Seoul: Loving the Lantern Festival

Throughout our time in South Korea we’ve seen lots of paper lanterns at the temples we visited. These lanterns are made to celebrate the Buddha’s birthday, and it’s the members of a temple, both the monks and the lay practitioners, who make these lanterns each year. After about three weeks of preparing, the birthday celebration culminates with the Lotus Lantern Festival, a nighttime parade on May 11th.



We stayed at a hotel across the street from the Jogyesa temple, which has a big role in the festival. When we first arrived in Seoul we went to the temple and saw many Koreans making lanterns. We were intrigued but didn’t think we’d be able to participate. So we took pictures of all the lanterns at the temple. This is one of our favorite photos. There was a 50 foot tall tree in the center of the courtyard whose branches had been decorated with lanterns. And there was a “roof” of lanterns about 20 feet tall that went around the tree. This roof hid the upper branches of the tree except in a few spots in the temple complex like this one.



The Bonguensa temple had large lanterns on display. Pictured here at the main gate are the four heavenly kings who are often called guardians. They have vowed to protect the temple from all evil, including our own evil thoughts. It’s common to see people bow to the guardians as they enter the through the main gate, as a way of acknowledging our own limitations of greed, hatred and delusion, and our wish to be free of these limitations. It was interesting to see the guardians as lanterns, and we were curious what they would look like lit up at night.



During our hike with our friend Namhee (who we met on retreat in India) she shared with us that she would soon be making small lanterns with her meditation group. We asked if we might join, and she got permission from her teacher to include us. We felt so happy to be invited to join their special day of lantern making and meditation! When we arrived at the meditation center we immediately felt welcomed by the 20 regular practitioners gathered. After a snack we got to work cutting the paper and then attaching it to the wire lantern frames with rice paste. It was a lot of fun!



While the lanterns dried we had lunch together. Here we are affixing the Sanskrit om characters to the lanterns. Pete opted for tweezers while Kristina got her fingers sticky with more rice paste. Throughout the day there was a lovely feeling of teamwork and community.



These finished lanterns will be hung in at the meditation center and their lights will shine all year. Next year they will recycle the metal frames and make new lanterns.



This is the altar in the meditation center. Pete was enlisted to swap out the picture behind the Buddha and Bodhisattvas, and the altar was cleaned and redecorated with new pink and white paper lotus flowers. Then Namhee’s teacher gave a brief lecture on meditation and Namhee kindly translated for us. The teacher emphasized the three-dimensional triangle shape of the meditator, with knees and pelvis forming the base and connecting to the earth, and head forming the apex and connecting to the sky. Then we meditated together for about 90 minutes, which was physically challenging for us because it was twice as long as we usually sit. We were very grateful for the opportunity to be part of this special community for a day!



The festival wasn’t called Lotus Lantern until 2008, when it was broadened from Buddha’s birthday celebration to be more inclusive of Korea’s folk traditions. More people started attending, including foreigners who heard about the beauty of the festival. This is Cheonggyecheon, a stream that was paved over in the late 1960’s and then restored in 2003. It’s a very successful urban renewal project that we enjoyed strolling around during the daytime. And it became magical at night, with the lights of the lanterns reflecting on the water!



There are three-day workshops offered in large lantern making. We could see why these would be popular, as these lanterns are gorgeous works of art and look like they would be complicated to make.



The Lotus Lantern Festival starts with a parade that includes lantern floats, musicians, and temple groups dressed in traditional costumes carrying lanterns. The atmosphere is high energy but friendly, with participants and spectators smiling and shouting greetings to each other.



Monks also march in the parade carrying lanterns and waving. The monks got the most cheers from the crowd.



On this float the baby Buddha looks like he’s striking the Saturday Night Fever dance pose but instead he's pointing to the heavens and flashing #1 sign. The legend has it that when he was born, he took seven steps and then proclaimed that he alone was the world honored one. We like the interpretation that the baby Buddha was speaking of Buddha-nature, which is the immutable and eternal nature of all beings. That's the real #1!



The dragon had smoke coming out its mouth. The lights were spectacular!




The four guardians that we saw earlier at Bongeunsa were also in the evening's parade.



Towards the end of the parade Kristina was given this tiger lantern from someone in the parade. She loved getting to carry her own lantern for the remainder of the festival, and then gave it to a girl to take home.



After the parade was the post-parade dance party. The stage included dancers, singers and musicians. The crowd joined in dancing and singing, too.



Confetti was blown into the air and it looked incredible as it circled around our heads. This girl was enamored of the confetti and was catching pieces of it. We were impressed with the positive atmosphere throughout the parade and party – there was no drunkenness or throwing of trash. Instead people were genuinely happy and enjoying themselves, and we felt completely safe while being in the huge crowd.



Since we’ve enjoyed the food in South Korea so much, we’ll end our last post here with another favorite meal. This is grilled Spanish mackerel. It was served with grated radish and citrus zest. We ate it with rice, savoring the flavor of the moist and delicious fish. Accompanying the meal was a pitcher of makgeolli, which is a fermentation of boiled rice, wheat, and water with an alcohol content around 7%. This pitcher is flavored with fermented pomegranate.

 

Next we fly to Vietnam for a two week cycling tour along the coast. We feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to spend the past three weeks in South Korea exploring this interesting, beautiful and friendly country. 

 

Seoul: Confucius Says . . .

... “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand."

Between 1392 and 1910 Korea was ruled by the kings of the Joseon dynasty. During this time Confucianism replaced Buddhism as the state religion, and the culture of Korea changed. One extreme example is that Buddhist monks were prohibited from entering Seoul, and this ban lasted 300 years. We learned about the Joseon Dynasty by visiting historical sites and museums and reading about the culture of the time. We were fortunate to be here during the annual ancestral rites ceremony on May 5th. The event started as a parade of hundreds of people dressed in traditional costumes, with many carrying banners or swords. These musicians were playing as they paraded up to the Jongmyo Shrine where the ceremony would be performed.



Here you see the “king” being carried in the parade. (This man is of noble ancestry, but the true royal Korean bloodline has died out.)



This is a walkway for the spirits, so that they can travel to the ceremony. The belief is that the deceased are not actually gone, instead they are part of the living world but as spirits only. We took a tour of the Jongmyo shrine a few days after the ceremony, so we could see it without all the crowds. We were instructed not to walk on the center part of this walkway; We happily complied since we are not yet ready to join the spirit world!



Once all the costumed participants had filed into the main shrine areas, an elaborate Confucian ceremony was performed. This included making food and drink offerings to the spirits of the deceased kings. There were 35 tables of offerings like this one, so that every King or founder of the Joseon dynasty was included. Originally these rites were performed at least five times a year to ensure good weather and crops in the coming season.



Related to this ancestral rite is the Confucian ideal of filial piety, which is that supporting and serving one’s parents is the most important duty. We learned at the Korean Folk Museum that the mourning period when someone dies is three years. During mourning it was lauded when an adult child would build a grass hut and live by the tomb of the parent. The ceremonial offerings were accompanied by music and dance.



We visited two of the five Joseon palaces. This is Gyeongbukgung palace.



A lot of important advances were made during the Joseon dynasty. The palaces were heated from underneath the stone floors with wood-burning furnaces and stone channels akin to duct work. This chimney was away from the living area to vent the heating system's smoke and we liked the clay decorative patterns.



These women are dressed in traditional hanboks. The palace tour guides were dressed in a similar fashion.



Peonies were the royal flower, and we saw painted screens with these flowers.



We also saw real peonies in the gardens of the palaces.



Called the forbidden garden, only the royal family and officers could enjoy the lovely environment. The guide told us that the king and his buddies would hang out at a pavilion like this, drinking wine and writing poetry. Supposedly they played a drinking game: if an officer couldn't make up a poem about the beauty of the garden quickly, he was forced to drink three glasses of wine. So that's where that game comes from!



Changing of the guard is done three times each day at the palaces. We enjoyed watching and listening.

 

At the end of the ceremony, they let the tourists take their picture with some of the guards.



The practice of medicine also advanced during the Joseon reign, with acupuncture and hundreds of herbal remedies being used to treat illness. We like this Confucius saying, "turnip in winter and ginger in summer keep the doctor away” as it shows the concept of food as preventative medicine. Ginseng is called the king of a hundred herbs and is an ideal tonic for summer heat. Shown here is ginseng chicken soup, which is made from a young chicken, a poulet, stuffed with rice and simmered with ginseng, ginger and garlic. It tasted delicious, even in the cooler weather of spring.



Feng shui also has connections to Confucian beliefs. Palaces had to be built to include the correct feng shui with mountains behind and a stream in front. Since there are so many mountains here, it was easy to do. Here's a picture of the top of Inwangsan, which is behind the palaces.



And here's a photo of us hiking on Inwangsan with our friend Namhee Park.



We met Namhee at the February meditation retreat in Bodh Gaya, India. Namhee was kind enough to meet us at our hotel and lead us on this beautiful hike.



Seoul had been ringed by a defensive wall encompassing the four mountains that surround the city. The wall is being restored. Here you can see that the wall in the area where we hiked was in good shape.



The spring blooms were abundant, with peach blossoms peaking. The cherry trees were starting to leaf, and we saw cherry blossom "showers" as the wind blew the flower petals off the trees.



Namhee also took us on an evening hike to Namsan so we could enjoy the lights of Seoul and digest after a big meal of Korean barbeque. This is the tower at the top, which was beautifully lit.


 

Confucius says, "wheresoever you go, go with all your heart."

Mt. Gaya: Chanting and Bowing at Haeinsa

We were interested in learning more about Korean Buddhism, so we decided to stay at a temple for a few nights. We found an organization called Templestay that offers over a dozen options. We chose Haeinsa because it is a UNESCO world heritage site and is located in the mountains (so would have nice hiking). This is the Nirvana gate that leads to the main courtyard of Haeinsa. It is the third gate, so visitors are required to climb up to the temple.



Buddhism was brought to Korea in the 4th century by Chinese monks, and it flourished until the end of the 14th century. Prior to Buddhism, Animism was the main religion, which included 3 spirits that were worshipped. Korean Buddhism incorporated these spirits, and often a temple complex will include a small temple outside the Nirvana gate that is dedicated to the mountain spirit. Haeinsa had a mountain spirit temple. We are also including a picture of the mountain spirit, which is shown as a tiger (who is king of the mountain). Haeinsa was first built in 802.

 

Sound is an important part of Korean Buddhism. This drum, called the Dharma drum, is played to signal the morning and evening worship services. The drum beats are to awaken all land animals. The monks took turns playing the huge drum, so that it sounded continuously for ten minutes.



The wooden fish is played to awaken all water born creatures.

 

This bell, called the Brahma bell, is rung twice each day at the beginning of service; there are 27 peals in the morning and 33 peals in the evening. The sound of the bell clears out mental confusion. This bell is more than six feet tall.



Part of the Templestay program includes following the monastery schedule. This means we got up at 3 am so that we could attend service. The service, called Yebul, includes melodic chanting and lots of bowing. We also participated in the subsequent 108 bows and meditation period. The bows are full prostrations, and we were sweating with the exertion. Then we took a nap before breakfast at 6 am! This is a picture of the courtyard in the morning after breakfast. During the day, it was filled with visitors.



Haeinsa is an active monastery with many ordained monks who are in a four year rigorous study program. They also spend six months each year on meditation retreats, for three months each winter and summer. The monks in the photo are on their way to a chanting period. For several hours each day they chant the name of the Buddha or the Buddha's teachings called sutras; we were able to participate in one of these sessions, and the sound of the chanting was awesome!



The meals were healthy vegetarian fare. They make their own kimchee here each winter. We counted over 100 kimchee vessels. It was served with every meal, as it is good for digestion.



We were given monk pants to wear. We found them very comfortable, but they came in just one size: baggy! We were glad they were warm, as the temperatures were quite cool.



In addition to the main temple area, there were a number of hermitages and nunneries at Haeinsa. This hermitage had a small vegetable garden in front.



The Bohyeonam Nunnery had the most beautiful flowers and landscaping throughout.



This dragon ornamentation was above the altar in the Bohyeonam temple.



The hiking here on Mount Gaya was great, in part because the paths were so well maintained. This path went along the stream for several miles.



We saw a number of carved stones like this one. We assume they had Buddhist sutras carved on them.



And the views were incredible!



Because we had to travel quite a ways to get to Haeinsa, including walking a mile up to the temple from the bus stop, we opted to leave our big rolling bags at the train station and bring only our little backpacks. Kristina is pictured here with all our luggage.



We were asked a lot what we are bringing on our one year tour of Asia. The answer is minimal clothes plus gear and supplies for the various activities we are doing. Here's our cycling gear.



This is what we need for diving (we rent the rest of the gear we need).



Here are all the supplies to keep us healthy: travel yoga mats, massage roller, steri-pen that uses ultra violet light to kill microbes in drinking water, sunscreen, and all sorts of medicines like anti-malarial treatment.



And we are also carrying a small library of primarily fiction books about the countries we are visiting. We are reading three books about Korea: The Calligrapher's Daughter by Eugenia Kim that covers 1910-1946 when Korea was colonized by Japan and the Confuscian culture was crushed; The Guest by Hwang Sok-Yong that covers the history of the Korean War which tore the country in half; and Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin which won the Man Booker prize and is set in contemporary Korea. We have purchased books on the road, mostly in bigger cities like Delhi, Bangkok and Seoul. When we finish reading a book, we try to leave it at a guesthouse that has a foreign-language library in the hopes it will be read again. And then we head to the nearest bookstore to restock!

 

Can you believe all this stuff fits into two rolling bags, two small backpacks and a purse?