Geumsunsa Temple Stay: The Weekend I Decided to Become a Buddhist... until 2.30 on Sunday Afternoon When I had my First Wine.

Doing a Temple Stay has been on my 'Korea Bucket List' for a long while now, and I finally got around to ticking it off my list when I visited Seoul's Geumsunsa Temple last weekend. Although 4.30 am wake up calls, all vegetarian meals, and 108 bows of repentance for our many and various sins may not be everybody's cup of tea (literally, as there was a tea ceremony on Sunday morning), I loved it and would count it among my best and most interesting weekends in Korea.
On arrival at the temple we were greeted by our lovely English speaking guide Moon-yum, who showed us to our room and fitted us out with our very stylish Buddhist Monk style PJ's as modeled in the pictures above. I got lumbered with the men's ones on account of my lankiness, where as Lucy some got nice pink ones, worst luck.
After we settled in a bit we were given our initiation into the Buddhist world by being taught how to do the three bows: first bow for the Buddha, second bow for Buddha's teachings, and third bow for Buddha's legacy and all the teacher's who have passed down his teaching's throughout the generations.

 The cool thing about Buddhism is that there is no 'god' as such, but just a man who foundered the religion after observing and learning from the patterns and rules of nature. This is symbolized by the center Buddha statue, who is called 'Cosmic Buddha', in other words the Buddha of the Earth.




The Cosmic Buddha's hand gesture, the left hand wrapped around the right index finger, is supposed to symbolize how everything in the world is interconnected, although where I come from it symbolizes a very different type of connection...
Anyway, after easing us in gently with a guided tour and a vegetarian dinner, we started the climb of 108 steps up to the main temple to do our 108 bows of repentance. 108 is a special number in Buddhism as they believe this is how many feelings we have.  This number is reached by multiplying the senses (smell, touch, taste, hearing, sight, and consciousness) by whether they are painful, pleasant or neutral, and then again by whether these are internally generated or externally occurring, and yet again by past, present and future. 6 × 3 × 2 × 3 = 108. As we were walking up the steps Moon-yum explained to us we weren't doing the bows for the Buddha but for ourselves, to let go of all the bad feelings and thoughts we had and to empty our minds. I found the idea of a religion that focuses on looking after yourself and not focusing all your attention on some all-seeing, all-knowing idol pretty refreshing and interesting , that was until I heard the story of his birth...
So apparently 10 months after his mother dreamt that a white elephant with six tusks entered her right side, Siddhārtha Gautama (the first Buddha), was born through her right armpit -_-  Really? Her armpit? I think any other part of her anatomy would have been less ridiculous. But no, the founder of one of the most practiced religions in the world was born though an armpit. But as our guide reminded us, it is just a story after all, and no more ridiculous than Jesus feeding the 5000 with a few loaves and fish when you think about it. Not that that really helps...

After completing our bows, we joined the rest of the group for the evening chant and meditation. Two monks led the chant, which we were supposed to chant a-long to (I failed and just stood looking awkward and confused instead), but combined with the brilliantly decorated walls of the temple, the smell of burning incense and the dimly lit lanterns up above, the atmosphere was really quite surreal and beautiful. 

Standing before the start of the Evening Chant

Three types of meditation: walking meditation.

Sitting meditation.

Laying down meditation.

After the meditation we all headed off to our shared dorm room for a very early bedtime of 9.30pm. Our beds were made up of a mat, blanket and pillow on the floor but after all that bowing, chanting and meditation it wasn't difficult to fall asleep.

The next morning we woke up at 4.30am, which was surprisingly easy despite the lack of coffee in my system, and headed back to the main temple for the Morning Chant and a bit of yoga. One of the yoga activities was a 'move your body freely however you feel like moving it- just go as the music takes you- there's no wrong or right way' kind of thing. The monk leading the class was shaking her body all over the place and looked quite perplexed when, as I didn't feel like moving my body freely in front of a bunch of random Korean women,  I just shuffled awkwardly from one foot to the other, haha. 
After this embarrassing, but surprisingly enjoyable ordeal was over, it was time for the Ceremonial breakfast. As Buddhist's believe is saving resources, even our own energy, we were told to eat as 'cleanly' as possible so that the bowls were easy to clean. After swilling all of our dirty bowls with rice water to get rid of any food residue, we then had to drink the rice water with the bits of food in it. Some the Korean housewives found it quite disturbing, but it actually didn't really bother me at all. We then swilled the bowls out with clean water, which we were told were for the 'hungry ghost' whose throat is as thin as the eye of a needle (I'm afraid I think this story belongs along side the one about the arm-pit birth). So if anything even as small as a grain of rice is in the water, the monks have to drink all of it, to save the 'hungry ghost' from choking. 

We finished off a very enjoyable stay with a steady hike around the surrounding mountains, which was made even more lovely by the beautiful autumn scenery. Overall it was a great experience, which I would recommend to anybody providing they are willing to go there with an open mind, and step out of their comfort zone a bit.