This is the second instalment of a three-part account of the temple stay I did at Baeknyunsa the week before last. For the first instalment, click here.
Day 2
[Sometime in the late evening] I was outside staring at the stars just now and my eyes started playing tricks on me. I was thinking about the Milky Way and the time I saw seven shooting stars in one night when I started to fancy seeing the auras of trees and streaks of light behind stars and clouds made of faintly glittering dust between them. So I blinked and got up from my position squatting in the courtyard and walked to the middle of the car park. I could look at the stars forever and ever – for a whole night, if I weren’t tired and didn’t need to wake up early. They are so bright here, so vivid; I stared at one that was hovering just above the roof of the building in which I’m staying, and fancied it getting bigger and bigger. I wondered for a moment whether it was an asteroid on its way to strike the earth – but I blinked again, and realised it was only winking at me, as the others stars did if I stared at them.
Earlier this evening I did 108 bows with Cheondo sunim to a female voiceover that spoke in a consistent, American-accented voice of the things for which we were prostrating. We meditated for a bit afterwards – how long for exactly I was not sure – and when we finally stood up my legs were tight from the bows. We went down to the small kitchen in the guesthouse and she made odeng (fishcake) and tomato ramen, which we ate at the little table there. She hinted strongly that next time I came I should challenge myself to 3000 bows in a go; apparently 108 bows take 20 minutes, if one is fast, and 3000 take ten hours. “If you practice everyday it won’t be hard. really, it’s better than the gym: it’s great for the body and for the mind.”
The day started, however, when I’d woken up at 5:45 after various vivid dreams and went straight to have breakfast: 잣죽 (or ‘jatjuk’, which I’ve found out is pine nut porridge) and varying banchan, my two favourites of which were the kimchi and marinated strips of aubergine. After breakfast was fresh peppermint tea which we picked directly from the garden. The smell was amazing, the colour like pale, molten gold; with a sprig floating in my cup it seemed such a luxury to drink.
In the morning hours following I did my colouring, and sat with my notebook sketching my surroundings and noting things down as the thoughts came to me. Around 11am, encouraged by Cheondo-sunim, I went up to the temple to pray. The youngest monk was there, chanting, and so as not to disturb her I slipped in and out as quietly as I could. Resuming my place under the trees outside, I continued to watch and draw and think. A little before I had gone up to pray, a car had pulled up the sandy drive. The visitors were two monks from another temple, and I could hear them chatting now with Cheondo sunim and Keun sunim inside the living-room. They had brought with them a collection of curiously shaped rocks; I could see them at the far end of the courtyard from where I sat below the dancing leaves and birdsong. Here in the mountains the days seem long – it feels as though there are pools of time in which to lounge, and yet mealtimes seem to come around so quickly. The call was sounding: it was time for lunch.
Inside the dining room were piles of fresh lettuce and small bowls of doenjang, beside which cut cucumber and chillies were lying tamely, patiently waiting to be eaten. Rice, several banchan, a dish of tofu and bamboo and doenjang jiggae were displayed proudly along the serving table – a feast in honour of the visiting monks, I presumed. During lunch, the cook – the one with the cute-potato nose – engaged me in conversation.
“Korea is nice, isn’t it? It’s nice to have four seasons.”
“Yes,” I replied, meaning what I said but slightly confused as to what the seasons had to do with it particularly.
She then went on to say something else, but, unsure whether I had understood correctly, looked at her questioningly. The other lady repeated it for me: “They don’t four seasons there, do they?”
By ‘there’, they were referring to France, my hometown (or so they considered it). Slightly perplexed, I said that yes, they have four seasons there too; at which the lady next to me looked confused and surprised, and proceeded to eat the rest of her lunch in wonder.
After the meal I descended to take tea and coffee and fruit with the monks, as usual. A generous slice of melon was placed before me, and it was so ripe and green that it seemed to practically glow with its freshness. I was served a cup of delicious smelling coffee too, which I had grounded the beans for – my first time doing so. Sprawled around the table, the monks slurped their mangos and sipped their coffee and talked and laughed. Before the two visiting monks left, preparations for their departure were made – gifts of fruit and rice and homemade, chemical-free washing liquid were gathered and organised to make the short trip from the shade of the building to the car out in the sun. It was the time of day at which the sun was its hottest, and Keun sunim had put on a Vietnamese leaf hat to protect herself from its rays. The other monks laughed at her tall, loose figure, topped by the conical hat that shaded her frowning, clever, tortoise-like upper lip.
I think it is not until one is amongst them that one realises how quirky monks are – from the way they slurp and polish off their food to the way they interact with one another, joking, teasing; it is perfectly permissible to sit with one knee up and the other tucked beneath you as you drink your tea, and to laugh and talk with a mouth full of masticated food. Though bound by certain spiritual laws, here, tucked away in the mountains and removed from societal conventions, one is oddly free. I was also touched by their generosity towards each other: by the abundance of shining melons and twinkling grapes in that cardboard box, and by the vast array of interesting stones the visiting monks had brought along. The temple was a place of plenty: the monks received abundant gifts of tea and coffee and other things, and they gave generously in their turn, offering something to everyone, whether it be a free meal and cup of tea or gleaming piles of fresh fruit.
Ordered by Cheondo sunim, I carried the laden box of fruit to their car and returned to transport a hefty-looking bag of rice. The more senior of the two visiting monks had already picked it up. I tried to take it from her, insisting I should carry it but she shifted her arms decisively away from me saying, “No, no, you’re young, I’ll do it!” (One might have presumed that this was the very reason I should have carried the heavy bag of rice, but she was already waddling her way to the car, loading it into the trunk before getting in herself.) Just as the door was about to close, Cheondo sunim called out – the monk who had just got into the car had left her shoes outside the house in which we had taken our tea. The monk in question waved this away, calling out in that characteristically-Korean, dismissive, almost irritated tone: “Keep them! I don’t need them, I don’t need them” even as Keun Sunim and Cheondo sunim protested. Before they could return her shoes to her, she had pulled the car door in with a slam – and they were off in a swirl of hot dust. Through the rear window I could see her lolling in the back seat and the other monk in the driver’s seat, as if she were some kind of celebrity and the other her chauffeur. As the car ground down the sloping drive, the dust in its wake started to dissipate, leaving us behind in the laughing sunshine.
You’ve just read part two of three of ‘baeknyunsa temple’ ; stay tuned for the third and final instalment, coming shortly to a browser near you! Follow me on instagram @hann.iyagi for updates.
