English Essays By Nahm, Yong-woo

Buddha’s Mercy

맑은공기n 2022. 5. 7. 12:44

용인 와우정사 티벳 기증 부처님:

 

 Lunar April 8, which falls on the solar month and day of May 18 this year, is Gautama Buddha’s 2,519th birthday. Many colorful ceremonies such as lightning a temporarily-made celebration tower, releasing living fish into rivers and night lantern procession are to be held across the country in celebration of the day. These ceremonies are indeed a sight to see in Korea, especially since they are held in May, the best month in Korea, which the sky is blue, the gentle breeze caresses our cheeks that have successfully withstood the blistering and nipping cold of winter and spring, and the peonies bloom, following magnolias and lilacs. Buddha’s birthday is particularly significant this year, as the day has been legally designated as a national holiday, although it falls on a Sunday this year.

 

 Since Korea is a country which together with China and Japan forms a Buddhistic-Confucian world in Northeast Asia, Korean culture cannot be properly understood without looking at the Buddhist attitudes of the Korean people. It might be therefore worthwhile to give a momentary thought on the occasion of Buddha’s birthday to something in connection with this matter. The Buddhist mind is said in short to recognize the universality of suffering in human existence, to seek a way of deliverance through rightness in thought, conduct an inner discipline, and what is most important, to render mercy to living creature on earth. Korean people grow up looking from childhood at mothers and grandmothers chanting Buddhist prayers and bowing repeatedly with hands folded before Buddha statues, in the eager wish that Buddha will give protection and mercy to their husbands and children in the present world and to relatives and acquaintances who have gone before them to the next world.

 It is for this reason that the Korean people cannot think of temples, mostly in the mountains, without some association with tender mothers and grandmothers. It is for this reason also that no matter how technologically modernized the country may be on the surface, something Buddhist is always deeply rooted in the hearts of the Korean people. Koreans being optimistic, spontaneous, conservative and unyielding is also said to come from Buddhism.

 

 Twenty-five hundred and nineteen years ago, Queen Maya of the Sakya people on the way to her parents’ home at Devadaha, stopped in the Lumbini grove located near the village of Paderia in Southern Nepal, and gave birth to a lovely baby son, the future Buddha. According to the Pali scriptures, the gods rejoicing in the sky at this moment are to have informed the sage Asita, “Bodhisattva, the incomparable jewel, has been born for weal and happiness in the world of men, in a village of the Sakyas, in the Lumbini country.”

 The tales and legends surrounding his youth say that “the prince had a remarkable personality, that although raised in luxury he was of a serious, meditative frame of mind, and that he was early attracted to a nonworldly religious life. Actually, when 29 years old, the prince renounced home and secular life to seek the supreme peace of Nirvana, and deliverance from the painful realities of life’s transitoriness. After extreme ascetic practices for six years and finally through sitting quietly in concentrated meditation, he gained the great enlightenment that the cessation of pain comes from complete cessation of human craving-its forsaking, relinquishment, release and detachment from it.

 

 I am not a Buddhist myself in the genuine sense of the word. I have besides some pictures related to Bodhisattva a holy picture of the “Immaculate Heart of Mary, Pray for Us” on a bookshelf in my room which I brought from the Philippines, a Christian country of hot sun, hot blood and hot love, last year. I feel very cheerful when I occasionally glance at the beautiful Mary.

 I am an only an ordinary Buddhist-inclined Korean since I am also one of the Koreans who have grown up, looking at mothers and grandmothers going to Buddhist temples on special days. I used to go to a temple over the mountain from where I lived in my childhood, playing ball or hide-and seek there. I like the temple because it doesn’t have a heavy iron gate.

  Here is a verse like best from the “Scripture of Transience.”

  Everything in the world is mutable,

  This life will inevitably perish,

  Whatever is born is bound to perish,

  To perish, therefore, is the most pleasant.

 I like this inasmuch as it reveals to us what is coming to all of us. It implies something about what we should or should not do while we are limitedly alive. Some kind of resignation to human fate is obtained.

 

 So, May 18 is Gautama Buddha’s birthday. Some millions of Korean Buddhists including those Buddhist-inclined will colorfully celebrate the day. On this occasion, I wish to express my sincere hope that the universities still closed will be opened and the universities barely reopened after more than a month of closing will return to normality and order as soon as possible.

 University campuses in May can be compared to a paradise. A student said. “The colour of the campus changes every day in May. To think that we cannot see the beautiful magnolias, lilacs and the burning-red rhododendrons!” A senior co-ed from one of the closed universities visiting a school which was open, was cheerful, but seeing the students chatting and playing lively on the campus, she went back to her home crying. She chokingly said, “When . . . when in the world will my school be opened?”

 

 Now is not the time to ask who is blame for the undesirable closing of the universities. After all, the government and the students are not incompatible enemies. The differing view points, if any, will be settled by means of communication, understanding and cooperation rather than confrontation. Let bygones be bygones. Let’s not any further break the hearts of students like the senior girl so ardent to study.

 While I am writing this article, the news has been announced that the order which had closed down Korea University was lifted. Bravo! No more university closing from now on! Let’s move without a break on the way to national progress and developments. Let Buddha’s mercy be showered on every corner of our country.

 

 

                                                                                                     The Korea Times

                                                                                                      May 17, 1975

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