“I turn to the Buddha with all my heart.”
I’m definitely sick. I thought I was feeling better, yesterday morning, but I felt like I had a fever all day. Often, when I know I have a fever, I deliberately don’t take medicine, because my understanding is that a low-grade fever can help the body fight whatever infection it’s fighting – the fever has the function of making the environment hostile to the infection. I have no idea if this really good practice, but it’s always been my way of coping, though it’s uncomfortable. Partly it’s because I just don’t like taking medicine. It always feels like an assault on my existential autonomy, although that’s philosophically inconsistent if not downright ridiculous.
Last night, when I got home, I felt really rotten. I began watching some shoot-em-up action flick on the TV, but it was really annoying. I have limited patience for Bruce Willis. I changed to the Buddhist channel. I sometimes will watch this as sort of background noise, because there’s lots of complex Korean to listen to, it’s culturally interesting, and the wacky-yet-banal informercials can be an entertaining contrast.
I’ve come to realize that every evening around 6 PM, the Buddhist channel runs a sort of day-end prayer, which are in the form of 108 affirmations. Lots of Buddhist ritual comes in sets of 108, which is an important number for Buddhists.
Anyway, the title to this blog entry is affirmation number one:
1. 지극한 마음으로 부처님께 귀의합니다.
Google translate, with typical guileless aplomb, asserts that this means “Buddha mind is extreme ear.” Which might make a good title for a comedy involving a philosophical meditation on the daredevil the body parts of great thinkers. But I think a good translation might be: “I turn to the Buddha with all my heart.” The first word, “지극한” is an adjectivalized form of the descriptive verb “지극하다,” which literally means “extreme” but in this context, I think it can mean “the depths of,” i.e. “all,” modifying “마음” “heart.”
I am not becoming a Buddhist. Not in terms of commitment. I can’t – I’m a dialectical materialist, and deeply committed to an anti-spiritual, anti-transcendent worldview. But I have strong sympathies for Buddhist practices, and I have found a lot of pragmatic “peace of mind” in Buddhist-style meditative practice, specifically (such as Zen and Vipassana). And I have been encouraged by the fact that when I say things like “I’m an atheist” to Buddhists, I don’t get the shocked and alarmed reaction of Christians, who immediately begin to worry over the fate of my soul. Buddhists, on the other hand, generally say things like, “that’s OK,” or “It doesn’t really matter.” Because they express no hostility toward my worldview, I feel no hostility toward theirs. Peace begets peace.
The morning is foggy. One thing I like about the weather in Glory County, Korea, is the prevalence of fog. It takes me back to my childhood, and the Pacific fogs of the Northern California coast.
지극한 – this word is strange, because it’s a positive word in korean (mostly because doggedness is a treasured quality there), but reminds me of a hellish persistence when i translate to english. well, maybe not strange because ‘no pain no gain’ seems to be the motto there.
I don’t use Google translation, but I’ve heard a lot about how bad it is and I saw the evidence of it. I don’t blame Google, because many Korean letters are from Chinese characters which get even Korean confused. Anyway, your translation is great and flawless, I would say.
And hope you get better as soon as possible. Although I’m a doctor, I don’t like to prescribe medicine for patients feeling compelled to do that by certain authorities or even by patients. The term I loved when I was in Med school and still love is Homeostasis. Hope your body figure out another set of homeostasis for you.