On the morning of Sunday 6 June, I took a train from Seoul Station to Ulsan, located in the south of the country, where I stayed at Baeknyunsa temple (백련사) for two nights. In the midst of monks and mountains I found unexplored territories of headspace and time to think and write and draw. Below is the first part of an account of my stay, pieced together from journal entries and observations I made at the time.
Day 1
10:10 am – What wonderful places train stations are! A sense of new beginnings, of adventure, of possibility is suffused in the very air, taking form perversely in the mundane benches and shop fronts and restaurants. I’ve breakfasted and now have a loose twenty minutes until my train departs, so here I sit in the wide open lobby of the station, checking the clock every so often and tap-tapping on my laptop.
Watching people is a diverting way of passing the time, I’ve discovered, especially in a place like this. Not even watching them, but just being in their midst as another anonymous person travelling elsewhere, or perhaps returning somewhere, because you can hardly tell whether someone is coming or going in a place like this. There are many soldiers in the station this morning – I wonder if it is always so or only on weekends, mostly. And apart from the soldiers, there are old men who walk as though they had once done so with a spring in their step, younger men dressed in blue shirts with their feet sheathed in strange sandals, middle aged couples carrying the black plastic bags of street food vendors, solitary women with backpacks and shopping bags, old ladies with patterned long shirts and pseudo-designer bags, young women with stunted high heels and fashionable clothing, men with caps and coffee and suitcases – human beings, human lives everywhere, threading a thousand invisible threads from place to place.
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[A little later] On the train, in my seat, not yet departed. Walking down the steps to the platform with the pale gold light coming in from the city, the wide open roof above and the trains resting neatly in their tracks below, it seemed like a scene lived in a dream – though in reality probably one seen in a film or through a screen.
This must be what people love about travelling: the sense of liberation, of opportunity, of looseness and limbo; you can afford yourself the illusion that, because there is no-one around who knows you, you exist in a vacuum, without ties or responsibilities. Free, and floating… a trapezist in the throws of adventure.
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10pm – I’ve had such a wonderful day – I simply must get it down, and typing is the fastest way to do so, so here I am. My legs are rather stiff from first sitting down cross-legged for several hours, and then walking in the mountains; but I’m very contented, and very content. It’s so quiet here – if I don’t type, as I’m doing now, the silence gapes in my ears before other sounds gradually make themselves heard.
First the train station, and then the train: writing; thinking; dozing, my eyes closed… and my head jerking upwards from my hand and feeling a stiff strain at the back of my neck – ow – from sleeping in a posturally foolish position. And glancing at the small TV, and looking out the window at the fuzzy trees beaming past, and seeing the sky get larger and wider and finally hearing the announcement on the loudspeakers – we are approaching Ulsan station. Zip up the backpack, step onto the platform, locate the way to the entrance hall of the station; scan the people sitting and standing between the benches – no monk garb in sight. Check your phone: she’d said outside. Step outside, and it’s surprisingly cool, very pleasant, not hot and humid like Seoul is; you feel comfortable even though you still have your cardigan on from the airconned train. Scanning again, this time the people on the path stretched around the station, this time the cars… And you hear your name being called, and you rush over, over two small crossings, and she grabs your hand in her mittened ones firmly, and gives you a hug with a smile, and you feel your soul lightening and warming, immediately happier.
In the car, and it’s a short drive to the temple. Her name is Cheondo sunim (천도스님), ‘sunim’ (스님) being the Korean for ‘Buddhist monk’. On the way a few questions about where you were born, where your parents are, etc. The same compliments: “Wow, you’ve only been learning for six months and your Korean is this good?” – hardly true, but appreciated. You feel yourself getting happier as you look at the trees in their full blue bloom and you say so; your eyes almost prick with tears. Rice paddies and farming patches recline below; the sky in its full ripeness reigns above, brushed barely with cloud. And then there are the mountains, like tigers, like sentinels, at the edges of the sky; taking up space, letting you into their keep. You are going up the drive to the temple now, and you see the corner of a traditional building peeking over the hillside; the distinctive colours, so many of them, saturated in the sunlight; and the heads of bobbing flowers too, bold and bright and beautiful. There are people in the driveway, the parking lot, leaving. She lowers her window to say goodbye to them. She had explained on the way that they have been very busy recently: lots of guests in the past few days and lots to come. You get out the car, drop off your bag inside the entrance to what seems an ordinary kind of country house, and follow her up the main path, shorn of stone. And then you see it – the main temple. Or rather, it blooms up out at you in a burst of fire and colour. The gold incandescent in the sun, you fancy you hear the clang and twining and clashing of Oriental stringed instruments and cymbals, so striking is its appearance. The surrounding plants look as if they have been set alight; you register a red Japanese maple with the sunlight gilding its edges, making it luminous and semi-transparent.
But it is past one, and time for lunch. “Buffet style,” she says. The dining hall is high-ceilinged, a large L shaped room with an open kitchen and several small tables. On a long, steel table near the far wall, several side dishes of vegetables (반찬, or ‘banchan’) have been laid out; two women, who are not monks but appear to work at the temple, hover round it. You scoop out a small serving of rice from the rice cooker, are cautious at first with your helpings of banchan but gain confidence as you move along the containers. Two pieces of fried sweet potato and a piece of tofu are also set aside for you.
“Is your mum in Korea at the moment?” You are asked.
“No, she’s in Paris.”
“Well then, these will be your mums for now!” And Cheondo sunim gestures to the two women. One of them, the shorter of the two with a cute, flat, potato-like nose, is the genius behind your lunch and all the meals you are to have. Then Cheondo sunim leaves the room, telling you to come down for tea and fruit when you are finished, and you are left with the two women. Shyly, you sit with them, eyes on your bowl and listening with half an ear to their conversation, or the scraps of it that you understand through the mesh of their accents and your limited vocabulary. All the time there is the soft call and cry of the birds outside, of the wind and the trees, coming in through the open windows. The food is delicious, and so you concentrate on chewing slowly, enjoying every bite. Once you are finished you are asked if you ate well – the answer obviously affirmative – and, encouraged by the women, go down to take your tea.
You enter the room. Two low wooden tables are aligned in parallel in its centre, and at the table to the left Cheondo sunim is sitting with guests, three other women, middle-aged, and another monk, who looks a little younger, wearing glasses. She prepares you tea, and tells you to follow the younger monk to the main temple. The two of you go together; you enter the temple, place a floor cushion and learn how to bow. You bow to the Buddha, to the painting on the far wall and also to the guardian of the mountain. When you have finished you leave and go round the temple grounds the long way before entering the sort of living-room again.
The guests have left and you make small talk with Cheondo sunim, learning a little about each other’s lives. You eat some 떡 (glutinous rice cake, or ‘tteok’) and she teaches you how to drink tea properly, in the traditional way. Still sitting, you look outside through the screen doors and see the trees fanning the bench below with their shadows. Amongst the melded tree trunks are the ribs of a single tree that stand out with bold, Ghibli-like clarity. A couple comes and sits with a packed lunch in the freckled shade: a headless pair of yellow sleeves and a headless pair of blue ones, with hands at the ends of them, and sitting bodies attached, unseen, to their tops. Fingers entwined with chopsticks, moving from box to small plastic bag to somewhere above where the blinds obscure your vision. She goes to the entrance, calls out to them, greets them, invites them in for tea afterwards. They never do come in, but other guests arrive shortly afterwards; a man with tanned skin and a curiously apologetic, likeable face; and a woman with long, flared light jeans. She has short hair and kind eyes, as does he; she has red on her lips, and he has a strong southern accent. We sit and sit, and they talk and talk, and soon we can hear chanting from the main temple, or at least you can; you are not sure about the others, for they are absorbed in conversation. From time to time, the conversation alights on you, and you are asked something, or else discussed. You do not mind; but your legs are starting to get a bit stiff and sore. There is fruit – lots of it – melon and apple and grapes and orange, and because you have not much else to do you slowly make good headway in the nearest pile of grapes.
And then we are getting up, and I am shown my room and given some clothes and some mandala patterns to colour in, and I sit with my colouring pencils feeling like I’ve returned to childhood while they whirl around somewhere abstract to me, talking, their laughs occasionally making their way to my ears. Soon it is dinner time – I am called to eat and also to meet the head monk (큰 스님, or ‘Keun sunim’), who has arrived. I help Cheondo sunim fetch a big box of what seem to be raspberries from the fridge and together head upstairs to the dining room. In the corner sits the head monk; I bow to her and help Cheondo sunim portion out the berries. She is generous with her portions. The large box is emptied into six bowls, and this, along with some 유부 초밥 (fried sweet tofu stuffed with rice, or ‘yubuchobab’) being made by the younger monk, is to be our dinner. The three monks sit at one table and you sit at another with the two women from lunch. The five of them constitute the temple’s inhabitants. You eat the berries one at a time: it is the first time you have ever seen them, and though they appear at a casual glance to be raspberries they are not. They are shaped like the Buddhist lanterns, or perhaps the lanterns are shaped like them – you learn that they are called 산딸기, or ‘mountain strawberries’. They do not taste like strawberries, however, but are more like slightly crunchy raspberries, a little more sour, a little darker, with a hint of pomegranate in the taste. They are delicious and you savour them, peeling some apart and staring into their interiors pricked with yellow. You eat the chobab, too, slowly and precisely, and when you are done, with three berries clutched in your left fist – you want to take a photo of what they look like – you help with the washing up and prepare to go for a walk with the dog: the first you’ve heard of there being one, or at least the first you’ve understood).
Together with the woman-who-was-not-the-cook from lunch, you set off down the sloping path leading out of the temple grounds. The dog – named Bultan (불탄), or Tan for short – has a kind face and beautiful white fur, and trots a few steps ahead of the two of you. As you come to flatter land you notice how the sky is a soft golden-blue, its light reflected in the mirror-like surfaces of rice paddies stretching into the distance.
She leads the three of you past the fields and the occasional house to the mouth of the mountains, where a rough road has been funnelled through the trees. You descend deeper and deeper into the forest, talking from time to time, listening to the swaying of the wind in the trees and the crunch and pad of your footsteps. Through an opening in the canopy you suddenly make out the hulking form of the mountain against the backdrop of the pale sky – massive, impassive, a thousand shades of green – and you feel that you are walking into the heart of something ancient. You walk until you reach the foot of the hiking trail, at which point she turns around and you head back towards the temple. On the way you stop to water the sunims’ patch of vegetables: there are cucumbers, potatoes, other crops of which you do not know the names… when you arrive at the temple she asks you if you would like some fruit, and you were not expecting to eat more but say yes, grateful; and together you walk back to your room with a tray laden with washed grapes and apple and orange. In Korean Buddhist temples it is tradition to sleep on the floor, and after helping you set up your bedding she bids you goodnight. Night falls quickly and quietly in the mountains; before you know it it is pitch dark outside and a page full of typed words stares out at you from your laptop.
To be continued…
