Tongdosa Temple Stay

Never in my life did I see myself sharing space in a temple with Buddhist monks, yet never did I realize my lack of personal awareness until my stay in the Tongdosa temple. Yesterday I returned from the temple with a whole new awareness of myself and my actions. Of course, this greater sense of self is a process, a lifestyle change...something the monks seem to seek after daily.

I have to admit that there were moments during the temple stay that seemed unbearable, but I survived. Overall the experience was amazing. We arrived around 2 PM on Thursday afternoon and were instructed to change into special uniforms for the stay...basically a brown vest and baggy brown slacks. After changing the temple stay was in full swing. We were served delicious tea at a special tea ceremony, crafted lotus flowers from paper petals and cups, and even attended a traditional worship service. Dinner was rough. Monks eat in complete silence and in a very strict order.. something that seemed very difficult for most students. The food was much like the Korean dishes served in the city except we had to finish everything we put into our bowls. This was hard for me because I am still getting used to the Korean food, so I just ate rice and tofu soup. After completing our meal we had to clean our bowls with rice water that we passed bowl to bowl, the sponge? a pickled radish. When our bowls were clean we were then told the worst news of all--we had to eat the radish and then to drink the water we cleaned our bowls with. This may not seem so tough but it seemed quite disgusting to me when I was staring into a bowl of dirty water with floating rice and other food particles. After swallowing ALL of my dinner I wrapped up my bowls as they were before and dinner was officially over. Thank heavens. Later in night, the monks taught us how to bow and how to meditate and then we were off to bed. The next morning at 3 AM the lights were flipped on and everyone scrambled around to prepare for the 3:30 AM worship service. When the service was over we had breakfast (ugh again) and then went hiking for about 3 hours. The hike was AMAZING! I have never seen such beautiful landscape in all my life.

I could sit here and write about this experience for hours as it was just that incredible. The pictures I have posted above are some from our stay, enjoy! We have this weekend free so I am taking time to explore Ulsan and get ready for our upcoming week in Seoul. Hope to find some interesting things to blog about next time!