Jikjisa Temple Stay

This weekend we took the wonderful opportunity to do a temple stay at Jikjisa Temple for free. Typically, temple stays cost around $50 and give you a chance to relax and experience life like the Buddhist monks live it. Our experience was a bit different because it turned out this was a special foreigners trip to basically promote the idea of temple stays and tourism for the area. It was completely funded by the Gimcheon cultural center. Gimcheon is only about an hour away from Daegu, and it is where Jikjisa temple is. So despite not being the peaceful, relaxing weekend we were thinking of, we still got to do some wonderful cultural activities.

We found out that a bunch of our friends were going as well, so it was nice to see them-- Marie, Erin, Emily, Sian, Maria, and Jake. Our train ride to Gimcheon was easy as was figuring out which bus we had to take to the temple (hint: it was the one all the foreigners were trying to get on). We got off the bus and started following people towards the temple. It was probably a 15 minute walk, but we got to go through the culture park for part of it. We didn't get to really check it out, but it had some cool sculptures and looked like a really relaxing little park area. On the way, we crossed over a bridge over a small stream that was like the playground ones you can jump up and down and bounce on. Not sure the name for them or why it was there, but it was fun.

We arrived at the temple where we were given orange, baggy uniforms to change into and wear for the weekend. They also gave us these little gift bags with information about the temple and the area as well as souvenir gray polo shirts (in sizes way too large for the girls--might be a present for someone later), a sewing kit, a tape measure, and a toothpaste/brush travel set. It was a really sweet thing to put together. As we were signing in, there were even these little people mascots! So cute. First thing we did was get changed and do a little temple stay orientation. We watched a video about what temple stays are usually like and the etiquette to follow and promptly realized that our temple stay was not going to be like that. They usually take your phones and things away I guess, 

This is a stupa, and that's a blue roof.

but not for us. I forgot my camera anyway-- :( You also aren't really supposed to talk unless it is necessary throughout the weekend, but we definitely did the entire time. Oh well! I'd like to do another, more traditional temple stay at some point. From the video, we also learned about the structure and buildings in a typical temple. At the entrance to the temple is a 1 pillar gate. It is open and has no doors to signify openness. It is also called the gate to truth, and you should bow with prayer hands when you enter it. After that gate is the gate of the 4 guardians. These are 4 kings who decided to guard the Buddhist faith. Each one represents 1 direction (North, East, South, West) and is holding a different object. These are the massive statues of the guys with crazy faces I've taken pictures of and seen at other temples, so I'm glad we learned what those are finally. After orientation, we got a brief tour around the temple. There was a Korean man doing the tour and another woman who I really don't think was Korean. She seemed to have trouble understanding the man speaking Korean and, thus, an even harder time translating his Korean into English for us. The tour made no sense, and we all just resorted to reading the signs posted outside the buildings to see what everything was. I did hear that the temple was built around the year 400 though! So it is really old! One of our friends from taekwondo did tell us before coming that this temple is significant because it has a building with a blue roof. Blue roofs mean the temple is old and important because the blue roof tiles are not very common anymore, now they are mostly grey or black. Another interesting aspect is that in the main hall where the Buddha statue is kept, there are 1,000 small, Buddha statues behind the big, gold statue. All of the statues except for 1 is sitting down, so it was cool to get to see the one that is standing up. It is a very beautiful temple.


Next, it was time for dinner. For monks, even meals are ceremonial, so, even though we were all starving, we had to do it in the proper way. You get a set of bowls called baru gongyang. Each of the bowl is meant for a specific food with no mixing--soup, rice, vegetables or side dishes, and clean water. You unpack the bowls using only your thumbs so as not to make a lot of noise. The smallest bowl (the side dish bowl) goes on your upper left, the water bowl on your upper right, the rice bowl on your lower right, and your soup bowl on your lower left--I think! It goes smallest bowl to biggest in any case. It was a little hard to follow when I couldn't see the monk very well from the back. You aren't supposed to talk during the meal, and you have to sit up straight. The monks had to keep reminding us of these. So you eat, and you all try to finish at the same time. When that happens, you pour some of your water into the smallest bowl and use a yellow radish to clean the bowl. You then pass the water to each of the other two food bowls in turn and clean those with the yellow radish. After cleaning all the bowls, you drink the water that is left in the largest bowl. That is supposed to be all the cleaning of the bowls that you need to do if you've done it correctly, but because it was our first time, and they didn't trust us to be properly sanitary, some of the guys (Gianni included) were made to help wash them with soap the next morning. You aren't supposed to take a lot of food because you have to make sure you finish all the food with no waste. I thought we'd be able to take more if we needed it though, which was not the case, so I was still hungry after dinner, and I had to wait until the next morning to eat.

After dinner, we made lotus lanterns using petal-shaped green and pink paper and a paper cup with wax and a wick in it. They were really pretty. We also wrote a wish or a hope on a piece of paper and hung it from the cup. We all lit the lanterns and walked around the stupa (large, stone monuments--see photo above) outside the temple with the Buddha statue in it. We walked around 3 times so that our wishes would come true. It was a nice, peaceful way to end the evening. We were told to go to bed at 10pm, so we all had a few hours to walk around the temple and hang out together before bed.


How many people can say they were woken up by a monk!? We can now!!! He came in at 5am saying "anyang haseyo," which means "hello" in Korean. We had plenty of time to get washed up and dressed for breakfast. Breakfast was much less formal than the dinner the previous night. We could take as much as we wanted, but, again, we had to eat it all. There was this yummy fruit and yogurt salad that I enjoyed a lot, but at one point, Maria goes, "the kiwi in here is really delicious." My immediate reaction was, "WHERE'S THE KIWI!?" Gianni is allergic to kiwi, and he had eaten some of the salad. He stopped eating it right away, and luckily he probably didn't have any of it, but we were both a little freaked out for a while, hoping he wouldn't have an allergic reaction at a temple in the mountains!

After breakfast, we participated in a Buddhist prayer/exercise ritual. They do 108 prostrations and pray for something with each prostration. It is a mental and physical training exercise. A prostration is a full bow. You begin standing with your hands in prayer position. Then you bend your knees and kneel on a mat. Then, you put your forearms on the mat and touch your forehead to the mat so that 5 point of your body are touching the mat (knees, elbows, and head). The last part of it is to flip your hands so that your palms face up and you raise your hands up slightly. After doing all of this, you put 1 bead on a necklace. You do this 108 times for 108 beads on a necklace. There is a significance behind the number 108 that involves multiplication. A certain number of prayers for a one thing multiplied with prayers for another thing...I can't really remember. Gianni and I both have nice prayer necklaces now that I feel like we had to work hard for! We all did them together as a group, waiting for the last person to stand up before doing another one. One of the times the hole in my bead wasn't completely open, so it took me entirely too long to get it on the strand! I was the last one to stand up that time, and I was totally mortified! We filled out surveys about how we found the temple stay before changing out of our orange uniforms and back into regular clothing.

The rest of the day was spent doing cultural activities organized by Gimcheon culture center. They took us out to lunch at a san gab san (Korean BBQ) place, and that was really delicious. Afterwards, we went to a cabbage field and picked out our own cabbages. They are surprisingly easy to pull out. We stuck those in a bag, thinking we would be using them to make kimchi next. Turns out, they had cabbage at the kimchi place for us, so AGAIN we get stuck with two huge bags of cabbage! How does this keep happening to us!? This is the second time! The next activity was to make summer kimchi. I think the cabbage they had was already lightly pickled, all we had to do was put some red pepper paste all over each of the leaves of the cabbage and stick it in a bag to take home.

Making kimchi was our last activities, so the buses took us right back to Gimcheon train station. On the way off the buses, someone was handing out bags of plum jellies. Apparently, Gimcheon is known for it's plums. They are yummy candies. We were earlier than expected, so we got in the huge line of people to try to change our tickets to an earlier train, and we were successful. We had to pay $2 more because it was a nicer train than we had been booked on though. The nice train is the same as the nice bus we've been on before. It had wider seats with more leg room and an adjustable leg rest.

We made it home around 4:30pm and made plans to see Gravity in 3D with Maria and Matthew later on that night. We went straight home and put our things down so that we could go buy the tickets at the theater downtown. We got the tickets and had some time before the movie, so we played some games in the arcade on the same floor as the ticket office. Gianni was really excited to have his first Korean arcade experience since he loves games, and we hadn't found one for him to play in before this. We also got some quick dinner at KFC. It was a wicked tense movie, but really amazing! The 3D didn't bother me too much the way it normally does, so that was good. I am really glad we saw it. It was a nice end to another great weekend here in Korea.