Whacked by a Monk

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 108^th 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!