Caveat: 3) 지극한 마음으로 승가에 귀의합니다

“I turn to the Sangha [Buddhist community-of-faithful] with all my heart.”
It begins to become a regular exercise (is it a linguistic pursuit, a cultural pursuit, or a religious one?).

1. [broken link! FIXME] 지극한 마음으로 부처님께 귀의합니다.
     “I turn to the Buddha with all my heart.”
2. [broken link! FIXME] 지극한 마음으로 부처님 법에 귀의합니다.
     “I turn to the Buddha Dharma [Law of Buddha] with all my heart.”
3. 지극한 마음으로 승가에 귀의합니다.

I would read the third affirmation as “I turn to the Sangha [Buddhist community-of-faithful] with all my heart.”
The Korean “승가” [seung-ga] is given as “priesthood” by naver’s dictionary, but I don’t think this is accurate.  Sangha (this is the Pali word, I think, but like dharma, it’s widely used in untranslated form in English Language Buddhist literature) is a little bit broader than that.  It’s kind of the Buddhist equivalent of the word “church” in Christian tradition, almost – it can mean those affiliated with a church directly, like priests or pastors or whatever, but it can also mean everybody in the community.
In the past week, since Chuseok day, fall has arrived and spun a cocoon of chill breezes and gold-green rice fields and loosening leaves across the Korean landscape.  Winter will emerge from this chrysalis, in a month or two.  I’m pleased.  I much prefer Autumn to Summer.

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