Temple Stay

(Golgulsa temple)

This past weekend a few of us spent the weekend in a Buddhist temple called Golgulsa, which means "Stone Buddha Temple." It's a small, yet fascinating temple which gets its name from a 1500 year old Buddha carved into a cliff. It also has some small caves, one of which has a temple built into it, and has been used since the 7th century. The most unique thing about this temple is martial art they teach called Sunmudo. This martial art had existed only at this one particular temple for hundreds of years, being only taught in secret among monks, until the 1940's (when they decided a war of fighting monks was unlikely to happen). They call it a "meditative martial art," meaning they never spar, and any contact during training is accidental.

(our sleeping quarters)

The temple stay consisted of a couple hours of Sunmudo training. The training was fun, but the best part of it came after we finished, when we got to watch the monks training. It was kinda entertaining to watch Buddhist monks, with their robes and all, kicking and jumping around the place.

(practicing the moves on my "bed")
(monks practicing sunmudo)

The temple was very quiet and serene. After the training, it was dark outside, which made it even quieter. It was the calmest I'd ever felt in Korea. We went to bed early, since we had to get up the next morning at 4AM!!! for a chanting session and meditation. The chanting sounded more like singing, it was really cool sounding. I didn't know the chants so I couldn't follow along, but I could do the bowings (after each verse).

(cave temple)

After meditation we had some free time. The sun was just starting to rise, so I planted myself on a rock next to the Buddha and soaked it in. When I got hot, I went into the cave temple and just sat there for awhile. It was very quiet and nice.

(buddha carving)

Next came breakfast. The meal is eaten in a very special way. You are instructed not to talk, or to look at what others are doing, just to think about your food and where it came from and what it took to get it to you. You get 4 bowls which come in a Russian doll-like container; you take the bowls out smallest to largest using only your thumbs to minimize sound. Each bowl has to be in the right spot on your mat; largest bowl in the lower left corner, and descending in size clockwise. You put water in the largest bowl, swich it around, then pour it into the next bowl, repeating this until you put it in the last bowl, where it stays. You eat the food, but not a single morsel of food can be wasted, so you must eat every speck. When you're finished, you take the only thing remaining, which is a piece of kimchi (after having been washed of pepper flakes in your soup), and use it like a washcloth to clean off the last remnants of food. After this, you get more water, and you rinse the bowls again, and you drink the water and eat the kimchi. Then you take the cold water that was sitting in your smallest bowl this whole time, and rinse AGAIN, but this time the water goes into a bucket. That bucket gets dumped into the stream, but there can't be any speck of food in it or else it's considered to be polluting the water. So, if the water you pour into the bucket has any crumb in it (like mine did), they pour that water back into your bowl and you drink that too. Needless to say, the meal was more stressful than peaceful, but it was still an interesting experience nonetheless.

All in all, it was a cool experience. I'm glad I did it, and I might even consider doing it again. Maybe.

tea time with a monk