Temple stay

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Wow.. what can I say about temple stay! One of the weirdest and most amazing experiences of my life.

I spent 24 hours living like a Buddhist monk! They have a lifestyle very different to most of us, from getting up at 4am to pray, to eating every last speck of food on their plate. I mean there’s no way I could do it for longer than a day or 2.. but it was great experiencing it just for one day.

When I first arrived at the temple, I was shown to my room. Now buddhists don’t believe in possessions, so the room only had a pillow, and 2 blankets for me to sleep with! I didn’t mind though. So I left my bags in my room, then I was shown around the temple by a young buddhist monk. He was really friendly, and spoke English. He then showed us the main praying room, and the huge buddha statue! And he showed us the correct way to pray. I mean I’m not religious, but I still got some fun out of it.

So next he took me to a few other temple rooms with various Buddhist icons in them. After an hour or so, it was time to learn how Buddhists have dinner! Wow it was so different to how we all usually eat. We entered the dining room, and were joined by some other Buddhists and tourists. What they do, is everyone sits on the floor, and they have the bowls specially wrapped up, we were shown how to undo them, and do them up again. So we unwrapped the bowls from the napkin.. and then they kind of performed a ceremony for the preparation of eating the food! Each person had to get up and serve the group a dish, and then sit down. All of this in silence of course! After about half an hour everyone had food in their bowls, and it was time to eat.


Buddhists believe silence is good, so we ate in peace, and afterwards had to clean the bowls with water, then drink the water! Then we wrapped up the bowls in the napkin, and put them back on the shelf where they started. No dishwashing detergent.. that’s pretty amazing!

So after dinner we all sat down and were talking to our young Buddhist friend. As we did this, they have us these patterns to colour in.. pretty strange but I enjoyed it! then we all had some tea, and talked, then it was time for bed!

BUZZ… alarm clock goes off at 3:45. Time to get up and pray. We prayed for a little while, then meditated. So it was dinner at 5am. Then back to bed for an hour!

I woke an hour later, and now it was time to visit this peaceful mountain for some martial arts training, and some Zen and yoga! That was awesome.. the instructor there could curl himself in a ball with his legs over his shoulders! So that was great fun, and now it was time to leave for my next location (Pohang) at around 11.

Despite getting up so early.. I felt really accomplished already! This would have been the busiest day in my life I’d say.. but a great one!

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