Jin-soon and I trained it to Sooncheon, in southwest Korea. From there we took an old bus (with matching driver) to Songgwangsa, one of the three principal monasteries in Korea.
They offer people the chance to stay at the monastery and live with the life of a monk for anywhere from 1–7 days. After almost five hours of traveling, we finally arrived at the temple. Jin-soon took me on a careful tour of the temple grounds, the many buildings, pagodas, and artifacts. This is Jin-soon's favorite temple in the world. I was honored when it dawned on me that she was showing me around her most sacred place.
After our self-guided tour, Jin-soon asked a large and friendly monk if we could stay the night and join the evening and morning ceremonies. He agreed without hesitation and assigned us our rooms. I shared a small, empty room with four other temple male visitors, all Korean.
It had been a long journey to get to the temple and by now we were quite hungry. The only food we brought with us was an orange and some Green World sprouted wheat crackers. We looked at the activity schedule posted outside of our rooms only to discover that we were too late for dinner. Just as our moans of disappointment tapered, to our surprise the dinner bell rang. For some reason the schedule was changed for this particular time of year.
We shuffled happily into the temple dining hall and each grabbed a simple, white bowl, chopsticks and a spoon. We filled our bowls with aromatic rice porridge, a sour and orange-colored kimchi, marinated mushrooms and assorted stringy vegetables seasoned in sesame oil. Having filled our bowls, we sat in folding chairs at a long table with the other temple visitors. Although I had become very accustomed to Korean food, there was little to choose from in the Buddhist buffet and I was nervous--if it was disgusting I may starve for the next 24 hours.
Cautiously, I tasted a small spoonful of rice porridge. It was exquisite! And with that I dove into my meal eagerly. Maybe it was because I was tired, maybe it was because I hadn't eaten all day, but I soon discovered that this was one of those meals where every bite was thoroughly and completely satisfying. I couldn't help eating slowly and deliberately. I twirled my chopsticks in the air as I chewed, unconsciously conducting the sonata of simple culinary perfection in my mouth. We ate in silence, though inside I was moaning with throes of primal pleasure.
I took my last bite and looked at Jin-soon who had been patiently waiting for me to finish my sonata. I felt a little sheepish but the content look on her face comforted me. We picked up our bowls and walked down steep concrete stairs to the kitchen to wash our dishes. Downstairs, were young monks in tight rubber aprons wrapped around their grey robes. They were contentedly and energetically sloshing dirty dinner dishes into suds and water. We washed our own dishes and utensils, bowed to the monks and mounted the stairs again. As we stepped out of the kitchen, I looked to Jin-soon and confessed, " O.K. That meal alone was worth the train and bus ride."
The meal was free along with the stay at the temple. However, they do appreciate an unspecified donation.
We were enjoying the evening sun as we walked in the court yard and talked about Zen poetry. Jin-soon showed me a mural painted on the outside of a building. It was a colorful picture of men stirring gaunt, weak "sinners" in a giant cauldron. Jin-soon told me, to my surprise, that like Christians, Buddhists believe in hell, too. It is the penitence necessary before you come back reincarnated.
As we were talking about the mural, we couldn't avoid noticing a monk who was walking in our direction. Even from a distance, it was easy to see that he was not Korean. We approached him and his thin, pale face met us with a large, toothy smile. We bowed and he began easy conversation with Jin-soon in flawless Korean. Noticing my silent, stupid smile, he switched languages and spoke in English with a smooth British accent. He could only speak with us for a moment but asked us if we would like to meet for tea after the evening ceremony. Delighted, we agreed to meet in front of the visitor's lodging building.
The sun had just ducked behind the mountain trees and painted the thin clouds a golden peach. Soon, monks emerged from all corners of the monastery and formed long lines as they quietly walked to the Great Hall. Meanwhile, a small corps of monks, perched in a large open tower, evoked the end of day by beating on the one end an enormous Dragon drum. As they pounded complex rhythms on the drum, their loose grey robes furled like a flag as their arms blurred around the gigantic drum.
The monks finished their final cadence on the drum, and switched to ringing the bell, a 10 foot tall, 15 ton, ornate bronze cup turned upside down and held by the mouth of a dragon. One monk pulled a large log suspended on both ends by two thick chains and swung it a few times to the side of the bell to gain momentum. Then with all his strength, he swung back the log and threw it against the bell, blasting out a loud, long gong that sang for a full ten seconds before it began a slow diminuendo and rested as a low hum. After thirty seconds or so, the monk wielding the log had built up enough momentum for another strike and with the bell still humming, he rang it again sending another blast echoing off the temple buildings and into the surrounding mountain air.
Jin-soon and I followed the last monks into the Great Hall, where we were each issued a long, well-used prayer mat, and laid them in the only open space on the rough, wooden floor. We bowed three times toward the Buddha and remained kneeling in silence, our hands in prayer. A singular monk began to chant a low and lonely melody. Outside, I heard a humble stream that bubbled and churned, adding a playful descant on top of the monks textured riff. Then, as my mind was fully absorbed by the delicate counterpoint between the stream and the monk, to my surprise, 150 monks suddenly and simultaneously burst into a loud and deep refrain. Without thinking, I found myself singing along. My voice was drowned in the sea of monks and I could barely hear my own sound, but I could feel my chest and throat vibrate. It felt like strumming an acoustic guitar against my chest and feeling it resonate. I couldn't follow the words to the chant so I sang my own words. My own prayer: "Thank you. . . thank you for my family and friends who bless my life immeasurably . . .thank you for making my life holy."
Outside, thirty meters away, the bell tolled again and I could feel the hum vibrate through the wood floor (suspended from the ground by poles). It vibrated my legs the way my chest and throat were vibrating. Om.
As the monks sang, I closed my eyes and heard fifths, minor thirds, sevenths, bended notes, half tones, natural harmonics. It was hearing the ancient asian pentatonic, modal scale, music before it was influenced by the west. As I listened to the monks, I heard black slaves in work fields. I heard the blues. I heard soul. Later, Jin-soon told me that the chanting temple is called Han, meaning melancholy or blue.
Following the evening service, we met with the English monk, Hey-am (meaning ocean eye) who invited us to a small room, his master's personal chamber, where we sat on the floor and drank tea from a delicate Korean tea set. Hey-am was serious and spoke with Jin-soon most of the hour and a half we spent with him. He spoke most of the time and he spoke most of the time in Korean. He talked about touching the soul through meditation.
The clock struck the ripe hour of nine o' clock and we were off to bed. Before both feet had even touched the floor, I could feel, true to form, that this Korean room was much, much too hot for peaceful sleeping. My mind raced as I worried about spontaneous combustion. My spontaneous combustion. The other four men sharing the room had kindly lain out a spot for me. I took my place and the lights went off.
The snoring began two minutes later. The old man on my right was a beach cave— deafening echoes of the deluge rushing in and out with every breath. It had only been 10 minutes and the heat had already covered me in a thin layer of hot sweat. I turned onto my other side only to encounter a classical hisser-and-sucker, not a lot of nasal reverberations like Cave, just really loud air passing between his teeth with every inhale and exhale. I thought, "If only I had some balloons, an air mattress, or maybe a trumpet, I could have put him to some use."
Needless to say, I didn't sleep that night. I rested though, and all night I thought of snoring metaphors.
So at 3:00 am (yes, 3:00 … I pause for effect … AM) when the monks came around clicking their wooden fish bells, rousing us for the morning ceremony, I was more than eager to leave the sweaty, hissing, beach cave. I didn't realize that I'd actually have the chance to experience Buddhist hell. "Wow, they really give you the full experience, here." I grabbed my sweatshirt, put in my contacts and left.
I breathed in the cool, early morning air. The same monks were again perched in the tower taking turns waking up the earth, people, fishes, and birds by drumming on various drums and bells. We followed the monks inside the Great Hall and began a ceremony very similar to the one we experienced the night before. But this time, it was dark outside. I looked through the door and in the distance, I could see the, black silhouette of a monk in a separate temple as perfect as if someone had drawn his outline in the window.
In Zen Buddhism there are 108 different forms of suffering. Therefore, to pray for those who suffer, one offers to Buddha the submission of 108 bows. This is accomplished by kneeling to the ground from a standing position, crossing the left foot over the right, butt close to the ankles, hands close to the face, palms down, and lowering the forehead to the mat at which point one turns the hand palms up, lifting them a few inches off the ground, returning the palms face down on the mat, then with the hands together in prayer, standing up to a full standing position … 108 times.
In a row.
Without stopping.
I wonder if intense quadriceps pain is listed uniquely among the 108 as one of the forms of suffering. Truth be told, I lost count after about two bows and actually just felt the pain and submitted to a spirit of sacrifice and offering. I felt very moved. More bows, 500, 1000 and sometimes even as much as 3000 bows, might accompany some ceremonies.
Having bowed, chanted, and sung, I was feeling quite lucid. Everyone filed out of the Great Hall except Jin-soon and I who took our mats to the center of the hall and began to meditate in the morning silence. The monks closed the doors and turned off all but one or two small lights illuminating the giant Buddhas in the center of the shrine. I closed my eyes and began to search inside myself, to meditate. I wanted to experience, to some small degree, the seemingly elusive Zen that Hey-am had talked about. I went deeper and deeper into my core, into my ha dan jun, into that white space, that part of me that never ages, but still feels pain, sometimes. I peeled away layers of emotion and intellect and tried to feel whatever it is inside. My spirit. I released my worries, my ego, my sarcasm, my habits, my intellect, my opinions and just was. I was just present to the second I was resting in and aware of what I was doing. Each second was an hour. I noticed how my body felt. I concentrated on the peace inside me. It felt good. I became more focused. Honed. I was experiencing the meditation that I have been cultivating during almost six months of Kouk Son Do practice, meditation which was coming to a small fruition at that moment. And I went deeper. I prayed.
Eventually we got up and stacked our mats neatly stacked beside the door and left. We walked to the kitchen and asked the monks if we could help prepare food for breakfast. Happy for our service, the monks immediately put us to work separating a large plastic vat of mushrooms, ginger, and sea vegetables. Then with large kitchen scissors, we removed the stems from rubbery mushrooms. As I sat snipping the stems off mushrooms, I listened to the kitchen monks chant as they sweated and stirred black cauldrons of boiling rice. I got that lucky feeling I do when I'm experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime moment.
We finished our kitchen help and still had an hour before the 7:00 am breakfast bell rang, so we headed up into the mountains to do some Kouk Son Do. The pre-sun morning sky was grey like the monks robes. They say that the grey represents all of the colors mixed into one.
Breakfast. I recognized some of my mushrooms. It was a beautiful sequel to dinner the night before.
After breakfast, we met Hey-am again for more tea. This time, he was speaking to me. As he poured me another cup of tea, he looked at me with a cheeky smile and said, "Korean Buddhism is funky as hell. " He told me stories about a few monks who drink, have sex, and watch Korean soap operas, but who are still as “woke” as any other monk. "There's no one watching over your shoulder. It's personal." It was good to talk to a human this time, and not just the robes of a monk. I asked, "Don't you ever get the urge to put on a Stones record?" Another smile. "Sure. And I do."
Check out the second installment of this story tomorrow . . .