Temple Stay

We arrived at the temple in the middle of Thursday afternoon, and left the next day at noon enlightened. Maybe not enlightened by Buddhist standards, but enlightened about Buddhism. We participated in Buddhist ceremonies, ate in the traditional Buddhist way and slept in the finest of Buddhist lodgings. Buddhist ceremonies involved sitting in extremely uncomfortable positions, and attempting to understand an esoteric concept twice translated into English. The most enjoyable was meditation. There was an open-air pavilion, overlooking the mountains and set above a rushing stream. It was one of the most beautiful places in the world. While sitting in silence, ignoring the pain in your knees, you get to contemplate life. The last step of meditation was to lie on your back, which was great. We all agreed that the meditation pavilion was our favorite place. A traditional Buddhist meal is a process in which eating is a secondary benefit. You start with four bowls, a spoon and chopsticks. You get a little bit of water in one bowl, rice in another, then soup and finally side dishes. The unpacking, placement, arrangement and filling of these bowls are quite particular. One yellow radish is included with the bowls. Once finished eating, you clean the inside of all the bowls with the radish, and a little bit of water (no soap). You then drink the water, and eat the radish. Finally, you are given a little bit more water for final bowl rinse. Then everyone dumps his or her water into a common bucket. If there are ANY food particles in the bucket, everyone shares drinking the water…

For sleeping, you are allotted a blanket and a pillow. There is a large room with no furniture. We slept on the floor. This was actually rather nice, except for the grandfather clock that successfully woke us up every hour. Reveille was at 3:30 AM. We participated in a couple ceremonies including 108 bows, which involves standing to kneeling 108 times. Apparently, several thousand bow ceremonies are not uncommon, so we were happy with only the 108. We were scheduled to go for a hike around the mountains, but it was raining so we got to take a two-hour nap. This was heaven, given the 3:30 wake up. Apparently napping is not a typical monk activity; they were smiling at us when that was what we chose to do. There was also some clandestine Pringle eating at night, also not condoned by the monks.