So it started out great - we went to this garden in Namwon, which is the equivalent to Verona in Italy -it's the setting of a love story between a nobleman and a prostitute, like Romeo and Juliet, but without the mass suicide pact in the end. So we took pictures, and at the bridge where Korean Romeo and Juliet met, we staged a scene where two of us ran in slow motion to meet in the middle for a loving embrace, and weren't that pissed off when we found out the TV station was taping us either.
After visiting a couple more places in the pouring rain (I finally worked out why it's called monsoon season) and being absolutely drenched, we ended up at our final destination - the Naesosa temple, in the middle of a forest. It was very picturesque, and looked so good! I was looking forward to some meditation and relaxation. So we ate dinner, got dressed into our orange monk-in-training clothes, and got ready for a talk to the head monk.
I can pinpoint the moment I realised it wasn't going to be the best time ever. It was during our meditation/dharma question time, where the head monk was asking us philosophical questions and we were supposed to be there pondering. We were all supposed to be sitting there with our legs crossed and our backs straight. One student teacher Julia, wasn't sitting as straight as the monk liked, so he grabbed his bamboo stick and whacked her on the back. She screamed, and in the middle of screaming, was trying to explain that the monk had hit her on her fractured pelvis.
I just wanted to go to bed, but we ended up staying up till 11:00, we had question time (I really wanted to ask what the sound of one hand clapping was) and lantern-making time, and then had to walk around a pagoda for 30 minutes, and it wasn't a huge pagoda, so we were walking around for quite a while. I just wanted to go to bed, since we all had to wake up at 3:50 for 4:00 morning prayer!
I was looking forward to sleeping - the women's quarters were quite new and big, so I expected something similar for the men's room - I dont' know if room's the right word because it suggests that there is space - there were only 5 guys, and we took up the whole room, so if we rolled over, we would be on top of each other. The ceiling was about two heads shorter than me, and had the lovely scent of fresh paint. mmm, musky! To top it all off, there was a power generator just outside our room that kept buzzing all night.
I managed to get an hour's sleep before being woken up by the monk's knock on the door. we only managed to wash our faces before we headed off to morning prayer. It was maybe an hour of standing and bowing and kneeling and standing and facing another direction and bowing again. when we finally left, we ended up going for a walk through the forest, which I hear was good for those who were awake/not shitty to notice, and went back to "meditate". Turns out, meditation is really just sitting in silence for an hour or so. Kinda like that game dead fish you play in primary school, but less fun.
By breakfast time, we were all really shitty - my teacher who came to visit us from Australia was absolutely pissed off that we were forced to do this, and especially pissed off that they would hit anyone. breakfast was supposed to start at 6:00 but we didn't end up eating till maybe 7:00 - we were listening to all the rules we had to follow when we received the bowls, a way to unpack the bowls and clean them. One thing that was lost in translation for most people was that you had to eat everything.
One thing about temple breakfasts is that you don't waste a drop of food. So once you're done with eating everything, you pour your bowl of clean water into your bowls, and use a pickled radish to clean your bowls. After you repour the water into all the bowls and scrub with the radish, you're supposed to empty the water into these large communal containers. If there is a single speck of rice or rice fragments, they distribute water in the large containers to everyone, and everyone has to drink it. So, if you find any specks in your dirty water, you're supposed to drink it. and eat the scrubbing pickle. So the girls ended up leaving some of their food, which meant that they couldn't get rid of their scraps, otherwise we'd all have to drink it. After drinking the gross cleaning-pickle water, I don't think I can look at pickles the same way anymore...
Can you tell that this photo was taken as soon as we left the temple?
2 comments:
ffft. ffft. ffft.
-the sound of one hand clapping.
John Safran had trouble in a temple too. At least you weren't hit with a stick...right?
Yes, Pete's keeping up-to-date with Narin's Sth Korean adventures, don't you worry...
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