Buddhist Temple Stay at Hwagyesa Temple

A few weeks ago, a bunch of other English teachers and I decided to experience a temple stay where you live the life of a Buddhist monk for a weekend. We found a nice temple right here in Seoul that accepted foreigners, and we went. It was an interesting experience, which I myself enjoyed, but unfortunately, most of my other friends did not share my sentiment.

We got there Sat. afternoon, and first thing on our agenda was lunch. What better way to start an experience, right? Well, it turned out not to be entirely true because lunch was basically boiled vegetables with rice. Now, I've had some really great vegetarian dishes before, but this was not the case. This meal was completely bland, and it turned out, we would get the same meal 3 times a day for the duration of our trip. I was a bit disappointed by the food, but food is food, and under the right circumstances, I can basically eat anything, so it wasn't a big deal for me. For some of my other friends, however, they couldn't bear it, so they ended up sneaking out of the temple grounds to by food from a local bakery. It was really amusing because we all made a joke about the "contraband goods" that they brought back, but that kinda set the tone for the weekend.

After lunch, we met the head monk. He was an interesting fellow, to say the least. He had spent years in the States, so his English was really good. That also meant, however, that he was comfortable saying basically to us, and he had a really weird sense of humor. He tried hard to be cool, but his references to 70's and 80's pop culture left us all confused, lol.

During our session with the head monk, he taught us the proper way to bow (which we would be doing a lot of), how to meditate, and gave us our homework for the weekend: a question about the meaning of error that we should think about during our meditation.

For the rest of the day, we did several meditation sessions, which proved to be quite difficult (Sitting still Indian-style for an hour at a time is not that comfortable). We also went to a general chanting session. That was really interested because we got to here the monks sing the chants, but that was also tiring because it was the beginning of many, many bows.

The day ended at 8:00. Lights out was at 9:00, and we were all in bed by then. That may seem early, but we needed to wake up at 3:00 in the morning so...

The next morning, we started the day with another meditation session (which for most of us meant extra naptime, lol). Then we had to do the ceremonial 108 bows. For this, you were given an hour and you have to bow continuously in that hour. They stressed no breaks allowed, and the number of bows you did reflected your devoutness and sincerity. Thankfully though, this was done at our own pace, so I think we each averaged around 40 bows.

After the bowing, we went to another chanting session (which unfortunately meant even more bowing), and finally, we did the morning chores. These people have got it down! I don't know how they managed to come up with such a sweet setup, but they basically get foreigners and tourists to pay to sweep their parking lot for them!! But needless to say, we had a bit of fun and goofed around with our brooms, lol.

Anyways, all this was done before breakfast at 5:00. Can you believe that??? I still don't know how we managed to do so much. But anyways, after breakfast we did one more meditation session, and then came the really fun part. They took us on a mini-hike up the nearby mountain and we got to "meditate" and chill up there. It was such a great view. It was nice and warm and the weather was absolutely gorgeous. You could see all the fall leaves. Oh, it was by far the best part of the trip.

The hike was the official end of our trip. The head monk invited us to stay for lunch, dinner, and more sessions for free, but as you can imagine, we were all ready to leave as fast as possible to get some real food.

So that was our Buddhist temple stay experience. It was definitely an interesting one, but it was pretty exhausting. So much, that afterwards, a few of us definitely to reward ourselves by chilling out with some wine in the park. :D