Temple Stay in Angharad's Eyes

Wednesday, 15 July 2009

Ding, ding, ding, BANG BANG BANG, BOOOOOSSSSHHHHH

That is what woke me up at 2.30 a.m. A monk was going round temple buildings with a bell, chanting Buddhist sutras and playing a wooden ritual instrument. My three-hour sleep was bizarre mainly due to the fact that we were sleeping in a temple, on the floor in Korean temple style. Everyone was getting up. I put my stuff away into the locker and went to the main temple with other girls and started our prostrations and prayers. We had done mantras and full prayer prostrations for about 20+ times. Then we were ushered out into the courtyard. We were arranged into pairs and one by one went up to the temple bell tower. We were given the opportunity to slam a huge piece of wood into a massive bell. It was really quite loud and meant to call the monks and nuns to prayer. I tried to bang it as loud as I could but the piece of wood took me with it and my attempt was quite feeble. I walked with the others up to main temple and we began to recite mantras and prayers again. I felt really faint as this was about 5 a.m.; we had not eaten or drunk; we had to keep getting up and down. This was for an hour or so; we were lucky as we had a nun in front of us; we just imitated her the entire time.

After morning prayers we got back to the main hall; we were greeted by the most awesome monk ever who had this tinkle in his eye. He taught us this really fun meditation; he spoke in such a way that we did not need a translator. We were shown some Buddhist self-defence using the international guy as 'a bad man'. We also did some crazy exercises that made everyone laugh, like swinging our arms, doing some sort of Judo-Ballet combination; it was just too funny. I wish we had filmed it. Afterwards he let us meditate' by lying on the floor and closing our eyes. We did this novel meditation practice for an hour; we had free time afterwards.

The big dong rang again for breakfast; we all hurried to find...Babimbap. I had some rice; I was told it was bad to waste any. It was really annoying as it had these horrible beans in it. I also had some water and tea. Caroline had the same; afterwards we washed our plates out the back and said thank you for the meal.

Commentary by Angharad John, Year 2, Philosophy and Ethics
Photo by Dr. M. Deegalle