“I turn to the Sangha [Buddhist community-of-faithful] with all my heart.”
This begins to become a regular exercise (is it a linguistic pursuit, a cultural pursuit, or a religious one?).
1. 지극한 마음으로 부처님께 귀의합니다.
“I turn to the Buddha with all my heart.”
2. 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.
