The Guk twins (2nd grade) made a snowman after class today, in the courtyard by the outdoor faucets. They are good kids. I’m very proud to say that I can tell them apart – Geon-u has a freckle on his forehead between his eyebrows that his twin Hyeon-u doesn’t. It can help that at least one of them usually forgets his glasses on any given day, but rarely do both of them. Anyway… their brother Snow-u has a funny-shaped nose, too, looks like.
“I bow in repentance of the ties that become like an evil destiny due to the divisions sown between people.”
This is #26 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).
…
24. 인색 함으로 인해 악연이 된 인연들에게 참회하며 절합니다.
“I bow in repentance of the ties that become like an evil destiny due to miserliness.”
25. 원망하는 마음으로 인해 악연이 된 인연들에게 참회하며 절합니다.
“I bow in repentance of the ties that become like an evil destiny due to a resentful heart.”
26. 이간질로 인해 악연이 된 인연들에게 참회하며 절합니다.
I would read this twenty-sixth affirmation as: “I bow in repentance of the ties that become like an evil destiny due to the divisions sown between people.”
“이간질” seems hard to translate in this affirmation. The dictionaries say everything from “division” to “alienation” to “mischief” to “the act of playing one side against the other.” None of these really work in the above phrase. So, I’ve settled on “the divisions sown between people.”
I had a dream in which I was living in a car in a parking lot of an apartment complex like Willowyck – which is the name of the apartment complex that Michelle and I shared in Lansdale, Pennsylvania (north Philadelphia suburbs) in 96~98.
I was living in a car – it was not a Volkswagen, which is the type of car I actually lived in for a time in 1985. The car I was living in, in the parking lot of that apartment complex, was a Kia. That's logical, maybe. It was a run down, beat up Kia. It was gray colored, with patches of rust and rumpled areas of primer-paint.
In the dream, my father had a gloomy little apartment at the apartment complex. But he was making me live in my car, because he had no space in his apartment. I realized I was late for a flight to Korea, but I couldnt get any help from my father. He was obsessively sorting some papers out, silently, while sitting at a table in his dark apartment.
Then, the dream shifted. I found out that my brother had taken over living in my car. My brother wouldn't help me either. I went back to the car again after a time, when he wasn't around. I was looking for my airplane ticket printout for my flight to Korea. Instead, I found a stuffed, toy monkey in the car, and so I stole the toy monkey from my brother. He was angry.
Time passed. I was walking through the streets of West LA, maybe somewhere near Macarthur Park, carrying my stuffed monkey. I felt like a homeless man. It was like a desert, littered with mini malls, apartment buildings, Korean dry cleaning establishments, Mexican taco trucks, Guatemalan dollar stores. Gray palm trees waved in a bitter tasting wind. It was beautiful. But very desolate. I felt lost and alone.
What issues is this dream working through?
