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부처님 손바닥 안에 있다
11/06/09
08:19:26 pm, by admin 
, 241 words 
Categories: ...and Takes On, Feats and Defeats (Language), 사랑?, America
부처님 손바닥 안에 있다
"부처님 손바닥 안에 있다." Good Man said.
I stared at him and he repeated himself. I frowned. "You are on the palm of Buddha?"
"Korean saying. It means 'I know everything.' 'Your actions or movements are predictable to me.'"
Oh, I can so see using this one in my classroom...
I finished the 만화 (cartoon, graphic novel) version of 어린 왕자 last night. I cried when The Little Prince committed suicide. Because, according to Good Man, I am "a crying machine" just like his mother.
I'm now trying to find another Korean book to read. Most of mine are still slightly too hard to be enjoyable. 어린 왕자 wasn't quite as easy as I'd prefer to read for fun, but I've read it once before and it was much easier this time around. It also reinforced a lot of the vocab I've been learning (and re-learning) on WordChamp.
Good Man thinks I should read a hard book with a dictionary by my side. That is a Korean mindset. I want to read a fun book that reinforces vocabulary and grammar patterns. That's my "Read at home! If you want to be a better reader, you need to read! Read things you enjoy!" American teacher mindset.
I did pick up 내 이름이 삐삐 롱스타킹 and flipped to random pages. I could read most of the words on the random pages and figure out the context, so I think that's my next book.
It's too bad my graded reader, 재미 있는 읽기 (Interesting Reading), is really 재미 없는 (uninteresting).
8 comments
"The Buddha made a bet with Sun Wukong that he (Sun Wukong) could not escape from his (Buddha's) palm. Sun Wukong, knowing that he could cover 108,000 li in one leap, smugly agreed. He took a great leap and then flew to the end of the world in seconds. Nothing was visible except for five pillars, and Wukong surmised that he had reached the ends of Heaven. To prove his trail, he marked the pillars with a phrase declaring himself "the great sage equal to heaven" (and in other versions, urinated on the pillar he signed on). Afterward, he leaped back and landed in the Buddha's palm. There, he was surprised to find that the five "pillars" he had found were in fact the five fingers of the Buddha's hand."
Since this one IS said in Korean (and Chinese, I'm sure and probably Japanese and...), I think we CAN call it a Korean saying, even if it didn't originate in Korea. A lot of language have similar proverbs or ideas, and how do we know where they all came from?
I'm sure Good Man have read "Journey To The West" (서유기) and know about The Monkey King (손오공) because it's almost a required reading for kids of all ages in Korea. (At least it was way back when I was a kid.) One of the main characters in the story is a Buddhist monk named Xuanzang (삼장법사 in Korean) who was an actual historical figure from 7th century China, I'd say its country of origin is pretty clear.
We've Got Seoul, I'm working on getting that "this food is so good if someone died at the table the other guests wouldn't notice" phrase down for the visit with the in-laws. ;)
In case of 부처님 손안에 있다, I think it's more of a literary reference than a saying. When people talk about a Korean saying, I usually think of something like "my stomach hurts when my cousin buys a piece of land."
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