So I’m writing days six and seven of this trip in two parts because half of each of them was our temple stay, which sort of deserves a post of its own, but I have a few things that I want to talk about regarding that, and some of the stuff we saw even after leaving the temple aligns with some of the stuff I want to say. So two parts for two days, but each part isn’t its own day. Also, part 1 might end up being way longer than the next one. My blog, my rules.

That being said, here’s the total itinerary for the two days with all the minor details before I get to the bulk of what I want to talk about:

On the morning of day six (Saturday), we left Seoul by the KTX bullet train for the city of Gyeongju, all the way across the country. It was really fast, using a GPS speedometer app I clocked a top speed of around 154 mph. Nowhere near the maglev trains in Japan and China, but for conventional rail, it’s really good, rivaling the Germany’s ICE and the French TGV. We ate at a restaurant there, then traveled by bus into the mountain region, where we reached Golgusa Temple, which sits in a small wooded valley.

This part of Korea is beautiful, and it has a strange sort of feeling to it; the flora feels familiar to what I’m used to in Western Pennsylvania, but the terrain reminds me more of the extreme topography of the Cascades, in Washington state. Western PA forests feel approachable almost, safe, familiar, and comfortable (as long as you don’t believe in too many myths). The towering redwoods and cliffs of the Cascades, on the other hand, inspire awe, reverence, and even a bit of fear (dark conifers help build atmosphere). But the forest in this part of Korea, where the geology is extreme but the trees are small, has a different feeling, something in between respect, playfulness, spirituality (the temple setting adds a lot here), and wonder.

At the temple, we did some Seonmudo (a type of martial art) and yoga training, then joined one of the monks in 108 prostrations (we ended up doing only about 40-50, but more on those later). Dinner was vegetarian as expected, and in the evening, we watched a music and yoga performance, took a night walk, then spent some time getting to know the other student group at the temple, a group of MBA students from UNC. The following morning, we woke up shortly before 5am for a morning meditation session, then ate breakfast, did another Seonmudo session, spent a few hours walking around the temple grounds, then had a midmorning tea with the monks just before our departure.

After leaving, we stopped back in Gyeongju for a group lunch and some sightseeing before going to the hotel in Pohang, where we went out for dinner on our own and walked a length of the beach at night. Overall, a pretty good two days!

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So now to the real stuff.

I’m not particularly religious. I won’t go too much into the details, but it just never appealed to me that much. And that’s why I quite liked the short window of Buddhism that I experienced. Here are some of the things I noticed and experienced that painted a favorable picture of the philosophy (sidebar: people disagree on whether to call Buddhism a religion, a faith, a culture, a philosophy, etc…, and while I understand that words have specific meanings, I will use them interchangeably).

First, the main Seonmudo instructor is actually a Christian. He seemed to find no contradiction between his Christian faith and his adherence to certain Buddhist practices, so who are we to say they are mutually exclusive? This struck me as unique; possibly due to my own biases, I perceive religions as being hostile to one anothers’ beliefs, but here I found that to be untrue. I admire a belief system that is open to coexistence with others.

Second, the monks and the staff of the temple are very matter-of-fact and practical. They used Google Translate to communicate complex language to us, played a recorded American English voice during the prostrations to help us understand the meaning of the acts, and played music on speakers during the Seonmudo and yoga sessions to aid in creating a calming atmosphere. And when it was cold in the morning, the monks did not “become one with the cold” as they might in movies, they donned tossle caps for their shaved heads to stay warm, pom-poms and all. One might think that all of this “ruins the immersion”, especially the American English voice during the prostrations that we perform in the Korean Temple, but then I thought back to my experiences in Hindu poojas, where I chant memorized prayers that I do not understand, and I realized that perhaps adaptation is better than historical realism.

(Sidebar, there’s an argument to be made here that part of the culture and the religion is the language, and by removing the language, you strip away the meaning of the culture/religion. It’s a fair point; many ideas and phrases can only be properly stated in a specific language, especially an ancient one like Sanskrit. Therefore, by translating it, you lose part of the original meaning, and as you continue to translate the religion into increasingly more accessible or distant languages and the ancient ones are forgotten, the original meaning gets lost forever. In rebuttal to this argument, I bring up first the fact that Dnyaneshwar (a 13th century Indian poet who translated the Bhagavad Gita, an ancient Hindu text, from Sanskrit into the much more accessible Marathi) is even now respected for his work, and second, that of the 2.4 billion Christians in the world, very few of them are reading the Bible in its original Amharic, Hebrew, and Greek, and without prolific translation (and evangelism), the faith could not have grown as it did. End sidebar.)

Third, (less of my observation and more of an attribute of the religion), from what I saw, it’s not about the Buddha; it’s about you, your consciousness, and your mindset. Which I like, mainly because I like free will. But now we’re about to get really “out there”, because I’m going to start hard theorizing.
The religion doesn’t really have to exist. Hear me out. Unlike other religions, where the deities are said to have real power and influence, particularly with creation, destruction, and fate, and the communication with the deities, through prayer or through a religious leader, is a principal part of the faith, Buddhism puts all the power in your hands, because there are no deities. So you could go through all the practices: the meditation, the physical exercise, the focused lifestyle, and reach the same level of inner peace without needing the greater religious structure. Then why have it at all? If Buddhism is really about the individual, doesn’t the greater structure undermine that concept? A short anecdote…
A few years back I went with my parents to a seminar on Hinduism hosted by not a priest, but a silicon valley engineer (not really important to the story but it’s interesting). I don’t remember the question I asked him after the seminar (it was something about the purpose of a God that I know isn’t real), but I remembered one part of his answer (sort of like HHGTTG): He asked me to visualize emptiness. I told him it was difficult. Then he pointed to the empty water bottle in front of me and asked me to use that to visualize emptiness. By focusing on the unoccupied space between the walls of the bottle, I found it much easier.
To me, Buddhism is like that bottle. It’s merely a bit of assistance with the meditation and mindfulness practices. In part it gives you a reason to do it. But for that reason I like th

All of this built my respect for Buddhism. Also, I didn’t even mention it above, but the values are very positive as well, specifically discipline, focus on individual tasks, reflection, and upkeep of the physical body. I could certainly stand to have more of all of those things in my life.

Now for my doubts.

After the midmorning tea with the monks, I asked a question to the translator, something along the lines of “when not doing martial arts, meditating, and teaching visitors like us, what do the monks do all day?”. The answer seemed to be, nothing. They do more meditations, more yoga, self-reflection, reading, and focus on reaching enlightenment.

As someone who believes that a core part of a successful life is creation, an entire lifetime of just consumption (of knowledge, not material) and reflection feels incomplete. I imagine that if I were a monk, in a peaceful place such as the temple, with a body and mind trained in patience and discipline, I would find great satisfaction in creating art, writing, and even scientific discoveries. I’m not alone in this sentiment, some of the greatest creators in history were monks and other religious figures: Gregor Mendel, Lemaître, and Copernicus are just a few. I imagine that when you have a great mind (it takes one to be a monk, else you get one after becoming a monk) and a lot of time on your hands, you tend to seek out new ideas.
But these monks aren’t. I do not mean to say that the monks are hoarding their knowledge and wisdom without sharing it; the head monk spoke about his travels and lectures across the world, and obviously all of the monks share their philosophies with all the visitors to the temple. They are by no means selfish (although given that Buddhism is about self-enlightenment at its core, selfishness may not be a negative trait if it means that each person looks out for their own enlightenment). I only think that for me specifically, a lifetime of gaining knowledge and wisdom is only worth it if is shared and utilized prolifically.
Tangentially, on the topic of thinking about things, I feel like the philosophy taught to us doesn’t encourage it. Their idea of a “clear mind” is a nice one; they say to clear the mind completely and focus only on what one is doing at an instant; eating, walking, yoga, etc… and I found it difficult, because my mind wanders. Certainly there are benefits to having a clear mind, but there are also benefits to allowing the mind to wander. Some psychological research suggests that deliberately allowing the mind to wander allows truly original thoughts to form in a way that they otherwise cannot. I have personally found this to be true; by allowing myself to fall into boredom, I start thinking. Most of my ideas for this series of blogs came from times that I was sitting on the bus, walking around in the city or temple, or zoning out in group conversations (sorry).
Now that I think of it, just as the Buddhist monks focus intently on walking and eating while doing those things, I wonder if they set aside time to deeply focus on thinking. That would be a very difficult type of control, to effectively turn on and off the mind at will. I guess I sort of do that when I write in my personal journal, since ideas get organized better when you write (This article was shared with me originally by my dad; the “There’s no such thing as thinking” section is relevant), but I think that there’s a difference between ideas coming out organized (by writing) and letting them flow freely (via wandering). I don’t like the idea of trying to block that flow of ideas.

Speaking of wandering, I’m doing quite a lot of it here and not in a good way, so might as well wrap up. Should I be a monk? No. Is Buddhism right for me? As a whole, probably not; I’m not a fan of the greater structure, I feel like it’s more genuine to seek out “enlightenment” or “inner peace” or whatnot due to personal motivation, not out of the desire to be a “good Buddhist”. But are many of the teachings appealing? Certainly. The connection between strength of body and mind, the ability to focus intently, and reflection on one’s past and present are all important. I don’t see myself doing 108 prostrations every day, but I could see myself practicing cross-legged sitting for fifteen minutes at night while reflecting on my day. I imagine it would only do good for me.
Maybe I’ll try it. Until then though, that’s all for today (2 days late but whatever).

-Rohit