There are several reasons why I'm only going to write about one of the past 27 blogfree days.
1. I forget most of what happened 27 days ago.
2. I don't like writing brief descriptions of dozens of events.
3. I need to save some stories to tell when I get home.
4. I leave for Japan tomorrow and simply don't have enough time.
Some things you should know before reading on; I'm on vacation from school till mid-July and my Mom and Stepfather, Steve, braved a long flight to come visit for 10 days.
Templestay
This is something I had been wanting to do since I got here. The gist is this: You go to a monastery and live with monks for a day; participating in their customs, wearing their robes, eating their food and attending their services to get a better idea of what Korean Buddhism is all about. I have several friends here who have done a templestay, and I thought it could be a cool way for Mom and Steve to see a traditional side of Korea that most Koreans don't even get to experience.
It was all and wasn't at all what I expected.
That is to say, everything looked like I imagined, but the procedure was not at all what I had predicted.
A monk met us at the main temple, and drove us in his SUV up into the mountains on a tiny gravelly road until we reached the hermitage where we would be staying. Our room was once the home of the great Zen Master Choui (pronounced Chewy) who is responsible for reviving the traditional tea ceremony in Korea.
We were then sent for tea with the monk who would be our guide for the next 24 hours. His name is Moo In, and his English is workable thanks to a 6 month stay at a Korean Buddhist temple in, of all places, Chicago.
There's some sort of distance dependant exponential reaction that seems to occur when it's discovered that two people have been to the same place.
Examples:
If I'm in Chicago, and I tell a Chicagoan that I'm from Chicago; zero reaction.
If I'm in Korea, and I tell Moo In that I'm from Chicago; instant friends.
Moo In told us a bit of the history of this particular hermitage as we shared what must have been 8 rounds of tea. Near the end of our talk, a cell phone started ringing. I did a quick mental check; my phone is always on vibrate, and Mom and Steve obviously did not have phones. That left Moo In.
He picked up something I had not noticed before from the table, an ultra thin Samsung touchscreen cell phone, and chuckled slightly before answering in his best American accent, over exaggerating the upwards intonation, "Hello?".
Noticing that we were all staring at his phone, he showed it off when he finished the call. He pulled out what at first appeared to be a stylus but which turned out to be an antenna that he screwed into the phone, and started surfing through TV channels. He was very proud.
After tea, we hopped in his SUV and slid down the mountain to the main temple for dinner. I had heard rumors about the eating ceremony of monks. It involves placing napkins in specific locations, 3 bowls placed in certain orders, complete silence, and most importantly, eating absolutely everything in your bowl.
Our dinner wasn't ceremonial.
Moo In led us into the monks' dining hall. We grabbed a bowl, and selected what we wanted from what can best be described as a buffet.
The food was delicious, but I was rather looking forward to participating in the elaborate dinning experience. Every expectation I had about dinner was broken except for one. After the meal was finished, Moo In poured water into his bowl, scraped it clean with his spoon, and drank the leftover soup, leaving the bowl totally clean, with no food wasted. I followed suit.
After dinner, Moo In performed the evening drum chant, where he banged on a massive 6 foot diameter drum head for at least 20 minutes, varying the rhythm slightly so that the pattern evolved from a constant steady beat to a series of rim shots and high and low pitched hits. The performance was so strenuous that a different monk came up and seamlessly took over for several minutes while Moo In recovered his strength, and then seamlessly took over the drumming again.
We were then taken to the main temple, where we were given a printout of a chant and followed along, bowing to each of the 3 Buddha statues in the room.
Back in the car we set off in complete darkness back to our hermitage. It was one of the most frightening car rides I have ever experienced.
The first ride up to our new home was wild, but that was in daylight. At night, it was somehow accentuated that we were crawling up the side of a mountain on a half dirt, half loose rock and gravel road, with a very.... very steep drop off.
Moo In, having likely made this trek hundreds of times, has it all figured out. At one point, the road makes a 170 degree hairpin turn before suddenly elevating to an approximately 45 degree incline. Right before the turn, he stops the car, turns the wheel almost as far as it'll go..... and floors it. Gravel spits up, and one tree in particular always comes so close to contact, it would smash any fly unfortunate enough to have landed on the side of the car.
For the first half of the ride up, he had his GPS on, showing that no, we are not in fact on a road recognizable in the database. For the second half of the ride, he showed off that the GPS screen could also double as a TV screen, and piped in the news.
Safe and sound at the top, we had 5 more rounds of tea before heading off to bed early at 9. All monks wake up to a bell that rings at 3:30 to perform pre-dawn ceremonies, but we were told we would be woken up at 5:30. He translated the chant that accompanies the bell toll to English, emulating a it by singing in monotone, "Listen.... to the sound..... of the bell.....".
In the morning, after waking up to thick fog in the valley below, we rode yet again down to the temple for an equally unceremonious breakfast, followed by a long relaxing walk around the temple grounds. As we walked to the entrance of the temple, Moo In got excited. We were coming up to what, he was sure, was the most famous coffee dispensing machine for miles. He explained how much the 40 monks in the temple love the machine, and sure enough there were several other monks hanging around getting their caffeine fix. For 300 Won a piece, we each bought coffees that came with a little stirring straw in them, which was apparently what made the machine so famous.
We came across a pyro monk on a bridge who had caught his finished coffee cup on fire, and was using that to ignite some fallen pine sticks. When he noticed us, he brushed it all into the stream below and laughed guiltily.
Back at our hermitage, we packed up and had our last tea time. Moo In started singing the bell chant again, "Listen.... to the sound.... of the...", but instead of finishing with "bell" he ripped a massive fart and started laughing hysterically. It was great.
It was, in the end, a fantastic experience. I had hoped to see the traditional lives of monks, but instead witnessed the true lives of modern Buddhist monks; cell phones, fart jokes, SUVs, and caffeine addiction.
There is no doubt that I will make time in the future for tea with Moo In, Zen Master.
