Beomeosa

Many of the temples in Korea host weekends where people can stay overnight and learn about life as a Buddhist. I chose to do a temple stay at Beomeosa Temple. It was originally built 1300 years ago, and has been home to practicing monks since then.

I chose to do this alone for a few different reasons. Mainly, I wanted some ponderin' time. I got just that.

Upon arrival, I received my monks clothing. I never got an answer about who makes them, but they were very comfortable and equally practical. We spent some time reading about life at Beomeosa and its history. I wasn't exactly sure what to expect, but I was surprised to see that the majority of the group was Korean. Some were college students there to get away from their studies for a weekend. Some were young students on a school trip. One man was there with his eight-year-old son. He had apparently been going through some difficult times at work and wanted to recharge and spend some time with his boy. There were six other foreigners, and some gracious volunteers that helped translate the stories and lessons.

After introducing ourselves, the monk taught us how and why to bow. Different than in western ideology, bowing is not an act of worship, but a gesture of inner humility. It is used to signify meaning for the self, rather than subservience to another. When bowing, you start with hands pressed together, pointing up. You then drop to your knees, put your hands on the mat, forehead on the mat. You then flip your hands palm up and raise them above your ears and return them to the ground. Then sit up with hands back together in front of you and roll up onto your feet. Every morning and evening, the monks do this 108 times. The 108 signifies the 108 types of anguish of human existence. Doing these bows releases bad karma.

The monk told us some stories about Buddha, the first person to reach 'Enlightenment.' The translations were nice, yet understandably difficult for the translators to give.

Dinner was next, and was even more intricate an experience than bowing. Buddhists are mostly vegan and do not waste anything. I am still fascinated by their commitment to using only what is necessary. For supper, some of us volunteered to serve the food to each other. We had rice, sprout soup, kimchi, mushrooms, sprouts, and a yellow radish for cleaning.

We were told that we must eat everything we took. They weren't joking.

Each person had four bowls for different things: side-dish bowl, soup bowl, rice bowl, and cleaning/drinking water bowl.

When you finish your food, you use the yellow radish to scrub the bowls with the cleaning water. You clean one bowl and then pour the remnants into the next, repeat... At the end, you eat the radish and drink the fragments of left over food with the cleaning water.

This experience was extreme, but I also think we need to take some notes back home.

Clean as a whistle...

We were able to experience a service with another monk and some older women. It was in a small temple and lasted about 10 minutes. After this, we went back to our building and did 108 bows. While making each bow, we also strung a single cedar-bead onto a necklace. Monks use these necklaces to count their bows and meditate.

Before doing the bows, one of the translators came over and told me what we were about to do. Just before we started she told me, "This is going to really hurt you." All I could do was laugh.

My muscles were fine, but pressure on my knees and ankles was intense.

Around 9pm, the guys headed for our sleeping quarters. There were mats and pillows. I had some time to write before going to sleep, but decided against staying up too late.

We woke up at 3am. Monks at Beomeosa wake up at 3am every day.

A gong sounded in the distance. We walked to a two-story pavilion where three monks stood next to a drum the size of a suburban. That is the biggest drum I have every seen. It hung sideways from the second story of the building. When the gong stopped, the monks began hitting different wooden blocks and bells around the pavilion. Then, one started hitting on the mondo-drum. They each took turns playing their own unique beats, never letting the baton of the beat stop when changing. This song was about twenty minutes long and by far the coolest alarm clock I have ever witnessed. As I stood there, I was blown away by the fact that people have been waking up this way in that place for more than one thousand years. People are amazing.

They finished with a calming, not exaggerated, finale. I really wanted to clap. But, we were instructed that no one talks until after breakfast.

We headed for our building among the dozens in the Beomeosa complex. For the next ~2 hours, we meditated. The monk gave us some very interesting questions to guide our minds, but for the most part, we sat and thought, or didn't think.

This was one of my favorite parts of the experience.

Breakfast was the same delicious food as dinner. We were recharged and the sun was finally out. The rain had stopped and so we went on a hike up the mountain to a smaller temple that overlooks the entire city of Busan. This temple had a sunroom where we meditated in one of the most beautiful places I've seen here.

We ended our time over two different kinds of green tea with a woman monk. She taught us about the intricacies of making the best tea in the world. We had a freshly picked green tea and a fermented green tea.

Throughout my time there, I spent most of it to myself. The monks and some of the volunteers were very curious about what I believe. They were very gracious and interested in Christianity. The monk actually talked about Jesus quite a few different times throughout the weekend. This curiosity and acceptance is something that I thoroughly appreciate and value.