Welcome to Unsui's Corner

[Jundo]

Dear All,

We would just like to welcome all to this new "Unsui's Corner", a place for our senior Novice-Priests in Training ... Shohei, Mongen and Fugen ... to express themselves on Zen Practice, Life, Everything.

Gassho, Jundo and Taigu

[Koshin]

Great

Gassho

[Mp]

Fantastic ... I look forward to the talks.

Gassho,
Michael

[Kaishin]

[Seimyo]

This is really a welcome addition. I'm looking forward to reading this forum.

[Shugen]

I'm also looking forward to hearing more from the Unsui. (What is the plural?)

Ron

[Dosho]

I'm also looking forward to hearing more from the Unsui. (What is the plural?)

I have been told that there is no plural in Japanese...when they made a sequel to Alien that was called Aliens here in the states, they had to call it Alien II in Japan because there would have been no difference in Japanese. There's a slight possibility that is an urban myth, but I got it from a good source....Jundo would of course know best.

Gassho,
Dosho

[Jundo]

I have been told that there is no plural in Japanese...when they made a sequel to Alien that was called Aliens here in the states, they had to call it Alien II in Japan because there would have been no difference in Japanese. There's a slight possibility that is an urban myth, but I got it from a good source....Jundo would of course know best.

Gassho,
Dosho

That is quite correct. The Japanese sequal to "Alien" was "Alien 2" (poster below), though I suppose they could have called it Aliens as English words can be written phonetically in Japanese.

However, there is no "unsuis" in Japanese. Just "one unsui, two unsui, three unsui" ...

Maybe we can call them Unsui I, Unsui II and Unsui III? Or, in Fugen's Case ... "Unsui" "Return of the Unsui" and "The Unsui Strikes Back".

[Shugen]

:-)


Shugen

[Jundo]

By the way, pronunciation is something like "un" ... like the first syllable of Spanish "uno" (uno, dos, tres)

and "sui" ... as in "sway" (swing and sway)

It means "clouds (un) and water (water)" ...

The term unsui, which literally translates as "cloud, water" comes from a Chinese poem which reads, "To drift like clouds and flow like water." The term refers to ... novices undergoing training in Zen practice ...The term can be applied more broadly for any practitioner of Zen, since followers of Zen attempt to move freely through life, without the constraints and limitations of attachment, like free-floating clouds or flowing water." ...

http://books.google.co.jp/books?id=s...page&q&f=false

I found this way of putting it from a Rinzai group in Boston ...

Unsui (雲水) literally means clouds and water. Clouds and water are manifestations of the same element – freely adapting and transforming in accordance with circumstances. Unsui is the traditional Japanese term which refers to a Zen monk or follower of the Way in training.

Like clouds, the unsui moves effortlessly through the sky, and like water around obstacles. Freedom from attachments enables the unsui to gain access to the wisdom of how the self and the world arise and disappear.

http://www.unsui.org/

Gassho, J

[murasaki]

...maybe it's 'unsuiae'? Or the Arabic plural: 'unsuieen' (for females, 'unsuiaat'). Farsi: 'unsuiyan'. Somebody stop me.

I am looking forward to the posts here because we rarely get the perspectives of the 'unsuieen' unless we get to talk to them personally via Skype at the Tea Party and whatnot.

Gassho
Julia

[Myozan Kodo]

Great! Looking forward to hearing from the older brothers!
Gassho
Myozan

[Myozan Kodo]

Very quiet around here. Look at the tumble weed blowing by.

[Jundo]

You can hear a pin drop.

Gassho, J

[Risho]

I have to go back to the phonetics. lol How do you write english phonetically in japanese? I'm completely illiterate in japanese, so would phonetic spelling be done in kanji characters, or is there a separate alphabet for phonetics? The reason I ask is that I see both characters and what look like English lettering on japanese products (well the limited set I've seen anyway)

Gassho,

Risho

[Myozan Kodo]

An Unsui will come along any minute now.
Gassho

[Hans]

Hello Risho,

let me generalise briefly in order not to lose myself in too many details. The really complicated characters you see in Japanese script ( these and only these characters are called Kanji) are actually Chinese characters that were adopted by the Japanese quite some time ago due to them not having developed their own writing system at the time. Over time, two simplified syllable alphabets emerged that are slightly longer than our alphabet and that complement the Kanji...they are called Hiragana and Katakana.

Now Katakana is used whenever a foreign word gets shoehorned into Japanese using the Japanese syllables and vowels which are closest to for example the English words in terms of sound ( in many cases English native speakers won't be able to recognize the original word) . Hiragana is used for prepositions and loads of grammatical "situations" where it shows that the Japanese language can't easily rely on Kanji only, due the Chinese and Japanese language not being related at all.

Usually you'll come across all three at the same time when seeing/reading Japanese texts.

Spelling phonetically is always going to be a bit of a "let's try to minimise the linguistic collateral damage as best as we can" kinda affair. So a name like Robert would be cut into syllable pieces that would combine ro-baa-to

Please keep in mind that the Japanses Katakana pronounciation is referring to the way in which most western European languages spell. So the english sound "eeee" would use the Katakana "iiiiii" vowel. The English "A" would be turned into "ei"....I made a less than perfect video related to this topic a while ago:




Hope this helps.

Gassho,

Hans Chudo Mongen