10: Possible

“How often do you shave your head?” I grinned to the monk.

He replied (through the translator), “Every ten days. On the sixth, sixteenth, and twenty-sixth of each month according to the lunar calendar.” The translator added that on these days, the monks were semi-permitted to kill creatures (in this case, lice).

The monk and I exchanged smiles and nods, and fellow guests continued the tea ceremony (ceremoniously) with more questions. The sacred person sitting before us fourteen worldly visitors was a monk in training (and looked about thirty-five graceful years old). His skin was smooth, his eyes large, and his fingers looked unmistakably powerful and gentle: as if they had never lifted a thing, but could lift a tractor from the mud with ease.

To tell more of the twenty-four hour experience would spoil its existentially-unrepeatable, words-are-just-symbols-and-not-enlightening-(in-and-of-themselves) nature. But hell, I’d like to better remember some of it...

*

Holding a five thousand won bill to the bus driver, I muttered, “Uhh...gkwen-chan-eye-oh?” (“Is this okay?”) He grunted, spoke some Korean, and the line of twenty people behind me grunted/laughed in unison. My bus card was empty, and I had no change, so I awkwardly continued on the bus without paying. (Commence head-down, shamefully-finding-an-empty-seat-all-the-way-in-the-back scene.) A pitying Korean teenage boy met me in my seat and handed me some change. (I later apologized to the driver and paid my ticket.)

This happened after a forty-five minute, semi-humid, triumphant hike up the mountain. I sat in the bus, delighted I had made it to the final leg before just making it in time for the Beomeosa Temple Stay. The bus would deliver me a few more kilometers to the top, at the temple entrance. 

Then, I (hilariously) watched my joy dissipate into a tangly, deflated red balloon: the bus turned right around, down the mountain, heading into town with a speedy, Korean haste. 

Peace, temple!

*

Temple-staying is when (Buddhism-)intrigued people briefly glimpse monastic life. At this particular temple (in Korea, there are quite a lot!), we stuck to a strict schedule of activities for twenty-four hours. 

Some of the various highlights included:

• Learning proper bowing and praying etiquette (not unreasonably complicated)

• Meditating (go figure)

• Hiking to another temple (I swear I spotted some enlightened cats flying across bamboo chutes up there)

• Eating a traditional meal in silence

• Praying 108 times (to make prayer beads)

• Touring the temple property

• Chanting (go figure)

*

After some internal laughter and a shared taxi ride back up the mountain, I made it! The temple grounds were pocketed with tourists (mostly Korean). The afternoon sun dipped above some hazy mist, about to peak for the day.

And what a calming, enchanting place. Beomeosa Temple was established around 678, and some of the oldest remaining buildings are from the 1600s. Perhaps because of excellent maintenance, periodic renovations, or simply its adjacency to nature and hella-old mountains, Beomeosa did not feel especially distant in time. Compared to the bustling city of five million I currently call home, it felt infinitely more familiar and welcoming. It was, in fact, so much more sensible to me than the hodgepodge of apartment complexes, wires, streets, and concrete of urban life.

As I explored the various areas, I reached the North End (I believe?) and saw a sign in English: “Temple Stay.” I climbed the steps to a pleasantly simple rectangle of wood and stone and doorways. To be as inconspicuous as possible (as I was late), I tiptoed inside, quickly changed into grey linens, and quietly plopped onto a brown matt in the circle with fellow stayers. The monk in the middle continued talking. (From his tone, he must have felt he was sitting on a delightful cloud rather than a mere cushion.)

*

Shoving a brown thread into the tiny hole of a brown wooden bead one-hundred eight times was hard on the knees. For about eight minutes (or perhaps eternity?), we made 108 prayer beads. Signifying the 108 feelings in Buddhism (as well as the lapse of years since the Chicago Cubs had won the World Series until 2016!), these handicrafts were to be constructed by simultaneously bowing, fastening a bead onto the thread, standing up, (rinsing,) and repeating. So, at the SMACK! of the monk’s hollowed pipe, we sunk our knees into the matt, touched our temples to the floor, raised our hands to our ears, and fidgeted with the materials. 

SMACK!

Stand up! Fold. Insert.

SMACK!

…

SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!

The middle-aged man next to me, who had quit his job in Hong Kong to travel, sniggered. It was clear the task was ridiculous, what with the pace of it and how some of the holes were too small. I giggled in my hea--SMACK!

BOW. (Knees crack.) FOREHEAD. HANDS LIFT. BEAD. UP!

I heard a bead or two scatter away from its unlucky threader. (Haha!)

Bow. Forehead. Hands. Bead. (Quickly-pre-position-next-beads-for-faster-fastening.) UP!

*

To clean up, an assistant poured hot water into a bowl, and we were instructed to swirl the water around, pour into the larger bowl, and use a yellow sliver of fermented radish as a sponge. Next, when two bowls are empty, you drink the remaining food scraps and pour the contents into the biggest bowl for composting. (That might be incorrect, though, as I did not follow well and earned some smiles from the translator as I tried to gulp what was a lot of water, some rice, spinach, and the radish. (Mmm...WET RADISH.))

Chanting in another temple hall--where offerings of towering, gorgeous grapefruits, dragon fruits, bananas, apples, and watermelons adorned the carved shelves--followed dinner. Of course, many of us stayers didn’t understand what we were communicating with the universe, each other, and ourselves--but it didn’t matter a whole lot. I felt the sacred air about us. (Language is an arbitrary song, no?) (And everything is sacred in context?)

Before an early bedtime, our group joined others at a courtyard to listen to the temple drummers. On the second story of an open-deck house, a double-malleted monk went to town on a polar bear sized gong. He painted the surrounding area with melodic, metallic vibrations. (What better way to usher us all into silence?)

Everyone drifted away to their lodging. Us stayers strolled to ours, unraveled our mattresses and blankets, and prepared for an early bedtime. (Sleep came quickly. We did pray a helluva lot...) 

Pleasant sounding snores floated above our little dreaming bodies.

*

“How did you become a monk?” inquired a German man, who was about my age, similar in beard and glasses. He sat upright next to his girlfriend, all of us half-circling the monk for more questions.

He explained he had grown up like many Koreans, attending school to qualify for a good job. While an excellent student and a college graduate, he decided the rat race was not for him. He had no ambition to (as I shall put it here) ‘become someone.’ The life so many around him would settle into--a career, a marriage, and a striving to accumulate wealth and some measure of success--was unappealing.

So, he became a monk. 

And he went to monk school. 

And he sat here, with us.

Immediately, his simple story sunk atop my shoulder blades and at the arch of my neck--a wrinkling, electric chill. For, at my current episode in life, just like he once did, I have no drive to necessarily 'become someone.' (A monk life for me, maybe?!)

*

As I speeded back to my apartment on the subway, I realized the mental quietude would eventually evaporate in the mere day-to-day of the city and its society.

At the temple in the mountains, I had gained glimpses of the potential beauty of a different life: death of ego; immersion into Now; alertness to the wholly unique, will-never-repeat, subjective nature of conscious existence. 

For in the monks’ presence, I felt a hint of their particular magnetism, achieved from countless hours of meditation. They do not belong to the states of being conjured from busy brainwaves of the clever clever primate. Perhaps they have indeed departed from the collective dream. Perhaps they live in possibility.

November 6, 2016