Pulsing through my temples- A Korean Temple Stay

Since I first heard about it, I have been wanting to do a temple stay since I first came to Korea, but when I arrived I assumed that a temple would be too cold in the winter so I would wait until the summer. Then summer came and parties and beach and all sorts of mad things happened and suddenly I was facing the onset of winter with no temple stay completed. And then one day, there it was- a super organized person organizing everything for other people and I and some freinds jumped on the train (the organizational train) and there I was at Golgulsa -one of the biggest temples in Korea built upon a steep mountain slope. 

Now a great thing about this temple is that it has a buzzing tourist trade and so at the office we were greeted by a bonified English speaker from England. I think this was the first time something in Korea had officially been explained to me by an English speaker and it was an experience, in itself, not simply nodding and smiling but nodding, understanding and smiling. The English girl from England gave us our temple clothes and told us to change quickly because soon we were going to have our first activity – temple archery.

So this is meditative archery, not just “this is how you shoot an arrow” but as you do it one must focus on one’s breathing. If you do manage to hit the huge rectangle which the target was on and your arrow bounced off the rubber block then it was because you weren’t breathing right. First you hold your bow down  and breathe in, then you raise your bow and rest it on your head while breathing out and then you draw the bow as far as you can and breathe in, hold your breath, then breathe out with the arrow. I hit the black rectangle once but my arrow didn’t stick in and one can presume my breathing wasn’t right or purely, I am not much practiced in archery. 

We then went on to a demonstration by the Sunmudo fighters. Sunmudo is a meditative martial art only practiced at Gulgosa temple in the world. It is in a way similar to Capoeira in its emphasis on flow and no contact yet also it is very focused on breathing and certain moves are supposed impossible if one’s breathing isn’t right. They did some great jumping and spinning and one older man did some incredibly ridiculous stretching much to everyone’s delight. 

Then onto an explorative hike to a carved Buddha made somewhere in between the 7^th and 9^th century AD and through autumn colours (fading very much into leafless winterness) and we ended up at the dining hall for vegetarian buffet style supper. The only thing that looked appealing to me was rice and some mushroom sauce thing so I ate that and we moved on to temple orientation where we were taught how to bow and received a little explanation on how to meditate the Buddhist way (so we would be ready for our 4am wake up and meditation the following day). 

Their chants were written in Korean as well as with English phonetic spelling so we could attempt to follow it and we were taught the specific bow one should do at different intervals, some were just a bow from the hips and some were on the knees with your face touching the ground, then you raise your arms up turning them and lowering them and only then lifting your head. She also gave us some tips on meditation and clearing your mind. She said, once again, that we must try to focus solely on our breathing and try counting breaths 1 through to  10 and then back down again to 1 . 

This is when Mr Monk came to instruct us in Sunmudo practice. It was incredible, starting with some great stretching of all parts of the body then some very vigorous kicking and some punching. I found the sudden attack of exercise pretty intense but was determined to try and keep up and not give up when everyone else was. It happened eventually- I was tired and wearing too many clothes and was only too happy after some meditative cooing down to make my way to sleepy time.  

I shared a room with 3 girlfriends, Korean communal style, just an open room with mats to sleep on. I normally only go to sleep around midnight or later so I was no were near sleep at the 10pm when lights out was recommended so we giggled for a while about the day and for a while about Princess Beatrice’s hat at the royal wedding as my British friend Helen proclaimed at same point that “the only disappointing part of the royal wedding was Beatrice’s hat.” Even though for most of my life I have talked and discussed famous people I can never truly be unamazed that I can have a discussion about a  hat a person who has no relevance to my life whatsoever is wearing. Luckily a smartphone was produced, the hat was researched and VOILA here it is. 

It was a restless night, I was worried none of our alarms set would go off and kept on thinking I’d missed morning meditation when finally the jingle jangle was heard and we groanedly rolled out of bed to hike up to the top of the hill where the meditation room lay. They say that the reason temples are always built on mountains and why the meditation room is always at the top is because when you arrive to meditate you don’t need to still your thoughts because they are too tired to start thinking anyway. Well there’s the theory. I don’t think there’s much that can truly still my whirring mind but my heart was definitely racing as we entered the meditation room and plonked ourselves down ready to try out our new bowing skills. Well the chanting and the bowing was kind of cool but sadly all I can really remember about our meditation was an extremely loud and fast DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG of the Buddhist instrument the Mok-tak. I cannot for the life of me understand why the monk had to play this thing so vigorously and loudly but I felt it pounding on the inside of my skull and instead of the peaceful brain silencing I was meant to be achieving through these practicing I had very violent thoughts of rushing to the monk, tearing out of his hands, shouting “WHY?” and then viciously smashing it upon the ground. In another pleasant day dream I quietly take a pistol out of my temple-shirt pocket and aim it perfectly at the instrument, and watch while the instrument explodes into pieces in the monk’s hands.

 

 FINALLY the pounding ceded and we were given time to sit and meditate on our new found silence. What a relief. I tried counting, think I got to 5 before I started thinking of the pure poetry that counting was then I tried again and through many misshapen thoughts I somehow dragged myself to 9 and once again got too involved with 9 as a number and then peacefully gave up and gave into my thoughts like a gentle wave rising up and down, washing me wherever it saw fit. 

We were then lead out for a walking meditation (all I could hear was shivering) and then to a special breakfast given by the monks. Now breakfast sounds delightful, and it is delightful where I come from yet this is Korea and all a Korean loves for breakfast is rice and wonderful fermented cabbage gimchi. We were dreaming of eggs and maybe a touch of cereal but we knew they were futile thoughts. Not only were we only to look forward to a simple Korean breakfast but I was aware as to how complicated the process was going to be as I had done it before. 

Basically everyone gets given a stack of 4 bowls and each one of them needs to be placed in a square but at the right place and each bowl has a different purpose- one is for rice, one for veggies, one for soup and one for water. You have to eat every last morsel of food that is given to you as all food wastage is prohibited and you must therefore only take just what the body needs to function and no more. After you have finished eating you then take the water and use a piece of kimchi (Korean’s traditional food made from fermented cabbage) as a sponge to wipe your dishes. After that return the dirty water to the water bowl, then drink the murky, foody water all and eat the kimchi. Now I hate kimchi. The taste, the smell, everything about it makes me want to throw up. So swallowing the tiny piece of kimchi I had to put in my bowl did ring a slight stomach lurch and an alarming sound but I stomached it and was grateful the meal and the dirty water was over. At the end of the whole ordeal you get given some more water and with this water you give your bowls a final rinse and poor that water back into a bucket. Our English girl from England told us that if the monk sees even one half of a grain of rice in the bucket at the end everyone has to drink the water in the bucket. Only now do I know it was scare tactics but I’ll tell you that then, I was terrified. 

Finally, it was time for a short nap and on to tea and conversation with a monk who actually spoke a fair bit of English. I was too shy to ask questions in front of the big group (though I wanted to know EVERYTHING) but what I could gage was mostly a monk’s journey is very focused on themselves as in one meditates and follows the teachings of Buddha and is very much involved with finding Nirvana for one’s own self and is not so concerned with the world around it. A monk lives and breathes the temple and I think perhaps, they never really leave to get involved with this outside world. Apparently the only one who is enlightened is the Buddha himself and everyone else is upon the path to achieve this. I found this interesting and wanted to know more but the continuous Korean stickling for time is ever present and soon “tea and conversation” was pronounced over. 

We didn’t wait for lunch- deciding that the breakfast and supper the night before was enough and thus we decided to fold our temple clothes and re-enter the world outside. A couple of modes of transport later and a long nap we made our way straight to Thanksgiving dinner number 3 put on by the military bar and a whole lot of military guys who brought in buckets (and I mean literally buckets) of food. Korea has definitely taught me to eat less and therefore need less food but after a weekend of eating the bare minimum I was ready for anything American Thanksgiving could throw in my direction. 

 

A part of me wants to go live there for a while and learn Sunmudo every day, and learn to be satisfied with eating just rice and learn to like kimchi and meditate a lot so I can count all the way to 10 and back without being caught in a whirl of madness and learn how to chant without constantly losing my place and learning what the chants mean. A part of me. But, all I can say is THANK YOU Korea for first letting me live here and get paid to teach and teach and teach and then, taking me out of my comfort zone and letting me just sit back and learn, learn, learn.

FEELING those Phillipines- and Ma 'n Pa Korea-ing on like crazy

The time has come the Walrus said, To talk of many things: Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax-- Of cabbages--and kings--And why the sea is boiling hot--
And WINTER IS COMING! 

With all our winter warmies on!

Yes it is, NOW it is, this morning I woke up on this sun sun sunny day and thought “I want to go climbing at the climbing wall”. After a long 20 minutes on a freezing scooter we realized that if our hands were this cold to start with, climbing would be a painful and dismal endeavor and instead we ended up coffeeing in a coffee shop hiding from the cold. The cold is slowing me down- more movies, less sports, more food, less activity. I feel my body starting to grow as I eat more and run around less, wallowing while my pasty body enlarges with gluttonous laziness.

I have been thinking of winter for so long; on every summers day it has brooded softly in the back my head, this dark force that would stretch into all the trees of Korea and strip them, leaving them lifeless and leafless and so immensely unpretty. Where no beauty is found but grey and the streets will fill up with litter that will not be picked up by the old people of Korea for even they, are too cold. A Korean winter is a terrible thing. But let’s not fear for the future but rather dwell on a gorgeous past, that is, the end of a heavenly summer. 

I went to the Philippines. How cool is that? For 3 days, well 5 days kind of but 2 of those days were traveling days and tiring at that. How can I be so spoiled as to be able to go to the Philippines for a few short days? Yes I am, I did. And even though at the back of my mind and the bottom of my stomach I kind of regretted spending so much money on just a glimpse of a country, now i can proudly say I couldn’t have not regretted it more than I don’t regret it. After a delayed and very hungry journey through China (my Korean Visa card wouldn’t work at the airport for some reason) there they were- my family well 50% of it)- my parents and my sister Sarah- looking tanned yet tired and happy to see me. 

We had a rather messy arrival in Manila and  a night in a rather dodgy looking motel/hotel place where I slept on a bed almost skinnier than me yet we set off the following day on a very comfortable bus and the country exploded into colour. Tropical trees and plants burst all over, on the streets were all sorts of vehicles such as their taxi-like “jeepnies”( which kind of looked like those big old rolls royce’s and were painted with such imagination), the little shops filled with little things were all characteristic and the people ,wow the people were so lovely. And warm. And they spoke ENGLISH, or at least a mixture of it.

 We took that bus and then a jeepnie all the way down to a lake and inside that lake there was an island and inside that island there was a volcano and inside that volcano was a lake and inside that lake was another island (well large rock that they call an island). My father asked our friendly Jeepnie driver to find us a place to stay and I don’t really know what happened but soon we were transported to this fabulous place owned by our new friend Joe. 

Now friend Joe and friend Joe’s family owned this whole place complete with fighting cocks , a few bungalows to sleep in, boats to take tourists to the island-lake-island-volcano thing and it seemed like everything that we needed could be provided by some relative or other. We needed fruit from his aunt’s fruit shop, fish from his uncle’s fish shop, his sister would cook the meal, his brother in law would take us on the boat to the island and friend Joe would supply us with any information about the region or about the politics of the country. A true family affair, we were the only people there and he gave us rooms for the equivalent of R50 ($7) per night and the family made food which was food that would stay in my stomach memory forever. 

The volcano-island-lake-island-lake-island or Taal Volcano as it's really name is was pretty rad too. Thanks to my sister’s extensive research we decided not to take the sad-looking-underfed donkeys up the mountain but instead use the legs that have been given to us instead. What a good decision! As I ascended the mountain that was almost ruined with huge ruts walked in from the "horses" and seeing the fat tourists bump down 70 degree slopes I was so happy to be on my feet without a guide whipping the tiny pony to go faster and faster down a precarious slope. The hike was beautiful and hot and sweaty and after a while I saw some smoke billowing out in the distance. Wondering why people would be making a fire on this hot day we came closer only to smell a rather unpleasant smell. “Ah yes”, my mom reminded us “we ARE on a volcano” and the smoke was the sulphur coming out and the rock was hot hot hot to touch. It was y first hike on an active volcano- WOOP!

The top of the volcano was gorgeous and there they had t-shirts, drinks and what not to sell and a peculiar amount of Philippinos renting out golf clubs per the golf ball so one could hit the golf ball off the top of the volcano and try to hit the tiny “island” (more like a large rock) in the middle. We convinced my dad it was his duty to hit the golf all off the top of the volcano (though I wasn’t sure about how environmentally friendly the whole thing was). I don’t think he got the golf ball too far but the Philipino lied to us about how far it went (well maybe she was just being encouraging) and we continued down the mountain to a ridiculously exquisite fish-vegetabley dinner cooked by miscellaneous family member number 7. 

We were sad to leave the happy haven of cheap accommodation, family minded Philipinos and rickety streets with no foreigners but I needed to see some colourful fish underwater. So we set forth (lugging all of their millions of bags in crowded low ceilinged Jeepnies) to Anilao which is supposed to be one of the best diving places on the island of Luzon. After some rather mad cajoling for accommodation we ended up with another hospitable Phillipino at a diving place. Now we were comfortably there next to the ocean with our snorkeling boat ride organized for the following day, we needed food. My mother and I and the hospitable Phillipino then got onto a trike which is a motorbike attached to a sidecar (my mother in the side car and me on the back of the motorbike) and got a ride into town where we spent small amounts of money on tons of vegetables and fish for the following day.  

So the next day dawned beautifully and we got on this fast boat and jumped into clear waters filled with colourful colourful fish! Wow I have never seen such things, so any different colours swimming in and out and around wherever you are, I dived and swam and exalted in the warm waters and the things my eyes could see with the luminous rocks and squishy anemones stretching far and wide. Lunch came upon us and we went to this special beach to cook lunch. We waited for our guides to cook us lunch (such spoiled tourists) played charades when the rain decided to come bucketing (and I mean BUCKETING) down all around us. Strangely enough it was a game my parents hadn’t played much before and was a good time waster until all the yummy yummy food came out. Also the beach was absolutely strewn with the most vivid dried corals and we searched for the most intricate ones to take home )probably illegal but no one was stopping us). We decided that although snorkeling was an under-water activity, being on a wet cold boat afterwards wasn’t exactly the vibe so we sped back to our resort singing pirate songs to ward off the unpleasantness of rain pelting into our eyes.  

After resting and listening to the rain and another good supper and some packing we went to sleep only to wake at 4am, say a sad farewell to my lovely sister and to start the trek back to Manila where my parents and I would go to KOREA! It was a trike and then a Jeepney and then a bus and we were in Manila earlier than expected with the rain still pouring down! Manila was covered in all sorts of water, people were making wooden walkways over flooded streets for tips and a taxi to the airport was near impossible to find. Finally we saw one but only after my father had to practically force the taxi driver to let some VERY VERY wet tourists into his nice dry car, did we got to the airport. I bought some Phillipino Rum and got onto my flight to return to Korea. 

And then KOREA... 

Well that was a rather whirlwind of 2.5 weeks. They were living in my bedroom and I was kind of living between there and a friend’s house, trying to complete all my commitments, go to work and show them as much as I could. They wanted to relax after the Philippines so the first few days were involved with sleeping and washing their clothes and then it was onto Gyeonjiu and Frisbee matches for me and them enjoying the ambiance of the oldest town in Korea. Many kings are buried there and it’s full of beautiful temples. We had rather huge plans to go to the Andong mask festival that night (3 hours away) and I somehow was going to get back for my Frisbee match the next day but instead we decided not to and they decided to camp next to the river that I had played Frisbee on that day and the next day they set off to go camping and hiking in another part of the country. 

I really wanted to show my parents the charm of Korea. It’s a very strange country and not really a tourist destination so it's difficult for travelers to get around confidently. However, when my parents came back from their little camping trip in the mountains they were only too happy to tell us about all the Koreans who tried to help them even though they didn’t know a word of English and how everyone stopped them to share some sort of food or other with them. My dad was also given raw squid to eat though of course he just said thank you, bagged it, and cooked it when he had a stove- not the Korean way but the best way to do anything in this country is to take what they give you and adapt which I felt they did quite well. 

My parents also came to an animal birthday party where my mother dressed up as a giraffe and gave everyone a good giraffe impression on the stage (there was a performance and the party was after)- much to the Pohang foreigner community's delight. We also visited an island on the south coast of Korea. And went hiking up this mountain past many waterfalls where my mother immediately dived into the icey water- I couldn’t let her beat me so I had to dive in too! Wow it was icey but it’s embarrassing when your 60 year old mother is more adventuress than you. We also took a trip to the Eastern most point of Korea for the sunrise. There is a statue of an open hand in the ocean and it is a great place for a photo (or 74) with the sun coming behind it making it look like the sun is in the hand. The hand faces another hand on land and these 2 open hands are meant to symbolize harmony and coexistence.

I also took them for a visit to Jukdo market which is the biggest outdoor market in South Korea and it is full of all sorts of wacky things- dried squid tentacles, bondegi (silkworm pupae) all sorts of strange edible roots, eels, fish on a stick and more. Most of the things you have no idea what they are and I’m sure some of them don’t even have English translations. We bought some vegetables including “tomatoes” that were not tomatoes but fruits called persimmons and my parents practiced bowing at all the many shop vendors. 

On their last night we played my favourite board game and I took my mother to a Jimjilbang or a Korean bathhouse. We dipped in all the pools and my mother as usual stood under the freezing cold waterfall wowing all the Korean women with her fearless embracing of the cold. My father did not join us as he was not too interested in being naked around a whole bunch of other Korean men. The following morning they went off to Seoul and I said goodbye, happy to have my room back but sad to say goodbye. 

I’m glad I got to show them a little bit of this funny country, especially when the weather was so glorious and sunny every day. Now things are changing and I have closed my windows and I shriek when I come out of the bathroom after a steamy shower. I will be strong though and not give in to putting my heating on until it is really uncomfortable- the button does look so tempting at times! However, I did get an email a few days ago saying my ski season passes are in the mail and I am ready to spend my weekends flying down mountains on a snowboard once again.