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.