The Enlightening

"Why stand when you can sit?" asks Winston Churchill.

Obviously, Churchill never spent time at a Buddhist temple. After just under 24 hours living with the monks, I have never been so appreciative of the freedom that many of us take for granted - the freedom to stand.

On October 18, I packed out of Daegu with 100 other foreigners on three tour buses to a distant Buddhist temple up in the mountains. After stopping for a free lunch and tour of a historical site and museum, we arrived at the Golgusa Temple in the early afternoon. After various orientational speeches, we had a walking meditation in which we walked silently, double-file up the hill to the site of the old temple. These temples seem to always be built up high in precarious places (I am, of course, an expert as I have seen two of them), so they are pretty spectacular and worth the steep hike. This one was no exception, with a giant Buddha carved into stone sitting a couple hundred yards above it. They know that the carving was done by and Indian monk from the swirl patterns surrounding the Buddha. This monk likely was with the party that brought Buddhism to Korea over a thousand years ago. Today, the carving has a large, glass overhang protecting it from the elements. It is a fun little rock climb up to the carving and a great view of the surrounding rural lands.



We hiked down just in time for dinner. Dinner at the temple, was of course, vegetarian. Furthermore, you are not permitted to waste any food, though you are able to take as much as you want. Thus, it is a delicate dance to take enough food to last through the rest of the night (which included 90 minutes of martial arts) and not take too much because you had to eat it all. We all agreed that the food was delicious, however, I don't know if it was good enough to be able to eat for every meal as they do.

After dinner it was off to the gym to learn how to bow, meditate and eventually the art of Seonmudo - the Korean Buddhist martial art of self-defense. This is where the pain begins, however, because during and between all of this there are long bouts of sitting cross-legged on HARDwood floors. They give you some flimsy pillow to sit on, but it really doesn't do much. Of course, the monks and the grandmaster have much bigger pillows than us. Anyway, I don't know how you feel about sitting cross-legged, but for me it is okay for the first 3 minutes, then it hurts for about 10 until my knees are numb. After I reach the numb stage, however, extending the legs becomes a painful proposition. Even if you are a competent cross-legged sitter, the hardness of these floors and the lack of cushion in your pillow would undoubtedly have you praying for some standing time.

Whenever you are sitting, though, you can always be thankful that you are not bowing. Bowing is when your knees, legs and backs are really in trouble. A proper bower moves from a standing position down to a kneeling position without using his hands. From there he moves to bow, touching his forehead to the ground with minimal use of hands. He lays his hands out next to his ears upside down, raises them off the ground and them rests them back down. From there he lifts himself back up to his knees and finally back up to his feet. Every third bow is done a little differently once you reach the ground, but the physical exertion is the same.  On the next day, we had to do 108 bows in a row which took 40 minutes!


Seonmudo practice followed, which is an original Korean mix of different martial arts for the purposes of self-defense and mind-body harmony. It might seem kind of odd that monks would need to know how to fight, but apparently the Koreans had lots of attackers throughout their history from China, Japan and the North. There are some pretty impressive Seonmudo moves, my favorite would have to be going from a cross-legged seating position to the splits in mid-air and coming back down to sit - all in one lightning quick move. Unfortunately, we did not get this advanced, but we did attempt some nearly impossible stretches and learn how to kick and punch (in slow motion) up to three enemies at once. Needless to say, I feel much better walking around Daegu at night now. After they tired us out enough, they brought us all together and gave a great demonstration of what Seonmudo really looks like. It was an amazing show and I think a lot of us were in awe. They had a Ph.D. of Korean dance come out and show the traditional Korean dance to us and then it was off to bed at 9pm. It was mandatory to wake up with the cosmos so we had to go to bed early. The cosmos awaken quite early actually, 4am believe it or not.


Upon being awoken by chanting and banging wooden blocks at 4, we made our way into the gym for our cosmos awakening ceremony. After that, we had practice for the breakfast ceremony, which they said would be the most difficult part for many of us. This breakfast ceremony was actually created by Siddartha himself. It is something like 2,600 years old! We sat in four long rows and received a set of bowls and silverware and learned the order in which we lay them out, wash them, are served and then finally are cleaned at the end. I could seriously write an entire blog entry about this ceremony, but I think I will stick to the most important point - the cleaning. After you are served all your food, you have until the grandmaster is finished eating to eat all your food. Then you must begin cleaning. They warn you that the grandmaster eats fast, so from the opening bell you have nothing on your mind but getting all the food down as quickly as possible. I might have taken this a little overboard as I was the first one done eating and sat around for about 2 minutes. But at least I wasn't one of the poor fools shoving everything into their mouth at the last second and trying to keep it in. Anyway, once you get your food you immediately take one piece of kimchi (cabbage) and clean all the spices off it in your soup. Set it aside, this will be your sponge for cleaning. After you eat all your food, you take your hot water and swish it around in each bowl, scrubbing with the kimchi held by your chopsticks until all your bowls are clean. Then you have to drink that dirty hot water and eat the kimchi. It's gross but just throw it down. After that you have to rinse all your bowls with cold water. Hopefully you did a good job cleaning your bowls because the monks are coming around to check how clean your cold water is after you are done rinsing. I don't think anyone's was clean enough, however, and they emptied some of it and made you drink the rest of it. The cold dirty water is the worst to have to drink. There is no waste, so that rinsing water will eventually be used to water plants.


After a successful breakfast ceremony, it was time for a short nap and then the tea making class. We used Oolong tea leaves and learned how to make three different teas using the same leaves. Then we had a session of monk yoga/taichi/stretching and finally were on our own. A compatriot and I hiked to the top of the mountain - no easy feat after all those martial arts, but a great stretch of the legs. We got on the bus finally at 2pm and every one passed out on the ride home.

The next day I returned to work to find the whole place decked out in Halloween decorations. We are currently in the middle of our two week Halloween party that we throw for the kids every year. We all dress up in costumes - I am a Grim Reaper/death kind of character and am pretty much the scariest teacher ever. My station for this is the ball on spoon relay race and it is a brutal one. The first three days saw a student leaving class with blood. The first day a kid was tackled by another student and came up with blood pouring from his forehead and a concussion. The next two days there were two bloody noses, though I am not exactly sure what from. There is also a bit of crying from students that are too scared (the race occurs in a pretty dark room with a strobe light and myself and Brad trying to scare the students so they drop their ball off their spoon). The fourth day there was a girl who left crying to her teacher and then yesterday (in my absence) a girl peed her pants and then proceeded to cry. So yeah, it is brutal work bringing the Halloween spirit to Korea, but somebody has to do it?

Halloween costumes. I am the tall mask in the middle.

That should be enough for now. Upcoming we have two teachers doing their last days today, so Reid and Joyce (the other new teacher - from New York) are needed ASAP and will probably be coming in Monday next week. Coming up this week is the start of the Korean Basketball League, so I am going to try and see the opening game of that in Daegu. Sunday, I have a big game with the Daegu Devils, so should be a fun weekend.

Take care at home everyone and get your votes in! (I did not)

The Haps

Two weekends ago, we had another 3 day weekend due to a Korean holiday (I believe it was some kind of flag holiday as there were some flags out). We had friday off, so four of us, Adina, Chelsea, Nathan and myself took the bus down to Jinju for the Jinju Flowing Lantern Festival. Jinju, which is thought by some to be the most beautiful Korean city, has a large ancient castle on the Namgang River near the center of the city. It was attacked a few times by the Japanese some time ago and held it's ground at least once, so there is some Korean nationalism attached to this spot. The Korean forces used lanterns which they floated down the river to signal the arrival of the Japanese to forces outside the castle as well as to signal to the well-being of individual soldiers to their families. This festival is a stylish commemoration to these Japanese invasions and the lives lost. We reached the city in the late afternoon, scrambled to get a place to stay for the night (it was insanely crowded), and headed to the castle for the free bi-bim-bap dinner courtesy of the city of Jinju. It was the largest dinner party I have ever been to. We waited in line for over a half hour to be served a heaping handful of bi-bim-bap which is a rice and veggies mixed together dish. It's kind of good. It was just a spectacle to see something over 1,000 people be served (by their government) in about an hour. Oh also the bi-bim-bap is a regional delicacy in Jinju and was served of course with kimchi and some pepper soup. After that, there was a phenomenal firework show and some unimpressive women's choirs. We spent a few hours being pushed by the mob up and down the river, occasionally catching glimpses of lanterns floating on the river. I don't know what to say about the lanterns except that they were big and colorful and kind of strange (see ET).



I also don't know that I mentioned the Korean language class that I am taking at the YMCA in downtown Daegu. Well, now you know. The class is two hours every saturday until Christmas and starts at the very beginning. The Korean language is called Hangul and was created by a King from way back in the day that wanted to take all these crazy Chinese and native words and symbols and turn them into a coherent language to increase literacy in Korea. Thus, the language is largely adapted from Chinese, with its own alphabet. At first glance, Hangul is pretty overwhelming (though not as much as Chinese is). It looks like a series of wingdings, however there are letters that are not that difficult to learn, but can be difficult to pronounce. The vowels are shaped to represent the three components of the universe - man, earth and the heavens. Syllables must be written with both a consonant and a vowel to maintain balance and harmony (even if only the vowel is pronounced). Also, the consonants are shaped like the body parts and the shapes they have to make to pronounce them. For example, the consonant sound 'ng' is written as the letter 'o' or the shape of the throat - where the sound is made. The letters are grouped together to form syllables that become easy to read with practice. I am currently at that stage. Reading is becoming easier for me, I am learning a few words at a time and am putting together the simplest of sentences.

This next weekend, the city of Daegu is sponsoring a trip for foreigners to experience Buddhist culture through a templestay at a nearby Buddhist temple west of Daegu. A group of us from the YMCA are attending the all expenses paid for trip, which leaves Saturday morning from city hall and returns Sunday evening. We stay overnight at the temple (there are 100 of us visitors in all), and we practice the Buddhist martial art of self-defense, wake up at 3 am to do the 108 bows with the monks and have the breakfast ceremony, there is also a tea ceremony and Q&A with the grandmaster - the enlightened one. This whole operation can be arranged anytime, though at a cost of about $50, so cheers to the Daegu government! Unfortunately, I am missing my soccer team's big match down in Busan against league leaders Inter Busan.

I have been playing with the Daegu Devils for about a month now. It is a team of almost 20 foreigners who play in a tight five team league (two teams in Daegu and three down on the shore in Busan). There is also a 16 team tournament in Ulsan that we will be playing in mid-November. Anyway, the team is pretty competitive and tight knit, so it is a little difficult to break into the rotation, but things have been going well. I have been to two practices (which are 5 v 5 futsal matches) and one game which we won 6-2. Most of the guys are Eastern Canadians and late 20's - early 30's. They are kind of like an image of what I might become should I decide to make Korea home for a few years. Several are married to Korean women. They all love it here and are pretty decent at speaking Korean. After spending over 5 years in Korea, they also know the best jobs here and are able to make great livings while having 4 months of vacation a year! Back to the league: there are only two teams with a shot at winning the league, those being us and Inter Busan, so it is a little disappointing to be missing the game this weekend. I am, however, really looking forward to staying with the monks for a night and picking the brain of the enlightened one, so it should be a great experience.

It has been great getting your comments, keep em coming. Sounds like things have been exciting?! back home. Looking forward to the start of the NBA season. Chelsea sits atop the Premiership table and the Phillies are looking good for the world series!! We'll just stick with the positives for now...

Looking down on my corner of Daegu.  Looks kind of polluted?