ལས་ཀྱ་རྣམ་པར་འགྱར་བ་ཞས་བྱ་བའ་ཆས་ཀྱ་གཞང notes.76

notes.76

76. “Factors” is our translation of Tibetan chos (bcus na/ni) in this context (literally: “when (or because) ten factors are present”). D, L chos bcus na; S, Z chos bcus ni (later chos bcus na throughout). Feer (1883, 256) translates Tibetan chos bcus as “ten conditions” (Ici, tu me demandes par l’effet de quel genre d’actes le temps de la vie est court. Je te dirai que dix conditions font que la vie est courte. — Quelles sont ces dix? Si tu les demandes (les voici), “Here, you ask me, through the effect of which kind of act one’s lifespan is short. I will tell you that there are ten conditions that make one’s life short. What are the ten? If you wish to hear them, they are as follows.”) In an earlier draft of this translation, we chose to translate chos with “factors,” which, while not wrong, seemed too vague. Feer’s choice of “conditions,” on the other hand, does not seem to capture the idea that the respective actions enumerated in the text are major factors able to produce a karmic result, and not just conditions that need to be present for a result manifest. Chos in this text appears to be a different way of saying “(karmically relevant) action.”