A lovely day trip

Today we took a wonderful, and really insightful day trip out to the North Gyeonsang province of South Korea to visit a Zen artist named Monk Bumju. After just recently stayed at Haeinsa I was a little worried about getting Buddhism-ed out, but the trip ended up being delightful, and far more helpful than the temple stay.

Monk Bumju lives high up in the isolated mountains, and we had a three hour taxi ride from Seoul to reach his house. As we passed by smaller villages on the way to visit Bumju Soonim our audacious taxis got a lot of stares, and we were worried that we would be making a scene! Making a scene or not, the mountains that Bumju Soonim lived in were absolutely beautiful, and everyone in my taxi agreed that they really looked like a traditional oriental painting.

His house was lovely, and he had paintings strung just about everywhere. Bumju Soonim is considered a Zen artist, which means that he uses art to practice Buddhism. He is a Monk, but he is also an artist. Because his art is a means of practice for his religion he makes a new one nearly every day, and so they are literally everywhere!

Before we could see any of his work he wanted to discuss with us what it meant to be a Zen Buddhist, a Zen artist, and what exactly it was that he was trying to do. He explained that there are many artists who are inspired by Buddhism, but of practitioners of the Religion there are two main types of Buddhist artists. There are artists who strive to represent a likeness of deities to serve as a symbol for the public, and there are zen artists. Before he could explain what a Zen artist does, he gave us a boatload of metaphors about what it means to be a Zen Buddhist. The most helpful example was his reoccurring idea of glasses. He started by saying that your body, and your “heart-mind” are separate entities that rely on each other in this life. In this case your body is a vehicle and your “heart-mind” is the driver. Anyways, your heart-mind has the capacity to reach enlightenment, and to be a Buddha, as everyone’s does. As you go through life however, all the thoughts and concerns of daily life, and in consequential nonsense clouds your “heart-mind” and it is as if you are wearing dirty glasses. Through Prayer, Meditation, and Practices, Buddhists aim to clean their glasses so that they can eventually reach enlightenment and truly see the world for the way that it truly is. As a Zen artist Bumjo soonim works every day to clear his glasses, and allow a little more of his “heart-mind” to become visible. As he purifies his “heart-mind” he paints, and through this painting he expresses a purifying energy to help clean the glasses of all who look upon his work. That, he said, is the goal of a Zen artist. Not just to portray Buddhist thoughts or emotions, but to spread a purifying energy through their work. Through this, a Zen artist is more than just an artist, who is bound by expression of emotion and all of those other busy thoughts. A Zen artist paints with a clear “heart-mind” and aims to help others achieve enlightenment as well. He said it is the both of best worlds, he uses his painting to help him practice and come closer to enlightenment, and his paintings can also help others do the same. He used a lot more metaphors and stories to get the point across, but hopefully I have summarized his points well enough! It was a really helpful insight into Zen Buddhism, and he was very well articulated on his thoughts!

On a random note, I definitely notice that in Korea people really like to get their food, and then talk over it and totally ignore it. Maybe it’s just when they feel like they are hosts, and are busy explaining something to us, but I know that we had the same experience with Kwon Ki Soo Sunsaengnim and also with Miro Kim Sunsaengnim. They spend so much time telling us things that we feel like we can’t eat until they do!! Here is a picture of what I thought was lunch, but turned out to only be the appetizer!

It was fruit!! I feel like I don’t get enough fruit in Korea so I had to take a picture when it was served to me…! Anyways here is another picture of him talking to us!

After our discussion we went to his exhibition place that was absolutely packed with beautiful work. He told us that normally he doesn’t allow pictures, but because we came all the way from the United States to see his work that he would allow it 🙂

the most amazing thing is that he had at least a part in every piece in this space! There were so many different works, and different mediums, and he did it all! It was amazing work and you could feel the Zen that he was talking about when you were in the room. It was as if all the unnecessary thoughts and concerns were lifted and all you needed to do was look at art. Even Aubrie seemed to be having a good time!

After the exhibition space he told us that it was time for lunch (at 3pm mind you) which was crazy! First of all, I though that Monks ate light, this is not so. Second of all that plate of fruit and ddeok was freaking filling! It doesn’t look like it, but ddeok (rice ball cakes) blow up in your stomach like a balloon and take up all the room! Anyways, this food was much better than the food at Haeinsa, and I felt bad that I was too full to finish it all!

After a nice full meal he took us to visit the nearby Beopjusa temple, which is the largets Buddhist temple in the area. It was absolutely stunning, and we got a little bit of special treatment because we arrived as Bumju Soonim’s personal guests. Here are a few of the pictures that I took at the temple!

Bumju soonim had to leave us a bit early (official monk business) so we wandered around a little while in the mountains beside the temple. It was truly beautiful and got me even more excited for our mountain hiking trip on Sunday!

Yup, South Korea is beautiful! Anyways, it was a great visit and he gave us each one of his paintings! It was such an honor to meet him and he was such a cute old monk!

After our 3 hour taxi ride home we stopped for Shabu-Shabu for dinner, which is apparently a Mongolian thing where you are given meat and vegetables raw to dip into a boiling pot of broth. It’s kind of like Fondue but you’re cooking meat/seafood/vegetables. I wasn’t too hungry so I stuck with veggies and the occasional seafood chunk but it was pretty good! After dinner we split from the professors and headed to the place that I have been hoping to go the entire trip. Yup, the Hello Kitty Cafe deserves it’s own post, and since it’s currently 1am that post will come tomorrow before I leave for the day!

Haeinsa Templestay

This weekend my little group of 9 took a trip to the Gaya Mountains in the South Gyeonsang Province to participate in a templestay at the famous Haeinsa Temple. Haeinsa Temple is considered one of the three Buddhist jewels in South Korea, and is the housing place of the Tripitaka Koreana, a collection of 81,258 woodblock printing blocks that are considered to be the oldest and most accurate collection of Buddhist text in the world. Since we are as a group examining printmaking in South Korea, this temple was a must! We also have a girl on our team (Solveig Swenson) who is looking into Buddhist ties within the printmaking field so the chance to stay and experience temple life was invaluable.

Our first day at Haeinsa was Saturday, and we didn’t arrive until around 4pm. The trip was long, but enjoyable. We took the Subway, express train and bus, so now I can say that I have fully experienced public transportation in South Korea! I was able to finish the Fellowship of the Ring on the bus ride (YAY) so that counts for something! There is a 30 minute walk from where the bus drops you off to where the temple is, and it is supposed to be a meditative and thought provoking walk. It was definitely tiring to walk all that time uphill with our backpacks, but far from meditative. There were old ladies on every corner shouting about the virtues of whatever spice they were trying to sell, street food stands, and ice cream shops. The further you get from this main treck the less the screaming becomes but that will be later in this post ;3

When we arrived we were given our super attractive uniforms and shown to our rooms. We were staying a day longer than the actual program so they took extra care in making sure that we were comfortable. The first thing on our agenda was temple manners where we learned how to properly take off shoes, walk in the temple, greet monks, do prostrations, and perform sitting meditation. It was a lot of work and honestly I can’t even remember all of the names for the different bows and movements we learned! Some of the things were really informative, like how to properly perform our prostrations at a service, and others were really silly, like how to take off your shoes (which is literally the same way that like 90% of people already do). We also learned at this point that there weren’t really going to be any pictures allowed during our activities, which is why all of the pictures you will see momentarily will be taken during our free time on Sunday!

While at the Temple we ate in the Temple Cafeteria where all of the student Monks ate. It was all vegetarian, and most of it was pretty delicious! We had some squash the first night that blew my mind, and there was this less spicy version of tteokbokki that was fabulous! The soup however was pretty gross and we all actively avoided getting soup poured for us the rest of the weekend. You were urged not to waste any food, and so if you didn’t like the soup you felt pretty pressured to suck it up and slurp!

We listened to the Monks perform a ritual playing of four instruments after dinner: The Dharma Drum, a Bell, a Wooden Fish, and a Gong. These four instruments call all sentient beings to study the wisdom of Buddha and to reach enlightenment. It was really cool, and I thought that the idea of calling all animals to worship was really powerful. We went strait from there to an evening service that was mildly stressful because were were seated right in the front by the Buddha statue in front of a whole bunch of loyal worshiper. They started doing chanting and we had to do prostrations and I didn’t really feel relaxed at all because I was intensely focused on trying to get everything right and not offend anyone. I also felt a little guilty because I was given the best seat of the house, yet I wasn’t a follower. I was only a Buddhist for a weekend, but the loyal followers had to sit behind my white but and pray.

The night ended with tea and a talk with one of the student monks. He seemed to have a lot to share, but the translation was kind of lost. He didn’t really speak any English, and the girl who was translating seemed really confused about how to put what he was saying into words a group of 15 white people could understand. It wasn’t any easier when there were a few of the guests who weren’t really taking the experience seriously and were messing around… Overall the talk was actually one of my favorite parts of the trip. It was actually relaxing, and we got to learn a little about practicing Buddhism. He seemed to focus a lot on life being ever changing, and finding your true self among the ever-changing world. One thing that really struck me was when he brought up the fact that our bodies are different bodies than the ones that we had 10 years ago, so which one was really us? Does our body define us? our job? our passions? At the end of the trip he told us that he still didn’t know the truth about himself, but that through practice he intended to find out.

The next day started at a groggy 3 am, which was made more miserable by the fact that it was pouring rain. A warning, I woke up in a miserable mood and so I may not look back on this day as fondly as I should. We trudged out of our room to the drums to see another performance, which was a lot less cool the second time and when you are soaked. We then headed to the practice room to have a morning service. The chants were really freaking cool (and I think we actually got a CD of them) but it was still pretty confusing when to bow and when to do the fancy third bow, and how to sit. The prostrations got a lot easier though after the next activity which was 108 prostrations!!! I shall hear no complaints from Catholics about kneeling in Mass, go to a Buddhist temple where you do about 50 full prostrations during the service and then are expected to do 108 more! In case you didn’t know, these prostrations are very specific poses that take you from standing position to a half bow (just bowing your back) to a kneeling position, to a full on the floor bowing position (combined with some fancy hand work) back up to kneeling and again to standing position. It was really tiring, And my things felt like Jello, but I trucked through it! The sitting meditation was one of the things I was looking forward to the most, but ended up disliking it the most. I can honestly say that I hated sitting meditation. I know that I was doing it wrong because I was not relaxed, did not have a clear mind, and was so crabby from lack of sleep and caffeine that I was positively livid the entire time. If someone would have tried to talk to me during my meditation I think I would have murdered them. The only thing that kept me from walking out of that room was the fact that Aubrie (who is Heidi’s 9 year old daughter) looked just as miserable but was still holding up. We got to do some Corpse pose after that, which calmed me down a lot, and I’m pretty sure I conked out somewhere in the middle of that shebang. Breakfast was also disappointing, I was hoping that Buddhists ate fruit for breakfast, but evidently they eat rice, kimchi, spinach, radish and nasty soup. I was able to avoid the soup, but even I didn’t want kimchi for breakfast… After our breakfast we were given a muddy and wet tour of the temple, which may have been nice had I not been crabby and wet. The temple was really pretty but I didn’t take my camera out in that mess. We were all upset when they told us that we didn’t really get to go anywhere near the Tripitaka Koreana, but instead got to watch a cheesy video about it. Yeah, I was pretty bummed and so when it came time for the closing ceremony I pretty much wanted to get the program done with and have our free time to nap. We had more tea with the student monk we met earlier, and discussed our true selves some more. We got snazzy little gift bags and mine has some awesome cheesy looking face masks I’m excited to try >.<

After the program ended my true meditation began. We were now staying an extra night because there were no train tickets to get us back to Seoul, but didn’t have to participate in the temple activities. We were able to roam the temple as guests, but not as temple stay visitors. The first thing we did was nap, and then grab a hasty temple lunch before a beautiful hike in the Gaya Mountains. I was still really crabby and freezing cold, but everything was so beautiful that I’m glad that I finished the hike. I got some really cool pictures after the rain cleared up a little, and got a serious workout!! I discussed with the girls later and we all agreed that this was the most relaxing and meditative part of the temple experience, and definitely my favorite part. We also stopped in this really cute cafe and I had some AMAZING coffee, which is saying a lot because I ordered black coffee! Overall the temple stay was not as useful as I was hoping, but the nature hike was great! Also, look at these pictures:

the last bunch are my favorite pictures from the stay 🙂