Dear Jill,
Even though there are a few words to choose from for some of the words, basically do what is best. I am quite happy even with this part of the translation, the way it came out. It is most important that nothing is left out from the root text.

Here and there for some clarification, to make it easy to understand, a little elaboration was needed. As there are other translations, many people are not familiar with the meaning of the teaching, it is a little bit difficult for them. This makes it easy to understand.

When you go through this, of course, it is easy to say things are empty of true existence, but not so easy to understand the unification of existing and empty, which means TEN-DREL: dependently related unified with emptiness. So many meditators make this mistake. There are many different views of what empty means. Not everybody came to the conclusion of the Prasangika.

Before working on this part about emptiness, it may be helpful to make some prayers to Manjushri. First, purify defilements with nectar, next receive wisdom and the meaning of the teachings and emptiness. Do this either with mig-tsema or Manjushri mantra. This might help to have a clear mind when you go through the section on emptiness.

Even though it is just two three stanzas on emptiness, it is very profound and the heart of the Buddhadharma, talking of the very important point of all those philosophical texts on emptiness, the essence of all the Prajnaparamita texts from the Buddha, all the commentaries from India and Lama Tsongkhapa, and so forth.

One student read the translation we are working on and said that it has more feeling than all the previous translations.

Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers...