So a couple of weekends ago a group of us thought we would spend our weekend in search of inner peace and cute monks at a Korean Temple. One of the wonderful ways in which us foreigners, aka waegooks, can experience Korean culture is through the temple stay program. Lucky enough for us there was a temple right here in Busan that offered a temple stay program with an English translator.
While we did not manage to find inner peace, we did find cute monks so I call it a win. Haha. But in all seriousness, it was a wonderful experience. We got a small taste of what Korean Buddhism is like as we were only their two days and one night (honestly it was a little more that 24 hours) and they weren't strict about enforcing Buddhist etiquette with us. This lovely picture is from our 3am wake up call for the first service of the day. We also got to string our own prayer beads which included doing one bow for each of the 108 beads. Needless to say we were feeling a little sore the next day. We did however; make new friends, great memories, such as singing Fresh Prince of Bel-air for the monks and we saw really beautiful architecture and got a glimpse of a beautiful way of life.
All in all I would recommend giving a temple stay a try. Here is a link to the temples that offer programs in English, http://eng.templestay.com/ and another helpful website, http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/AC/AC_EN_4_4.jsp
No comments:
Post a Comment