JapanNewbie

Becoming Buddha

Posted on 24. Sep, 2006 @ 10:30 am by harvey in Language Views: 157

Here’s an interesting Japanese phrase I recently learned.

「おしゃかになった。」 Osyaka ni natta.

The meaning of this phrase, is the same as 「だめになった」 Dame ni natta. Which means, “it was broken”, or “it became useless”.

The root of this phrase is very interesting. The kanji for Osyaka, is 「お釈迦」which means Buddha. If you literally translate Osyaka ni natta, it means, “it became Buddha”.

Now why would a phrase which translates to “becoming Buddha”, be used in the case when something becomes useless, or broken? Isn’t becoming Buddha a good thing?

According to the 広辞苑 (koujien, a Japanese – Japanese dictionary, like our Webster), the phrase comes from a story like this…

Someone was trying to make a statue of another god, such as Jizou, or Amida, however failed, and instead the statue ended up looking like a statue of Buddha.

Thus, the term “it became Buddha” is used for when something becomes useless or broken, and especially, when someone is trying to create something, but destroys it in the process.

Our Japanese teacher used this phrase when referring to a cassette tape that was eaten by the player. A student was trying to wind the reel back into the tape, and she said… 「それはもうお釈迦になったと思うよ」
Good stuff!

- Harvey