Templestay 4

After my fitful night of semi-sleep, I was ready for day 2.  My room was right next to the bathrooms, so I was excited to sneak over and beat the morning rush.  Things didn't work out as planned, however.  I had two sets of sliding ricepaper doors, and one set of big, wooden, hinged doors to open.  The sliding doors were no problem.  I unlocked them and slid them open.  The hinged doors weren't so easy. 

I unlocked them and pushed. 

And pushed. 

And pushed. 

But they wouldn't budge.  I could hear other people walking past my door to the restroom, and was totally embarrassed to be rattling my doors, completely trapped inside my small square room.  Eventually, magically, I have no idea how, I got them to open and joined the crowd in the bathroom.  (I'm going to blame at least part of the difficulty on the fact that it was four o'clock in the morning.)

At 4:30am, we met in the chanting hall and were lead in the morning bows as the monks sang their devotions to Buddha.  I guess Korean monks prefer singing over traditional chanting.  The temple tourguide led us through this activity, as with all of the other bowing activities, because our monk had recently undergone leg surgery and couldn't perform the bows easily.

At 5am, we switched halls and did 108 prostrations.  I was still able to feel my quad muscles a full 24 hours after the fact.  108 is a lot of times to get up and down on a mat in a matter of twenty minutes.  The prostrations are meant to be symbolic.  A way to lower yourself and raise up the Buddha.  A way to show your humility, and also, quite honestly, is often used as a form of punishment.  A DVD spouted off the reason for each prostration as we completed them.  There were three types of reasons.  I'd say the first sixty or so went something like, "I prostrate in repentance for (something I did wrong."  Then came, "I prostrate in gratitude for (something I have come to realize or appreciate.)"  Lastly came, "I prostrate to commit myself to (live a better life in one way or another.)"  Doing this exercise was probably the most enlightening thing in terms of understanding Buddhism better.  I was surprised by how connected to nature many of the prostrations were.  And also how compassion-centered they were.  In college I had read a book about Japanese Buddhism, which led me to imagine a much stricter, colder, and suffering-centered idea of Buddhism.  This felt much different from the mindset I had read about.

I had worked up a slight sweat by the end of our prostrations, and was happy to have another twenty minute breathing meditation to settle down.  Given that it was still before 6am, it's probably good that they had us get some exercise in before tyring to meditate.  If we hadn't, I'm sure I would have heard lots of snoring.

And we're down...

Now we're up...

And now we're back down again!