Where do monks learn to drive?

By coincidence, I followed up my metropolitan whirl with something close to Korea's other extreme: a templestay. Monday, some friends and I spent a couple hours on a couple buses to head due east to Golgulsa Temple to check out the Buddhist way of life. Twenty-four hours of meditation, martial arts, yoga, vegetarian meals, hiking, chanting, and way more floor-sitting than my body's equipped to gracefully do at the moment. All this in a pristine mountainside temple dating to the 6th century. Pretty amazing.

We almost got on the wrong bus to Gyeong-ju (yes, it's a theme - part being a unknowing foreigner, part just being myself in any country) but managed to get thing straightened out before actually boarding. From Gyeong-ju, the directions say to take a city bus another 40 minutes to a certain stop - but if you're going, best enlist a local's help. The bus announcement for the place is decidedly different, they don't stop unless you ask, and you'll never see the stop marked on the road. If you successfully make it off the bus (we were only 50 meters or so past the place when the bus screeched to a halt as our helper shouted down the driver), you'll find yourself in the middle of the country at a random road with no clear signs for this historic spot, your only directions to "walk 15 minutes."

Those were 15 long minutes, lemme tell ya, trudging single-file along the road (which we hoped was the right direction), past fields and a small town and countryfolk giving us quizzical stares. But we finally spotted some signs for the temple (only in Korean though ... the temple's tourist-friendly reach is pretty much confined to its grounds) and knew we had arrived.

Despite the lack of worldly announcement, the temple is quite a grand place - maybe a couple dozen buildings ancient and new scattered along a gorgeous and quite vertical mountainside. I'd guess there were maybe 25 monks and monks-in-training in residence (a couple of them Western) plus a handful of Western twenty-somethings living there in a two-year training course for sunmudo - a form of martial arts. Monk fashion includes natural-dyed grey and brown robes, shaved heads and accessories of simple glasses and watches. The sunmudo trainees wear a certain loose-fitting pant and regular T-shirts. Then there were maybe 20 of us there for the templestay, and upon arriving, we were given orange vests - kind of like a Buddhist take on prison garb.

The templestay program goes on daily, with visitors staying anywhere from hours to days, and the schedule changing a bit from day to day. The time is basically broken into regular strenuous or culturally interesting activities separated by fairly long stretches of free time to rest, hike, meditate or just contemplate the beautiful surrounds. here typically is a service element to every day - cleaning or weeding or building, for example - but I think that since we were there for Chusok, the schedule was devoted more to holiday ceremonies instead.

In the evening we ate dinner a la Korean Buddhist custom - men and women sitting separately, quietly. Nothing can be thrown out, but you can get seconds. I definitely don't have a handle on the Buddhist approach to food, however: According to Buddhism, you're supposed to focus on your food and be grateful for it, yet eat for sustenance rather than pleasure. As everything's vegetarian and simple, yet fresh and delicious - it was some of the best Korean food I've eaten, and I had a hard time with the not-enjoying-it-too-much concept. I definitely could stand to eat less food mindlessly, but I think that tenant alone could keep me from converting - not to mention the whole Buddha business - the world is just too full of delicious things to savor.

After dinner was an couple hours of chanting (always accompanied by plenty of full-bodied bowing), a brief meditation (as in sitting straight-backed in the lotus-position, hands encircled in front of your navel, eyes closed, "ohm"ing and hissing), sunmudo training (ouch, ouch and double-ouch - those monks are amazingly fit people) and a demonstration of traditional Korean dance by a local university professor. This was all supposed to be an outdoor moonlit ceremony to observe the holiday, but drizzly weather unfortunately moved it indoors. Then to bed to prepare for an early morning - the men were divided into a few rooms and women all shared a large common room, everyone sleeping Korean style (with mats on the floor), but the mats here were more like a folded-over blanket.

Korean Buddhists believe that the karmatic power of the universe begins to awaken around 4 a.m. and that the morning is a particularly potent time for reflection, so chanting and meditation was slated for 5 a.m. Apparently some of the Korean women in our room believe that 4 a.m. is a particularly potent time for fixing their hair, because they started rustling around 3:45. Not having a clock at my bedside, I was up and dressed before I realized the hour, so I slipped out into the dark for a quiet starlit stroll, or so I thought.

Unfortunately one of the many temple dogs - kept to ward off evil spirits - apparently decided I was a demon on the loose, and the two of us managed to rouse an even larger crowd. A sleepy-eyed German (or something like that) emerged on the scene of me standing petrified in front of the snarling mutt, and we had a most delightful conversation something like this:

(German speaks to dog, who lowers volume of growl.)
Me: I'm sorry! I just wanted to take a walk.
German: Don't be afraid! She senses your fear. DON'T BE AFRAID!
Me: Um ... okay. (Thinking: Yeah right. You come down here and stare down this ferocious thing and DON'T BE AFRAID!)
(German speaks again to dog, who finally goes silent.)
German: It is early.
Me: I know.
German: 5 o'clock. You come here.
Me: I know. I just wanted to take a walk. (pointing to trail)
German: On mountain?
Me: Yes.
German: It is early.
Me: I know.
German: (stares at me for a moment, then finally shrugs shoulders at the weird American) Be careful.
Me: I will.

(German goes back inside and I start up the path, walking away from the dog I'll note. But as soon as I take a few steps the dog breaks into snarls and growls again and starts tearing after me.)
Me: Okay! Okay! I give up already!

I edged back around the building and down the mountain, muttering all the way about stupid dogs.

Turns out that maybe that dog was good karma though in disguise, because instead of stumbling around on a dark hiking trail with little to see except some burial mounds, I headed over to the other side of the mountain (assiduously watching for signs of any other spirit-keeping dogs) for a closer look at the ancient Buddha carved into a rockface above the main temple. It may not have been the smartest thing I've ever done, creeping up crumbling footholds in a dewy rock wall in the pre-dawn, but the payoff was worth it - stupid dog and all. The monks had started their morning chants and a soft light pulsed out from the elaborate temple below; hushed droning and percussion wafted up with a hint of incense on the cool breeze. A star-studded sky sprawled above, and the verdant Korean mountains were spread out before me, occasional lights illuminating a misty valley here and there. And at my back, a 4-meter serene-faced sculpture - pounded into a mountainside by Indian Buddhists who had migrated to Korea about the time the Dark Ages were setting in upon Europe. This is traveling.

I had to book it down to morning chanting, then we had an elaborate yet pious breakfast ceremony for the holiday. Awhile later was tea with the grandmaster, a warm and graceful man with a deep-belly laugh that reminded me of the way one of those jovial Buddha statues might laugh if it came to life (though the grandmaster had none of those statues' girth). In my limited experience with Buddhist culture, it seems to me that the faith tends to emphasize a docile sort of humor - kind of like how Christianity has its own version of standup-style jokes, I suppose. Later was more chanting and then a Chusok ceremony celebrating growth and life and the lives gone before us, which basically involved a lot more bowing and some chanting and a table full of harvest goods. People come to the table two by two to symbolically empty cups of water into a communal bowl, then hold the cups as monks pour them full anew.

Then another tasty meal. And for our final adventure, the couple of my group who remained crammed into a small, rickety van with a questionable clutch and an even more eye-raising driver - a monk. I haven't even seen taxis here pull some of the stunts this guy managed ... and I had to wonder where monks learn to drive. Or maybe because they're religious, Korea just gives them a free pass to the road. Anyway, our fabulous guide (in full monk attire, of course) successfully shuttled 12 of us tourists to several other historic Buddhist sites in the area and explained the culture and history in broken but extremely animated English. A Brit in the group bought everyone ice cream at the journey's end, including one for our monk, of course. I'm not sure where ice cream fits in with the whole take on food, but our guide gratefully accepted, and it was really heartwarming to see someone's eyes light up that much at what seems such a little thing.

The trip home took an extra hour because of holiday traffic, and seemed even longer for the lack of sleep and soreness of body, but there's no question it was worth it. Templestay: $40. Bus fares: $11. Incidental tourism costs: $3. Experiences ... well, you know.