My stay at a Zen Temple - Day 1

This past weekend I stayed at a the Zen Center - Hwa Gye Sah Temple in Seoul. The temple hosts anyone for free with optional donations. It was a wonderful and complete experience and perhaps a life changing one ... only time will tell.

Day 1

I arrived at the temple in the evening ... I was given the monk clothes and a room in the temple attic to stay. There were many foreign monks at this temple; the ones I met were from Israel, Serbia and USA; the head monk was from Serbia. It felt really easy and pleasant to talk to the monks at the temple ... I had many questions and later we would have many chats. Not long after I arrived, I went to observe an ongoing chanting meditation going on in the main room at the temple ... as it turned out later the chanting would continue non stop for my entire stay there! After a few minutes of trying to observer and imitate, I left for a brief walk around. Soon after I came back an hour long meditation session began.


The meditation session went by a lot quicker than I anticipated, but for much of the time, I had difficulty sitting properly with my knees touching the ground and my back straight ... my body is not yet adapted to that. My mind was also wondering off to different directions from time to time. The basic premise of the meditation I was doing was to concentrate on my breath and not let any other thoughts in ... to clean my mind. The meditation practiced at the temple involves having your eyes half open and concentrating on some spot a meter or so away.



Once the meditation finished everyone left for bed ... I decided to go walk around some more outside and inside before heading to bed around 9pm. While walking around the temple I noticed that people that would see me would bow with their hands together at their chest ... it was a sign of respect designated to monks and others in training ... I would return the bow as is customary. On my walk outside, a hinja (monk in training) stopped me and said hello ... I stopped to chat with him for a bit ... he was from USA. He told me about what it meant to be a hinja; apparently before you are a monk you have to go through hard labour training for about 6 months or up to 1 year. He live at a Korean temple in the mountains and was introduced to Buddhism by a monk that saved him in USA. He was 26 when he was introduced to Buddhism, I told him that I am 26 now. He was in Korea to become a monk. We talked a bit about the training and what kind of things one has to overcome ... he mentioned an example of him being 46 years old and one of his masters who was ordering him around was 23 years old ... so one has to overcome desires and anger, etc to deal with such situations. He told me about some of the frustration he had ... he had taken the test for admission to become a monk twice now and failed both times ... he said that the reason was due to his lack of knowledge of Korean and so, he was at this Temple in Seoul to learn Korean. I asked him many of the questions that I wanted to get answers to;

1. Does Buddhism believe in god(s)?
2. What does Buddhism say about our place and connection to nature and all living beings.
3. What is the expected role of a master and what kind of teaching they provide for a student that one cannot attain on their own studies?

I didn't like his answers; he told me that he was not sure, but in his opinion he thought Buddha is believed to be a supreme god ... this was not correct. The had trouble answering my other questions, he would stutter and had trouble formulating sentences. I left to bed a bit unhappy with the answers I got and very sceptical ... luckily things would clear up for me the next day.

On my way to my room, I met an Israeli monk, who was there visiting the temple where he became a monk ... we had a brief but nice interactions; he was always smiling and spoke in a soft and calm voice. As I was leaving, he offered to wake me up the next morning ... I said that I would be grateful.

To be continued ...