Temple Stay

Halloween was a blast! My school loved my witch costume and some of the other teachers enjoyed dressing up, too.

My co-teacher Byeong Su dressed up! A first for him...

We "studied" Halloween at our Teachers' English class. They all wanted to wear costumes, too!4th Grade Teachers: Ok Sun, Se Eum, Kee Jeung (my co-teacher) and Hyo Ju.

Our scary 3rd graders...

After the Halloween festivities Friday night (involving 1 bar, live music, and WAY too many foreigners), I went to Gimnyeong Beach for an overnight Seon Buddhist Temple Stay. There were 10 of us plus the Seon Master Monk and Young Ja, our coordinator. We started with a tour of the temple. This is the older of the two Temple Buildings.

The Buddha Statue in the new Temple:

This Pagoda houses the bell which we each got to ring at 4am on Sunday.

This is a beautiful picture of Sunim (the title of Monk in Korean) showing us around the grounds. She doesn't speak any English so Young Ja (above) acted as translator.

The food is always delicious here! Korean Buddhists are vegetarian and eat very traditional Korean food. We ate dinner and breakfast at these tables. For lunch on Sunday we got to use Bal-U bowls which are traditional bowls that monks use. It is quite a ceremonial way to eat. Each movement is deliberate and conscious and the meal is eaten in complete silence.

Bal-U Bowls:

Saturday night we had a ceremony after dinner. We did the traditional 108 bows following Sunim's beat of the Juk-be, a wooden mallet she would strike in her hand for each bow.

We made traditional Korean Lotus lanterns and processed through the grounds with them lit. It was a beautiful, clear night. From the left: Ruzena, Sunim, Maya, Young Ja, Alex, Shanna, Alex, Me, Cindy, and Julia. The little girl was there for the whole weekend but I don't remember her name!

One of our many tea ceremonies:
Sunday we awoke at 3:30 for the 4am ceremony. Well, none of us slept because of the mosquitoes. Yes, mosquitoes in November. I'm still getting bit every day! But we got up at 3:30 to ring the bell and participate in the morning service. Then we walked to Gimnyeong Beach, but we were too early for sunrise! Breakfast was at 6:30am...rice porridge with soy sauce, dried Kim (seaweed), Kimchi, Eggplant, and a few other side dishes. I didn't think my stomach could handle Kimchi at 6:30am, but I was hungry enough to deal with it. Sunday's big activity was copying the Heart Sutra. Young Ja made us copies of the 276 Chinese characters that make up one of the founding sutras of Buddhism. We did one bow (drop to your knees, forehead to the floor, lift the hands) and traced one character, then got up (rock back on your toes, hands to your heart, stand up straight) for all 276 characters. It took us about an hour and a half and we were all sweaty and exhausted, but it was really meditative and surprisingly calming.

The Temple stay was a wonderful experience. Sunim left Monday to go on a winter retreat, then she'll be back at her home Temple in the mainland in the spring. We are planning a visit to see her.