Busy weekend, but I did find time to post another episode on season 2 of the Beginner Buddhism series on YouTube:
This one helps explore the notion of monasticism in Buddhism, what are monks and nuns, etc. Apologies to Theravada viewers for screwing up the Pali terms. ;p I haven’t had much free time lately, so I pretty much filmed this in one shot and off-the-cuff.
There are 2 episodes left in the BB series, and after that I think I’ve covered everything I wanted to cover, so I don’t really plan on making anymore.
One of the lessons I learned from dating my wife is that in Japanese culture, it’s important to know your place among those around you. The rules are pretty simple, but I also realized that they apply to other cultures, such as Korean culture, Vietnamese culture, etc:
If someone is older than you, you should politer speech.
The greater the difference, the politer the speech.
For people younger than you, you can usually be more casual, but not too much.
For children and such, it sounds awkward if you are too polite.
The rules are very simple (simple enough that people all over Asia have been following them for centuries), but this was difficult for me to understand at first. As an American, I am used to calling my bosses by their first name, and talking fairly casual. For example, my boss here at work is about 10 years older than me, and has been in the company twice as long as me. And yet, we talk almost as peers.1
In the same way, with my friends, I never thought about age or hierarchy. So, when I met my wife’s friends and family, I had trouble understanding the importance. Then, when I learned about polite Japanese, I started talking too polite. Lately, I’ve learned to use more appropriate levels, but I still struggle sometimes.
This Korean lesson at TTMIK does a good job of illustrating this. Click on the link and take a look. For people who are older, you have to use polite Korean or jondaenmal (존댓말), and for friends and those under you, you use banmal (반말) which is more informal. For example, my wife and I have a friend who’s Korean and she’s a bit older than us. So, I speak polite Korean with her, and call her “older sister” (nuna 누나). Since we’re close friends, she’s told me we can just use banmal, but I still over-do it sometimes.
Similarly, when I learned Vietnamese, the same basic rules applied. Once you get a sense of age, it’s proper Vietnamese to address older people as “uncle”, “older brother”, etc. Vietnamese has different words for “uncle”: bác if they are older than your parents and chú or dì if they are younger. You had to call yourself cháu (means “nephew”) and such. When I first learned Vietnamese, I learned only tôi (“I”), not cháu, so my Vietnamese sounded too formal and distant. That’s OK in some settings, but once you get to know someone, it makes more sense to just use kinship terms. During my last weeks in Vietnam, I started to get the hang of this, and my Vietnamese started to improve because I could engage in conversation more readily. But using kinship terms, it can show respect, but also friendliness too.
Anyway, with Japanese, I started as being too informal, then I became too formal to compensate. A good example is my sister-in-law. She’s very nice and friendly toward me, so we talk pretty informally, but I still call her onēsan (お姉さん) instead of her name because she’s older than my wife and I. Since we’re close and she’s not much older, I don’t have to be too polite. However with my mother and father-in-law (especially my father-in-law), I need to be more formal and polite. Again, my in-laws are very nice and patient with me (and happy that I am trying), it’s not that strict, but I still prefer to make a good effort.
Similarly with my wife’s friends, there’s a friendly hierarchy. They’re all friends of course, but the younger ones talk to the older ones with slightly more respect. Also, the older ones tend to have more influence in the group. It’s all perfectly friendly, but people subconsciously know their place.
Anyhow, so the key to being social in Japanese, Korean or Vietnamese culture is to be sensitive to hierarchy and the age and rank of people around you. If someone is older or in a position of authority (e.g. boss, senior, doctor, teacher, etc), remember to treat them with more respect. The bigger the age difference, the greater the respect. With people under you, you can relax, but don’t be bossy or mean. No one likes that in any culture.
P.S. I suspect Chinese is similar, but I don’t know. I’d love to hear from Chinese-native speakers about this too.
1 If you think I’m being informal, my wife and co-workers often tease me for being too polite. ;p
When people learn a new language, they often ignore pronunciation and intonation until it’s too late. That’s what happened with me with Japanese.
I started learning Japanese when I was 16. My neighbor had lived there for a while, and had some books. I borrowed the books and learned some basic Japanese. When I was in college, I learned Japanese formally, but the classes were lecture-style. We didn’t learn conversational Japanese, and just did a lot of passive study. So, pronunciation, intonation, etc, were not emphasized. It felt like this skit starring comedian 志村けん (Shimura Ken):
On the other hand, when I was in high-school, I studied Mandarin in school, and we spent a lot of time practicing accent and pronunciation because it’s essential for Chinese. I haven’t studied Chinese at all in almost 20 years, but I recently had a Chinese conversation and I could still speak/pronounce OK. Not great, but my “accent” sounded more Chinese, less American. I couldn’t say much, but I still pronounced it correctly even after 20 years.1
So anyway, my wife has told me before that when I speak Japanese I have a strong accent. For example, when I say the English word “important”, it sounds like imPORTant because I put stress on the second-syllable a lot.2 Ideally, you should pronounce Japanese very flat, and equal weight in each syllable. Take this example phrase: Yokohama wa samui. If each hiragana-syllable is 1 beat, it should be pronounced evenly like yo-ko-ha-ma-wa-sa-mu-i- (よ-こ-は-ま-は-さ-む-い). When I say it though, it sounds something like yo-ko-HA-ma-WA-sa-MU-i.
Anyhow, recently I’ve been listening to a series of Japanese-language podcasts about learning Korean called サランヘヨ (mentioned here). The podcasts are made by a pair of Japanese people who have been living in Korea for 15+ years, married locally and have kids. It’s interesting to see how Japanese learn Korean, compared to Westerners, because the languages are more similar.
In several lessons, the main host talks about intonation. Korean language has no stress, like Japanese, but the intonation has a kind of “back-rhythm” (lit. 裏リズム in the podcast) so it sounds like low-high-low-high-low-high, etc. In one episode, the host impersonated a Korean person speaking Japanese (not in a bad way, just a demonstration). The grammar and words were correct, but even as a Westerner like me you could definitely hear a different accent. Similarly, when Japanese speak Korean, they have to be careful to learn the right intonation or they will sound wrong.
I mention all this because when I speak Japanese (or Korean), I have to be careful of two things:
Stress – I have to get into a habit of speaking each syllable flat and even weight.
Accent/intonation – When to use flat, high tone, and when not to. I wrote an older post about it too.
The problem is that most English-language sources do not teach accent/intonation at all! I think some Western sources on Japanese/Korean are using outdated methods. Fortunately, I started using JapanesePod101.com again.3 I used it years ago, but I stopped subscribing to focus on listening to Japanese podcasts, books, etc. Anyhow, I paid for a short-term Premium subscription and asked for help in fixing my conversation. They suggested following the “Newbie Season 2″ series which focuses on accent and such.
I learned a lot from the first lesson, even though I studied Japanese for years. For example, when you say you are “American” (amerikajin) or “German” (doitsujin) and such, the standard accent is “Amerika” (or any country) has a flat, high tone, but “jin” (人) is low and flat. I never knew that! No one ever explained that to me.
Anyhow, the point of this long post is: take intonation and pronunciation very seriously. It will save you a lot of problems later. If you have bad pronunciation now, invest time to fix it. You’ll thank yourself later.
P.S. Have a great weekend!
1 After that experience, I was kind of inspired to start learning Chinese again, but it’s a big investment of time, and I’m already busy. :p Maybe in the future.
2 Apparently, people in the South put stress on the first syllable: JU-ly, not Ju-LY which is how I pronounce it. Similarly, in Japan Tokyo dialect has different accent than Kansai dialect. The Korean-lesson podcast above mentioned that Koreans can pronounce Kansai dialect more easily than Tokyo dialect because the accents are more similar.
3 In the spirit of openness, I am a registered associate there. Clicking on the link above gives me some credit if someone subscribes.
Lately, I’ve been inspired to re-read an old book on Zen I bought in Japan. The book is bi-lingual Japanese/English, so I will post the quote in both languages:
Zen is a way of washing away your mental impurities, a kind of bath to cleanse the mind. If you don’t clean your desk for two or three days, you’ll notice that a film of dust has accumulated on its surface. Day after day—in fact, moment after moment—all sorts of thoughts and feelings arise in our minds. In our daily interactions in life, feelings of hatred, anger, dissatisfaction, jealousy, and numerous other impulses and ideas arise in our minds, some of them fading away and others persisting. As these thoughts and feelings accumulate, we come to feel spiritually weighed down, and we need to clean ourselves. If we don’t, our vigor and dynamism will gradually diminish.
Of course, Zen is not simply a means of mental and spiritual cleansing. The point is that Zen focuses on the mind. (page 1-2)
Again, as the Buddha himself said in the Dhammapada (法句経):
183. To avoid all evil, to cultivate good, and to cleanse one’s mind — this is the teaching of the Buddhas.
For most people, they’re used to living live with a mind that is tired and weighed down by hatred, jealousy, dissatisfaction, etc. It’s like a fish in water. It never notices the water. But once you experience life without hatred, jealousy, dissatisfaction, etc, even for a short time, it’s hard to go back to your old way of life.
I found this quote recently by famous British author, George Orwell, and felt it was still true today:
The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
Indeed, you can see examples of this “deafness” in many places in the world.
P.S. Feeling inspired this week. Expect many little posts. ;p
After my last Buddhist post, I wanted to give an update. I’m happy to report that I’ve been finding some good temples to visit lately. Thanks to “M” and others, I’ve had a few potential temples to check out in Seattle. I found one temple near Beacon Hill, just south of downtown, which I started visiting two weeks ago. This temple, another Rinzai temple, had the best schedule for me because they had a Saturday morning Buddhist service starting at 6:30. This is very convenient for me because I can come there while my daughter is sleeping, and still come back in the morning. That means I can come home before I go oncall at work (if I am oncall that week), or just spend the rest of the day with my family. Other temples have times either in the evening or mid-morning, which is more difficult for me.
Saturday morning service has fewer people at this temple, and most of them seem more like senior members of the temple who are already pretty dedicated. There’s no sermon or “dharma talk”. That happens on a different day, which I am unable to attend. So, this saturday service is focused mostly on chanting and meditation. Since I couldn’t attend the “introduction” class either, I had to just follow along and try to not make mistakes. Easier said than done. ;p
Anyhow, although I’ve been to the temple twice, I’m finding that I have much to learn about the Rinzai approach to Buddhism and Zen. There’s actually very few resources on Rinzai in English language (most are written for Soto Zen), other than books about koans (公案). I’m personally not all that interested or eager to delve into koans, so I just want to get a general “feel” for Rinzai. Since there’s not many English-language sources on general Rinzai Buddhism, other than this book I read, I have been learning a lot from the basic services.
A lot of Rinzai Zen seems to be about being fully “engaged” in what you’re doing.1 Of course, this can mean meditation, but also things like drinking a cup of tea, walking (hence kinhin 経行 or walking meditation). I started trying this on my own as well. While reading bedtime stories to my daughter, I try to slow down and read each word, instead of reading fast. I make fewer mistakes reading too, which is good. ;p Also, while drinking coffee I also try to slow down and be engaged in drinking my coffee. When I didn’t pay attention, I spilled coffee on my shirt. I should be more engaged more often. ;p
The other thing that surprised me a little was the liturgy used in Rinzai Zen. It’s a mixture of typical things you would expect (Heart Sutra), but also a mixture of esoteric dharanis as well, which you normally only see in esoteric Buddhism (密教). I’m going to write up a small post on the Rinzai liturgy I’ve observed so far as a reference to others who want to do a home service. I never saw dharanis used at all in Pure Land Buddhist services, so I was surprised to see them at all.
I’d like to write more, but I want to visit a few more weeks before I say too much. It’s been an interesting learning experience, and so far I’m happy to keep going. The temple has a convenient schedule, and has a large, mature community (but not too large). My wife also has been very supportive too, and I really appreciate that. My daughter requires me to bring donuts back. It’s a fair trade, I think.
Thanks everyone for your continued support!
P.S. Sorry “M”, this wasn’t the temple you suggested. This one just had a more suitable schedule, but I’m still investigating temples in my area just in case I find something even better.
1 The term “mindfulness” is used a lot in English when talking about Buddhism, but this is abstract and potentially confusing I think. Hence I like using terms like “alertness” or being engaged in what you do.
(Emperor Hadrian, whose real name was Publius Aelius Traianus Hadrianus Augustus)
In Western culture, we have a lot of famous Romans from ancient history: Cicero, Julius Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, etc. Such men are famous enough that people can recognize their name.
But interestingly, while reading the excellent textbook by Wheelock, he talked about how Roman names really worked.
Similar to modern Western culture, the given name (praenomen) came first. This was followed by a family name or gens. Finally Roman men often had a cognomen which was a kind of nickname to describe a person’s traits. Later, Romans also used agnomen as a “nickname of nicknames” because some cognomen became well-known.
An example of a complicated name is that of the famous general, Scipio whose real name was Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus:
Publius, his given name.
Cornelius, his family name.
Scipio, his nickname, which actually came from the particular branch of the Cornelii family he was born from.
Africanus, his secondary nickname. Due to his victory at the Battle of Zama in north Africa.
Even more complicated is the name for Emperor Hadrian above:
Publius, a common given name (praenomen)
Aelius, his family name (gens)
Traianus, his nickname, which came from his family relations with Emperor Trajan (cognomen).
Hadrianus, his secondary nickname due to his family’s ancestry from the ancient city of Hadria (agnomen)/
Augustus, meaning “wise”. This was a special titled used by all Roman Emperors.
Also, it was very common to abbreviate the given name because there was little variety. During the Empire, only about 12 given names were commonly used for men, though more were used in ancient times. The name “Gaius” was abbreviated as “G”, while Marcus was “M”, Tiberius was “T” and so on. In general, Romans liked to abbreviate things a lot. Probably because writing on stone was a hassle.
But what about women? In early Roman society, they had names similar to men, but over time people stopped using given names for women. They would only use their family name, but with a feminine ending. So, a family name like Julius would become Julia. If there were two daughters, they might be named Julia Major and Julia Minor and so on.
Interestingly though, women didn’t change their name when they got married. Children did not inherit their mother’s name, but women didn’t have to change their name either.
This blog explores my life as a father, Buddhist and Japanophile among other things. I like to share information and help make the Internet a better place.
No one ever explained that to me.
