Bowing and dish water = Buddhist temple stay

If you are ever given a choice between spending three days at a beach in Korea or spending that time at a Buddhist temple, take my advice. Go to the beach for goodness sake.

Actually, the truth is, I wouldn't have traded the experience. But if you are looking for a relaxing time, a temple stay is anything but that. Here was our typical schedule:

3:30 am (yes, you read that right)-wake up call. You are woken up by a monk outside of your room hitting a bamboo stick.
4:00 am-prayer time in the temple. A monk sings/chants while hitting the bamboo stick some more and you have to bow a few dozen times. First in one direction, then in another.
4:30 ish am-108 prostrations of repentance. I will explain this in further detail a little later. Just know that this involves bowing. 108 times.
6:00 am-breakfast. Involving a very elaborate and structured routine. Also involving drinking the dish water.
7:30ish am-chores. Which meant weeding the pathways. And dealing with Korea's interesting insect life. And HOT SUN.
(this next time period was filled with either a break on the first day or dying fabric to make a handkerchief the next day)
noon-lunch. Monks are vegetarian. I was always hungry during this period because all I ate were vegetables. Although I did get some fruit which was nice!
(this time frame is a little hazy as I had already been up for nine hours. But one day I think we went for a hike/swim (WITH MONKS) during this time. Another day we finished making our handkerchiefs (who knew sewing a square would be so difficult for so many people!). And we also watched a ceremony celebrating ancestors/became an attraction for all visiting Korean elderly women at the temple during this time.)
late afternoonish (I told you things got a little hazy. don't ask for specifics here)-more prayer. more bowing.
eveningish-dinner. (these last two things could have been swapped in order. Or maybe there was prayer before AND after dinner. I have no idea).
9:00 lights out. Literally turned out by the monks. And all 20 of us ladies slept on the ground in one room. Next morning at 3:30 am, repeat.

The monks were amazing. They were so cute and had a great sense of humor and are just really lovely people. They were constantly taking photos of us and I'm pretty sure they'd never had this many whiteys at their temple at once before because they were all so fascinated!

We had to wear these lovely monk-y outfits. Which included some brown genie pants and a matching brown vest. I put on the first one I grabbed, which happened to be an extra large. And the pants were long enough if I sagged em a lot. Our translator, Zoe (her English name), told me after that the lady in charge of us was worried when she saw me that they wouldn't have anything to fit me. Welcome to my life. Anyway, it worked. She should have been more worried about Jose, who is 6'3" and almost 300 pounds (and is the one responsible for dislocating my shoulder, even if it was in no way his fault). I think he and I were wearing the same size outfit....something is not right about that.

Remember those 108 prostrations I mentioned? I'm sure you are dying to hear more about that. The point of this bowing is to clear your mind of all the 108 evils that can be there. Each bow is done in repentance of an evil, in gratitude for something, or as a vow of some sort. To see all 108 of these, go here. Some of them seem kind of silly ("I prostrate in repentance for having thought that only what I smelled/tasted/felt was right."). Others really make you think (especially because I didn't know what "avarice" meant and had to look it up-apparently it means "extreme greed"). Now, before you go and think that all we did was bow from the waist and listen to these words of repentance being spoken to us by a man's voice from a CD, I should explain the bowing process. You start on your feet, with your feet together. You then get down on your knees and sit on your heels. Then your hands go to the ground and your forehead touches the ground. Then you have to stand back up. Without using your hands. So you rest on your toes and your knees, then push yourself up to standing. Now repeat this 108 times. Right now, I dare you. Needless to say, I have sore quads. Then we had to sit and "meditate" for 20-45 minutes (depending on which monk was in charge...), which mostly consisted of me fidgeting like crazy because 1) my legs were tired from 108 bows and 2) I am incapable of sitting still for more than two minutes.

Anyway, the bowing ceremony was actually really cool. For each "repentance" that we bowed for, I turned it into a prayer for whatever it was. Praying for forgiveness for selfishness or lack of compassion, for help in using only kind words and for being aware of the beauty that surrounds me every day, to vow to never regress in practice (although they meant practice of Buddhism, I turned it into practice of my faith in Christ!). So after 108 quick prayers and 108 squats, I was feeling pretty good! Until the meditation time, as mentioned before.

I should mention, Buddhists do not believe in a god, technically. So the bowing in this religion is not done in worship of anything, it is done to clear the mind. They are all about awareness of every moment, so they want their minds to be clear of any thoughts not pertaining to the present moment. So they bow to focus and to remind themselves that they are wanting to attain the status of Buddha, or of complete enlightenment and happiness. An interesting concept, and while I do think that it is good to try to focus on the current moment and to clear your mind of any unnecessary, unhealthy, or impure thoughts, I'm not sure that bowing repeatedly is the only way to do that (although it is hard to think of anything else while you are doing that!)

Breakfast is an interesting ritual here at the Seonamsa Temple. First, you get a set of four bowls which are all tied up nicely with napkins and other cloth...things. Then you have to untie them, put the napkin on your right, the utensils on top of that, the towel on top of those, then the ribbon-y thing on top of everything else. Then you unfold the place mat and put the bowls on the bottom left corner. You then remove the smallest bowl from inside the big bowl and place it above the big bowl on the placemat. Then the next bowl goes on the bottom right. The last bowl goes on the top right and the spoon and chopsticks go in that. Sound confusing? Just you wait. And remember that this is happening at 6 am after you've already been awake for a few hours. Okay, now you've got your "table" (you are sitting on a cushion on the ground-no table involved) set. Then someone comes along and ceremoniously pours hot water into the biggest bowl. You have to move your bowl from side to side to tell the pourer when you have enough water. (Note: do this quickly or else you will have a lot of water. You will see later why this is bad). Next comes the food. Someone serves you some rice, then some soup broth. Then a tray comes and you can serve your own kimchi, seaweed sheets, soup and radishes (everyone must take at least one radish and save it until the end to clean with. Just go with me on this.). Then you eat. And you have to eat at a good pace-too quickly and you will look like a pig and too slowly and you will have too much food left over when its cleaning time. Next is cleaning time. After eating every single tiny crumb you can scrape up (with chopsticks...this is no easy task), you are served some rice water in the largest bowl. Again, move the bowl from side to side quickly so you don't have too much water. Then you plop the radish in the water and scrape the bowl with it to clean it. Who knew pickled radish was so handy! After scraping up all the food particles in one bowl, you pour the hot rice water and radish into the next bowl. Rinse and repeat. After all four bowls are cleaned, you will most likely have some food particles floating around. Because this rice is STICKY and leaves residue no matter how much you try to scrape it off. Next up you drink the rice water. With all food particles in it. Then, remember the water you were first served before getting food? That goes in the largest bowl next. More scraping with the radish. At this point, all the food should be gone because you should have drank it down with the rice water. But occasionally it doesn't all get cleaned. Or you don't drink it fast enough and so the particles stick to the side of the bowl after you've drank the rice water. If you have no food left in your bowl, you just get to dump the water into a bucket. If you DO have food particles left (and I mean PARTICLES. Like, little floating specs of....gummy rice residue), you also have to drink THAT water. And if your group has food left in the bucket after pouring your water out, because they didn't drink it like they were supposed to, then the water gets shared among all those in your group. Done? Now wipe down your bowl and put it back on the shelf. No actual dish washing occurs here. Alright, now breakfast is done! Time for chores....!

There were a lot of mosquitoes there. And no air conditioning. And you eat on the floor. And sleep on the floor. And do everything else sitting on the floor. And take communal showers, only one of which has hot water. And WAKE UP AT 3:30 AM. But it was an experience I wouldn't have traded! One thing that I really came away with was realizing how much dedication most religions require of their followers. Getting up super early, bowing, prayer rituals...many religions have these kinds of things as requirements. It just made me realize that as Christians we can easily become lazy followers. Go to church when we feel like it, pray when we need to, maybe wear a cross around our necks or carry a Bible in our cars. All these things are good, don't get me wrong. But why can't we be as dedicated as followers of other religions? Why can't I make it a point to pray and repent daily? To spend as much time reading my Bible as a monk does bowing every day (it only took about 25 minutes to do the 108 prostrations)? The Buddhist people have some great practices and wonderful attitudes. I may not believe what they do or agree with their ideas of heaven/hell/life/God, but I can still come away from this experience inspired and motivated to become a Christian with maybe a bit of a Buddhist attitude. Work at it, spend time devoted to my faith and not just be a lazy follower of Jesus. Also I will make it a goal to repent "to all sentient beings that I have harmed or killed for entertainment or pleasure." (Tell that to the dragonflies in your fans and the mosquitoes and flies on your bug tape, MONKS.).


I will add a "photo blog" post of this trip soon. Once I get the photos on my computer....which may take a while as the new group of kids arrived today (yikes!) and I have a class now (yay!) which means I will be crazy busy wrangling the "Tranformer"s and "Hot Dog"s and "Soap"s of my class!