Templestay 3

I have heard it rumored that templestays are weekends of silence and hunger.  That was not the case during my experience.  The dinner they served was vegetarian and delicious!  I think I really lucked out by choosing this temple.

I could have definitely used a little exercise to walk off such a big meal, but it was time to ring the bell.  Each of us got paired up and got to experience ringing the giant Korean bell in the ritualistic way of the monks.  It's quite heavy!  I'm pretty sure that my partner and I didn't ring it as loudly as the other pairs.

The last item on the agenda for the day was to practice Seon Meditation.  Thankfully the monk was realistic and understood that we were beginners.  Our goal  was just to keep our minds still for twenty minutes.  He would make a noise indicating that start and stop time of the twenty minutes, so we didn't have to be distracted trying to keep track of time.  He also understood that it's hard for us newbies to sit completely still for a prolonged amount of time.  He let us fold up part of our mats and sit in a modified lotus pose to make it easier.  Honestly, the twenty minutes went by much faster than expected... except for right at the end when my entire right leg fell asleep.  I wasn't alone in this predicament.  After about ten minutes I heard lots of shuffling about as people re-situated themselves.  I also heard quite a few stomachs digesting the food we had just downed.  Sitting in complete silence after a meal with 40 other individuals is a bit awkward.  He had us sit facing the wall so that we wouldn't be distracted by one another, and instructed us to count our breaths from one to ten, and then to start over.  If we accidentally lost track of our number, or found that we were on number eleven or twelves, we would realize that our mind had wandered and could start back over from one.  We wrapped this activity up around 8pm, or so, and headed to the showers.  It would be an early bedtime, as the next day started at 4am, sharp!

The two dogs at the temple weren't overly friendly. 
But man, did they like to bark in the middle of the night!

I wish I could say that I slept soundly in such a peaceful environment, but that just wasn't the case.  First of all, there was a dog barking loudly from about 1am, to who knows what time.  Second, despite sleeping on the floor at my host family's house for a month, I'm still not accustomed to such arrangements.  And third, the rice pillow felt like a rock under my head.  I woke up a couple of times, and then once more at 3:59am, just in time to sit up before the monk started striking the morning wake up bell.