Whacked by a Monk:
The Buddhist
Monastery Temple-Stay Escapade
Last weekend Rachel, her brother Jeff, Kari, and I [(a)
braved (b) endured (c) accomplished (d) survived (e) all of these] a one-night
temple stay at the Haeinsa Temple and Monastery (Buddhist) in the Gaya
Mountains south of Seoul near Daegu.
What follows is an itinerary of our experience with personal commentary.
10:00-10:20 Backpack-ladened, I walk from my
apartment building to meet Kari in front of hers, and then we both hoof it to
Seoul Station, the nearest mass transit station in our neighborhood, also a hub
station for all of Seoul.
10:25-10:50 We meet Rachel and Jeff in the train
station area, and at a ticket counter, we exchange our on-line confirmations
for actual tickets before proceeding to track 9 to board our bullet train
headed south—final destination, Busan--out of Seoul. We have opted for first class tickets because
neither Jeff nor I have ever travelled via bullet train in Korea.
11:00-13:42 Train time. The cityscape of Seoul and environs ultimately
surrenders to hilly countryside garbed in the greens of springtime and
accessorized with blossoms. I am
enchanted. Except for villages, towns
and sporadic industry, all arable land is fully cultivated. Steeper hill slopes remain forested.
13:45-14:30 We alight in the Daegu train station
with an initial intent of locating the metro that will transport us to the
station where we can then catch the bus traversing the route that includes a
stop at the trailhead to Haeinsa. En route
to the metro we find a taxi queue and decide it could be easier to just taxi it
to the bus station—after all, there are four of us! Once crammed into the taxi, someone brilliant
inquires whether we might just continue in the taxi all the way to
Haeinsa. For 45,000 won (around $40),
the taxi drive is amenable to the proposition as are we. Our ride carries us out of Daegu—South
Korea’s third largest city—into the countryside once again as Jeff jokes that a
taxi jaunt like this would cost $200+ in Chicago…if one could even convince a
taxi driver to take on such a ramble.
14:30-15:15 We partake of a very Korean
lunch—bibimbap—in a building strategically situated at the junction of the
highway with the trailhead path to the temple.
For dessert we unwrap the red foil from some Dove dark chocolate morsels
and savor their bittersweet smoothness. I do not yet know how much I will wish
I had packed the entire bag.
15:15-16:00 We leisurely traipse the path to the
temple gate, browsing sporadic stalls set up along the way and photographing
the beauty and delights illuminated by a gorgeous spring day.
16:00-18:00 We check-in, complete an information
form, receive our monk uniforms, and have a brief tour of the temple-stay
facilities, to include our room assignments.
Rachel, Kari, and I will stay with three other women in two joining rooms,
each with its own bathroom. We will
sleep on pallets on the floor. After
changing into our uniforms, we all meet in the main training/conference room
for temple-stay patrons. There are two
groups participating in this particular temple-stay: an English-speaking one and a Korean-speaking
one. Sixteen people constitute our
English-speaking group, all female except for Jeff, all US citizens except for
one from South Africa, and all teachers of some sort (mostly teaching English
for Korean schools and businesses) except for one who is a light designer
currently working on a production in Seoul.
The Korean-speaking group is smaller than ours but has more men in it;
Jeff shares sleeping quarters with those men.
We learn how to show respect, bow, and sit, and we practice all of it.
Our teachers, two devout female Buddhist practitioners,
inform us that in the morning we will do 108 bows followed by a period of
meditation. I am nervous: (1) The bows are not simple or easy,
especially when performed in repeated sets quite reminiscent of workouts with a
trainer! (2) My body does not handle
floor sitting with legs crossed for extended periods as well as it once did.
18:00-18:15 Drumming! We congregate outside of the intricately
painted—absolutely stunning, may I add—edifice sheltering various percussion
instruments to include a gong and an enormous drum. Three monks take turns beating the drum with
a variety of beats and rhythms. There is
no lull; as one monk approaches the end of his stint, he moves to the right of
the drum, still drumming his cadence. The
incoming monk steps up to the left side of the drum and commences his drumming,
a rhythm complementing the one already in progress. Then the monk on the right steps away, and
the “new” monk moves into the center, continuing his own rendition. The drumming gives way to a finale comprised
of a pattern of gongs. I love the
drumming!
18:15-18-30 Our teachers lead us into the
temple. We sit on cushions. Some sort of head monk chants in a sonorous
voice and I am reminded of other chanting I have heard in my life: the chanting of a rabbi in a synagogue, a
priest reciting a Latin liturgy.
18:30- 19:00 Dinner is strictly vegetarian and
silence prevails; monks do not engage in conversation. So, we sup on rice, boiled peanuts, kimchee,
some sort of greens, potatoes, and soup.
I quite like the boiled peanuts—especially after I figure out what they
are—and the potatoes are everybody’s favorite.
I eat everything, for we have been admonished not to take what we cannot
finish. Okay, I leave a wee bit of broth
in the bottom of my soup bowl.
19:30-21:00 We gather again in the
conference/practice room for a question and answer session with a bona fide
monk, and I find myself connecting ideas and constructs he presents to other
lines of religious thinking. We also fashion
lotus lanterns from a paper cup and Korean-style crepe paper. Mine is pink, like the lotus I saw growing in
a murky pond by a temple ruin in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
All of the lanterns turn out quite pretty. A lotus flower emerges from muddy water
where it grows; in Buddhism the lotus symbolizes the rise from “muck” to enlightenment
and purity.
21:00 Bedtime.
After all, monks arise by 3:00!
My pallet falls way short in the comfort category but I do partake of
some fitful sleeping.
3:00 Rachel’s iPhone alarm awakens us. Fifteen minutes later we stand before the
drum once more.
3:18-3:30 Drumming—oh, glorious
drumming! It is dark, and there are
stars—who knew Korea had stars?! (I’ve never seen stars in Seoul, only the
moon.) The air is clean and brisk, and
the dark is filled with percussion that pounds in the mind, beats in the heart,
and reverberates into the trees beyond, maybe all the way to those stars
winking above. I already know this will
be my favorite moment of all, and it is.
3:35-3:50 Temple again. I am surprised how many people are there
besides us and the monks—children, parents, grandparents—all seated on
cushions. A monk reads in a chanting cadence from a parchment
written in kanji.
People stand, people kneel, people bow, people sit. And the pattern repeats more times than I care to count. My cushion smells kind of funky. I know it can’t be my socks because I put
them on clean not even a half-hour before, and those shoes I slipped off at the
threshold are not even a week old. Maybe
it is somebody else’s socks!
4:00-5:30 Back in the conference/practice
room, it is time to do 108 bows. Arranged
in rows—I strategically place myself at the end of a middle row right next to the wall—we
all stand just behind our cushions. One
of our teachers starts a recording of a mantra, and we begin. At maybe bow number five, the attending monk
whacks me on the lower back! Even though it doesn’t
hurt at all, I am totally abashed.
He then proceeds to push down on my back so that I lower my butt, and he rearranges
my feet. Okay, I will confess: hoping to ease
my foreboding regarding a successful completion of the task ahead, I have not
fully embraced proper bow form on those first few bows. Now, I do.
I have no desire for further monk attention. So I concentrate specifically on form and position for the
next ones, and eventually I think I just zone; one bow slides into the next and then
into the next. It becomes a mindless repetition
of a specific pattern in a dance, and I am
very surprised when the teacher tells us we have just completed our 108th
bow. I still feel physically capable of
more bowing!
Next, we rearrange our mats into two columns the length
of the room and sit facing each other in meditation style. My eyes close, my back straightens, and
although I hear the monk-whack a few times during the elapse of time, the whack
never touches me. Even if I do not
contemplate in the channels suggested by our teachers and the monk, I am
actually quite good at this meditation thing—in form and position, anyway. I rearrange the crossing of my legs only once
within the requisite span of time, and when we change our format into walking
meditation, I have no problems unfolding myself into an upright position and moving.
6:00-6:30 Breakfast…vegetarian, of course,
and very Korean. The offerings include
rice, beans, kimchee (not for breakfast, thank you!), greens, fried seaweed,
stewed figs and chestnuts, and soup. My
stomach shudders, and I can only muster the courage to place small portions of
rice, beans, and the stewed figs and chestnuts on my plate. Hooray for the figs and chestnuts! They taste pretty good.
7:00-8:00 We hike twenty minutes or so to a
retreat center. At first my quads feel
shaky—thanks to the 108 bows, I’m sure—but they buck up for the trek. The retreat center has such a pretty setting;
blossoming trees design a stunning contrast to the darkness of the forest
greens and the rocky outcrops of the mountain behind them. On our descent, I walk with the woman who is
a light designer. Although she is a US
citizen, she has lived in Israel for the past thirty years and has a husband
and children there. We discuss our
impressions and experiences with the temple-stay, Korea, and Buddhism, as well
as living life not in the USA. [I do have
some thoughts to share in regard to the spiritual realm and religion, but not
in this post.]
8:30-9:30 Given some free time now, we roam
the grounds with cameras in tow, just ahead of the tourists and practitioners
who will soon arrive. Located here at Haeinsa also
is a designated World Heritage Site—the depository for the Tripitaka Koreana
(wooden printing blocks of Buddhist scripture, created in the thirteenth
century). Pretty amazing story and
fascinating to actually see.
[Official monk quarters--not ours.]
9:30 We change back into street clothes,
pack up, and clean our quarters. One of
the women in our room says, “Isn’t it afternoon yet?!”
Rachel, Jeff, Kari, and I have asked the teachers to call a taxi
to take us to the train station in Daegu.
What else is there to do when you’re fully exhausted at ten in the
morning and your legs are threatening a “fail”!
EPILOGUE: My legs complained mightily for the next few
days. Monday I wobble-walked to school
on very mushy quads. Apparently, my current
program of running, squats, and lunges has never engaged my thighs quite like
108 bows. The year I took a Pilates/yoga
class—a class I enjoyed far more than I ever anticipated—both
my strength and flexibility notably improved, and I certainly recognized position and format
similarities to some of those yoga/Pilates moves when bowing 108 times. Hmmm…perchance I should just add
bowing to my regular fitness routine!
