Part 1: Buddhist Mountain Temple Stay

This past weekend was a holiday called Chuseok in Korea, which is to say it's the Korean Thanksgiving, which is to say I had 4 gorgeous days off! Heyoo!
So what did I do? I went in search of a solitary Buddhist experience involving meditation, silence, and a sense of the spiritual that has been too long absent from my life. What did I find? Well here, let me tell you.
I took the train from Ulsan to Gyeongju. After about 25 minutes I asked the woman next to me, the slender late 20 something woman with long black hair and an intelligent air about her, "Shillehamnida, Gyeongju issoyo?" in my typically nervous fashion I was worried I would miss the stop, have to get off and turn back around, which wouldn't have been a huge deal--I had plenty of time--but regardless, I like getting to where I'm going in one fell swoop. So I ponied up the balls and asked her the simple question of, "Excuse me, is this Gyeongju?" She answered, in perfect English, "No it is the next stop." I don't think I successfully masked my, "Holy shit you speak English, and well" face.
We had a nice conversation from there out. She's an English teacher who spent some time in Oceania (where apparently they speak English) who was on her way to Seoul to see her family for Chuseok. I asked her to grammar check the sentence I was going to use to figure out what bus to take from the Gyeongju train station to find the right bus to Golgusa temple, and she was more than happy to help. I was more than happy to realize that I accurately constructed a useful Korean sentence all on my own! Then it was my stop, so I bid her farewell, and was on my way.
After bugging a couple people with the phrase, "Moosun bus-uh Golgusa kanayo?" (which bus goes to Golgusa) in my absolute BEST Korean accent (which is still pretty crappy) I found my way and off I went to catch bus 100 to the mountains that lay just outside of Gyeongju.
That bus ride blew. I was standing up for 3/4 of the 40 minutes I was on there and those roads were damn windy. But it was OK, I was on my way to a Buddhist temple, so whatever. Part of me felt like this slight suffering was a sign of my dedication to my "pilgrimage" of sorts, because I'm a dork like that.
I get off the bus because the bus driver, who I was like, "Golgusa kanayo?" to (I really did give my best accent on that one, he understood me immediately!) basically yelled at me to get off the bus when I was supposed to. After about five grateful "Gamsahamnida's" (thankyou's) I stumbled off to find myself on the side of a road that was covered in fields, surrounded by mountains, and now populated by me and my endless glowing smile--being in the city all the time makes me giddy like a school girl about nature.
I trucked my butt up the road for about 25 minutes, smiling broadly, occasionally stopping to take a picture, or to revel in the gloriousness of being where I was in Korea, in nature, absolutely alone (!), before I reached the part of the temple where the main office was.
Let me say, the roofs were everything I imagined them to be and more. Picture every typically Asian rooftop you can imagine (think old China) then imagine that this beautiful ornate, uniquely Asian style roof that is intricately painted in vibrant greens, pinks, blues, reds, and subtle yellows. The designs are all flowers, circles, and lines that flow in and out of one another with ease and symmetry, and this seems quite appropriate.
Yes! A voice in me proclaims, I have arrived at my first Buddhist temple in Korea. This is precisely where I want to be.
Before I came to Korea one of the many reasons I wanted to learn Korean was so I could communicate with Korean Buddhist monks. I would study day after frustrating day with little success and sadly feel this hope of communication diminish and dwindle away.
I do not feel this anymore, but after my weekend spent at Golgusa Temple feel a renewed sense to work on my speaking/listening ability in this language so that I can, if not communicate, then at least better understand the words, the melodic flowing chants that whirled around me this past weekend with their sounds and repetitions that I became accustomed to, whose weight and intensity permeated me, but whose literal meanings slipped right by.
So I get in, I register, I settle into my dorm style room which is basically a big empty room with only blankets to sleep on--oddly this doesn't bother me much anymore.
Then I go to help make sticky rice balls--and who do I see but my friend Dan, who had told me he would be at the temple this weekend, and his friend Hannah. So, so much for my solitary experience. However, I got along with the two of them famously, and having them around turned out to be a really great relief from the stresses of waking up at the ass crack of pre-dawn (4am) sans food or my own personal heroine--coffee.
This weekend has shown me up for the physically feeble addict I am. Oh well.

Any who, the first night doesn't really get underway till around 8:30 when we go into this sort of prayer room that is at the base of the main hill at the temple. We enter in silently, take off our shoes, and walk into the room full of small rectangular brown pillows, upon which we each take temporary residence for the bowing, chanting and prayers.
First things first however. Whenever you enter a buddhist holy space you must perform three bows. The first to Buddah, the second to the temple (I think, or maybe its to the ceremony about to happen), and the third to yourself--you are to ruminate on being present in the moment, then sit quietly and wait for the chants to begin.
The monks sit up at the front, closest to the three golden statues of buddah. The older monks are behind the younger, swathed in their flowing gray robes, with vibrant orange sashes tied over them. The younger monks in training (or baby monks, some of them were probably only 12!, as I liked to call them) up front in their more simplistic brown frocks. Then one man begins the chant, an older monk, and if you're lucky, as we were, the monk who began the chant on the first night has this vibrant rich voice, and it was more of a song flowing out from him, than a droning chant in a language I scarcely understand.
Soon the other monks joined in, and there was something about it all that just sort of climbed inside of you and pushed things around, making you feel, or rather making me feel all sorts of strange sensations. The ever running dialog in my head couldn't help but wonder at so many things, questioning, questioning, questioning, the hows and the why's and the what for's. Up and down we'd go, bowing at intervals, the chant ever flowing around us, liquid words with rhythm and a meaning so implicit that the language barrier couldn't fully cut off their weight. And then, after a long line of criticisms and doubts, I wondered amidst all this bowing and supplication, in the company of intensely devoted men(and women too), if the humility implied in this ritual wasn't enough to make it all worthwhile? I thought about my pride, and how perhaps some of the sensations I was feeling was simply it reeling at the thought of it being outright bucked.
After all, I am independent and free, I have no master, the only master of me, quite frankly, is me (for better or worse that is...).
But there I sat, face down on the floor, feeling something in me bend--some proud little part of me submit, and it very rarely to never does.
In a strange way, that felt quite good.

I am tired now, and have to twist my unruly mane back into some semblance of order in the morning, so I will stop here. Parts two and three will arrive shortly, with pictures and videos included. Till then, Daume do bwayo! (Literal translation: Next time again see.)