:: Moved out :: Moved in ::

Seoul Day-6
May 18, Sat

Last night was the last night we would be staying in the Shinchon hostel. Our activity started around 11:40 a.m. as we needed some time to pack our stuff and get prepared to move to our next accommodation which was Templestay right next to Jogyesa Temple. We already visited the temple last night to see the lantern festival in celebrating Buddha's birthday. Before we left the hostel, we went to the same vegan restaurant that we had visited few days ago since it was convenient as anyone can eat whatever they want and the food were really delicious too. Around 1:40 p.m., we left the hostel. Luckily Prof Ahn reserved two vans to carry our luggages or else it would be a little bit harder and attracted a lot more attention when a group of 13 foreigners (okay maybe just 12, Prof Ahn doesn't look like a foreigner here) with big luggages was rushing to fit into the subway. Therefore, some of us commuted by the van too whereas the rest of the group transported by subway.

Our room and spread out "futon"
Picture purposes only. =P

I totally like our room the moment I saw it. It was clean, has a window and ceiling that were made of wood, and provided some sort of peaceful feeling to me. I already could picture myself snapping some pictures of the room and the bedding before we would actually get to hit the bed and sleep. Well, there was no bed in the room actually, but "futons" (I don't know what it is called in English), comforters and pillows are provided in the cupboard. After we settled down, we proceeded to the temple to participate in a tour given by a lovely middle-aged woman who became a volunteer. I was quite amazed at her English speaking ability as to be honest, I was under the impression that usually only the younger generation would be able to communicate in English fluently. We took a look into Daewungjeon, the main dharma hall of the temple, Paradise Hall, and Brahma Bell Pavilion.

The three Buddhas in
the main hall

In the main hall, we were introduced to the three idols located in the hall, which were Shakyamuni Buddha, Medicine Buddha, and Amitabha Buddha. Before I took classes in U of M, I have no idea that there was more than one Buddha, and every Buddha icons looked the same to me. But apparently, there were many of them and they can be differentiated by looking at their "mudra," hand gestures. The founder of Buddhism, Shakyamuni, was placed in the center among those three and he can be recognized by his right hand which was touching the ground and the palm of his left hand was facing up. Medicine Buddha often holds a medicine container whereas the thumb and the third finger of both right and left hands of Amitabha Buddha were touching. On the outer side of walls of Daewungjoon, there were paintings that described Buddha's story of life began from Queen Maya's dream until he reached the second nirvana which was complete dis-attachment to the physical world. It was interesting on how they managed to tell the whole story of someone in a series of paintings but I don't think I would understand it by looking at it without our tour guide's and Prof. Ahn's explanation. I could barely tell apart the males and females character apart.

Written Lotus Sutra in Gold

After the whole story was told, we also spent some time in the Museum located next to the main hall. One of the main exhibition that was going on was a piece of work from a woman who spent many years sewing the entire Sutras. As I took a closer look on her masterpiece, I secretly hope that one day, I could also became a dedicated believer of my religion and do something for it instead of just being on the receiving end. There were also a lot of interesting things could be found in the museum such as the wood printing blocks and handwritten Lotus Sutra. I first came to know about wood printing blocks in one of the courses that I took, Asian204: Pre-modern History of East Asia, but I never expected it to come with pictures printing block as well. It must have taken a lot of skills to carved the wood in a mirror way to show what exactly you wanted to print and without a single error. Unlike pencil and paper where we could just erase and rewrite when there is a mistake, I don't think that would apply on wood carvings. Imagine if the carver accidentally carved an extra stroke on the character, that would totally changed the character and he would have to redo the whole printing block. That, required a lot of attention, dedication and patience.

For our dinner, we went to a restaurant named Torikin and had a wonderful meal there. The dish strongly reminded me of a meal I had in Sadako, except that this time, it has a ton more seafood in it instead of just few shrimp tempuras. This was definitely one of the best meals I ever had in Korea and I'm looking forward to more dishes to top this hearty meal.

Super delicious meal..