On with the story....
I was sitting down to eat some of that slop the the Air Force Services personnel continuously provide for sustenance under the pretense of being intended for human consumption, when a co-worker told me he had signed up for a temple stay. I was familiar with the program due to the fact that a few of my friends have participated in similar programs under the same name. It turns out that there are hundreds of temples across the Korean peninsula that offer programs that allow anyone to enter the temples and chill with the monks. Generally they have a program set in mind for each temple and they vary from temple to temple. I am pretty sure you could easily sign up for a temple stay at a different temple every weekend for an entire year and the only similarity of the visits would be the awesome fried tofu and the smiling Buddhist monks.
So, my friend signed up for a temple stay at Jikjisa temple near Gimcheon. There are not many people in our line of work that would be open minded enough to even consider the idea of spending a peaceful weekend in silence and meditation with some Buddhist monks who don't even drink. There would be no shots, no juicys, no meat and no hip hop gurgling through the bleeding crack that used to be your eardrum. I had actually been considering a temple stay for a while but the opportunity had not presented itself and I think I would have chickened out if I was to try and go alone. I was pretty stoked when he told me about it and told him right away that I was definitely in.
He sent me the temple stay Facebook. Which is all screwy and not really useful to those of us that don't speak Korean or read Hangul very well. http://www.facebook.com/templestay It is just a normal user profile but they will befriend you without question and there is a little bit of info on there. The most valuable bit of info is the link to the english version of the website where you can find a program that is right for you, pick your temple and register for a wicked cool Buddhist monk adventure of your own. Check out the website at http://eng.templestay.com/. I have seen pictures from friends temple stay adventure where they are all just chillaxin and interacting in a quiet temple environment, going on meditation walks, beating a large pile of rice stuff with a mallet (which is actually how they prepare a type of gummy rice food here), and generally taking it slow and easy. That was not at all the case for my weekend.
Here is a picture of our schedule for the weekend:
We were the first to arrive at about 2PM. We got all checked in at the main office and some giggly volunteer high school girls escorted us to the main gathering hall. Once everyone had arrived we began the orientation. Fortunately for myself and the eleven or so other folks that did not speak Korean, all the instructions were in Korean and the monks talking to us only did so in Korean. I know by looking at the schedule that I learned a lot about temple etiquette. We sat patiently on the floor cross legged passing a sideways glance here and there to make sure that we weren't the only clueless one in the room. I think we could safely say that there was about 35-40 people total in our group which meant that 2/3 of the group was laughing at the monks jokes and the rest of of probably assumed they were laughing at us.
It quickly because apparent that this was going to be a 24 hours game of follow the leader. We weren't supposed to talk at all, which really wasn't hard because you can only ask the other English speaking folks in your group, "what is going on?" so many times before the empty shrug get annoying. At least they gave us all these wicked comfy pajamas to strut around in. I don't know what the outfit is called but it was seriously about the most comfortable outfit I have ever worn in my life! Alright that might be a bit of an exaggeration but seriously if these outfits were for sale I would have bought one just to relax around the house in.
It is about 5:30 PM and everyone is getting up, it must be time for dinner. I get a flashback from basic training as we form it up outside and await notification to proceed to chow. They line us up into four lines and lead us down to the cafeteria. Once again, follow the leader, these foods are foreign and you don't really know what to expect so I just get a little of each to be safe. We file through the line grabbing a little bit of everything and then proceed to the table. Once the table is full the monk says something and everyone looks at a sign on the wall and begins to read it. Once they are done reading we got the all clear from the monk to dig in. Kimchi, and Tofu and a bunch of things I don't know were pretty fantastic really. I wish our military dining facility would prepare a meal half as worthy of consumption. As we were finishing up the monk seamed very concerned about the little bits of food that were left on our plates. I got the idea that I needed to devour every single morsel of food that I had committed to. Nothing was to be wasted. At this point I noticed the seven or eight year old boy sitting at my table having a very difficult time with one of the dishes. His mother ate the dish for him in the end but not for lack of trying. That kid continued to impress me with his obedience and effort to participate in this program.
Food was gone and it was time to clean the plates and head back inside. Once we all returned they gathered us up with our flat sitting pillow thingys (yeah I have no idea what they are called, yes I am aware I could look it up but I don't want to.) and led us to a temple. Try not to get this elaborate image in your head about a huge temple structure. The temples are small buildings with a shrine inside.
Once we arrived at the temple we silently lined up and squeezed in to make room for everyone (It was a tight fit.) Then the Yabul chanting began. This is a ritual where the monks chant while doing a series of full bows. By full bow I mean, you stand with your hands in a prayer pose and then kneel to the ground and lower your hands to the floor, place your forehead on the ground and turn your hands upright and raise them slightly (You can see it in many of the images) then rise back to the originating position. The sound of the monks chanting, the harmony, the reverberation off the walls, it was very powerful. I wish I could have found a proper recording of the monks I was with doing the chants.
After the Yabul chant was complete we started right in to our 108 bows. It is exactly what it is called, yes, that is right, one hundred and eight bows. These are conducted in sync, at the command of the monk with the slap stick noise maker thing. After about thirty two, I lost count. After what I would guess was about seventy, I wanted to quit. After one hundred and eight full bows, I was ready for a nap. The 108 bows is intended to improve concentration and focus. We say a video where people were trying to get through some twenty thousand bows, one of our hosts tried to explain in English but I did not understand the point of such a feat. The video also spoke of a girl that wanted to be a model but she had a crooked spine. She completed the 108 bows every morning and night for over a year and her spine was healed. They also mentioned that students do the 108 bows in school during breaks in class in order to improve focus and mental discipline. From my experience I can see how the practice of 108 bows regularly could help to tame the wild mind and improve focus with the added benefit of being a decent cardio workout.
That night we completed the Yabul chanting session, followed by 108 bows. We then went back to the meeting hall we started in. I am not really sure what exactly transpired but we were penalized for something and had to complete another set of 108 bows. Shortly after that a couple of kids in our group got busted slapping each other and caused us to do another set of 108 bows. All in all between dinner and tea time I figure we completed about 500 bows. One of the people in the group just stopped bowing and lay down on the pillow thingy, "WUSS!"
The monks were very concerned, almost OCD, with the alignment of like items. When we lined up on our pillows they wanted the pillows evenly spaced and aligned to the slats on the hardwood floor. When they served our tea it was the same story. They passed us each a piece of paper to place in front of our pillow and then each of us was handed a paper cup. We had to place the paper squarely in front of our pillow and aligned with the person next to us and the cup in the center of the paper. If it was adjusted wrong they would point at it and nudge until we corrected it.I think the tea was a ginger tea. I am not exactly a connoisseur but it was pretty amazing tea. Although I tried to sip it while it was hot and the steam attempted to choke me to death. I learned that steam from ginger tea does not for a good nebulized inhalant.
It would appear that I am being a bit more long winded than I had originally intended with this entry. There is just so much that happened within a short period of time I want to relive it all right here. But there is no time for that and I doubt anyone would really want to read about my weekend in that much detail. I am however going to cut this off for tonight and continue another night. After we had tea we completed another set of 108 bows and then went to bed, it was almost 10PM and we had to get up at 3AM to begin the new day.
To be continued...
