“I bow in repentance of any misdeeds lived, forgetting the preciousness of all my ties to the things that allow me to stay here in this world.”
This is #14 out of a series of 108 daily Buddhist affirmations that I am attempting to translate with my hands tied behind my back (well not really that, but I’m deliberately not seeking out translations on the internet, using only dictionary and grammar).
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12. 먹을 수있게 해 준 모든 인연들을 잊고 살아 온 죄를 참회하며 절합니다.
“I bow in repentance of any misdeeds lived, forgetting my ties to all those things that I am able to eat.”
13. 입을 수있게 해 준 모든 인연 공덕을 잊고 살아 온 죄를 참회하며 절합니다.
“I bow in repentance of any misdeeds lived, forgetting the public virtues of – and my ties to – all those things that I am able to wear.”
14. 이 세상이 곳에 머물 수있게 해 준 모든 인연들의 귀중함을 잊고 살아 온 죄를 참회하며 절합니다.
I would read this fourteenth affirmation as: “I bow in repentance of any misdeeds lived, forgetting the preciousness of all my ties to the things that allow me to stay here in this world.”
This translation is a little less literal that some previous efforts. The best I could make out, literally, of the first clause (which is more comfortably the second clause in the English), is something like: “forgetting the preciousness of all ties that are able to stay here in this world.” And that probably means: “forgetting the preciousness of all ties [such] that [I am] able to stay in this world.” But using “…to the things that allow me…” seems to work better in English, if I’ve understood it correctly.
The roles attached to Korean verbs often seem quite oblique to me, not attaching to clear semantic notions of subject/object (is this the dreaded ergativity at work, maybe?). Consequently, although the grammatical subject of the verb “머무르다” (“stay”) seems to me to be “모둔 인연들” (“all ties”), which is relativized by the suffix -ㄴon the periphrastic “-ㄹ 수있게 해 주다” (lit. something scarily like “Be-Able-To-ly Do Give” (and oh, I love those serialized verbs!) which is to say, “be able to”), I nevertheless suspect the semantic subject is the elided speaker “I,” and the “all ties” drops into an oblique role represented by “things that allow…”
[UPDATE: So it occurs to me, on rereading this much later, that I have misunderstood this aphorism – this one, and all those that have the same structure “…misdeeds lived, forgetting…”. The “forgetting my X” is in fact an example of the “misdeeds lived” – which is to say, you’re repenting for failing to experience the feeling in question.]
