Last Friday, Jon, Becky and I took a late-night bus down to Daegu to go on a Temple Stay at Haeinsa Temple.
After our arrival, we went love motel scouting and stumbled upon the Shangrila Love Motel. It was wonderfully kitschy and served our needs pretty well.
The next morning, we got up early and hopped on a bus toward Haeinsa. The ride took an hour and a half and was on super windy roads, so I ended up feeling a bit ill from trying to read.
The hike up to the mountain was very pretty and crowded with the Koreans in their hiking gear.
Smoky the Bear says, "Don't start the 산불."
It was a lovely fall day! These things house the remains of dead monks.
This bridge was a Photo Zone, so it had to be done. It was pretty. And horrifying if you looked down.
This tree stump is 1,200 years old!
Temple wall!
Our dormitory.
The Ice Buddha. This was part of a big international art festival that was going on. There were little vials that you could collect the dripping water in for good luck or something. Our monk gave me one the next day. I was very excited.
Temple views.
That night we had to go to a "special program" that was happening because of the 1,000th birthday of all of these Buddhist scripts that are housed at this temple. The "program" was mostly pretentious artsy nonsense as far as I could tell. But I got some cool pictures out of the deal.
The main Buddha Hall.
One of the cool parts: The monks walking up the stairs at a reasonable pace.
More interpretive dancing.
The monks liked it. They snapped some photos on their cell phones.
Still interpretive dancing.
Still.
Yeah still.
After the interpretive dancing, I headed to bed, since wake-up was at 2:50AM.
The temple entrance looonnng before dawn.
The morning entailed some sweet drumming, followed by bowing and chanting in the main Buddha Hall. Then the Temple Stay participants were all led off to a hall where a monk led us in the 108 daily prostrations. It was interesting this time in that the prostrations were done to an English recording, so I knew why we were prostrating. Last year on my temple stay it was just chanting in Korean so it was interesting to learn more about the practice. Then we meditated for a while but someone's cell phone went off like 15 times which was pretty funny and made it hard to focus. From the experience I learned that I dead suck at clearing my mind. Oh and that I have the skeletal integrity of like an 80-year old. My hips and knees are killing me now.
Then a monk led us on a tour of the temple.
This is the tomb of a monk who is very famous for a reason that I can't remember. It reminded me of where Dumbledore was buried in Harry Potter.
Here's our monk in front of the outer gate. The gate was all covered in plasticine art as part of the art expo.
The monk explained what all of these symbols meant, but I promptly forgot.
The path up to gate two.
Our monk in front of the mountain-goddess shrine.
The Ice Buddha was much smaller by day two. Here I am with the Ice Buddha and my Buddha water.
Lotus lanterns!!!
Roof tiles!
Temple stuff!
More!
More!
Me in one of the art installations.
We survived!
And made some new friends!
All-in-all it was a good weekend. Sure smelled better there than in Hongdae. Always a plus.
Love your blog. not because of the awesome content, but because its the only way i can keep up with ya! Btw, that split buddah was pretty rad.
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