when introducing Taoism to readers who are likely to be familiar with Christianity. However, it makes no sense when writing an essay about Taoism and Buddhism. The relationship between Taoism and Christianity is simply irrelevant. It is only mentioned here in the essay because it was mentioned in the source that was used – no thought was given to the needs of the essay you are writing.

I think I understand what is happening. You are all now aware that in order to get a good grade, you need to cite a variety of sources. However, some of you are just compiling source material without thinking about how to use it – either cutting and pasting a direct quotation, or using a direct quotation with a few minor changes, and calling it a paraphrase. Save direct quotations for when they are really necessary – usually for situations when you need to prove a point by quoting primary source material.

Also, I hope that these examples indicate how difficult dealing with sources is. You cannot just include long direct quotations, you need to paraphrase. But paraphrasing is a difficult process, it requires practice. Some students then take a short-cut: cut and paste sentences from various sources without giving a citation. So far this semester, I have reported one case of plagiarism to Professor Anyfanti. The students criticised above at least wrote their own papers: they made mistakes, but they will learn from them.

A good example of how to use a direct quotation:

The concept of family in this culture is one of the things that have the more importance to them, for example in the Confucianism the base of the whole society is the relation father-son. (Molloy, p.240)

To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order.
To put the nation in order, we must put the family in order;
To put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life;
And to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right. (Analects of Confucius).

This is how it should be done: a claim about the religion is made. Molloy is cited as a source, but the summary sentence is clearly written by the student (the grammar is not perfect, but it is comprehensible). This is followed by a direct quotation from a primary text that proves the point.

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