It’s 4am and the repetitive thwack of the wooden hand drum known as a moktak reverberates around the temple pavilion. As alarms go, it’s relatively gentle, but no one could sleep through the cacophonous wake-up call that follows, as a bell clangs 28 times and monks rhythmically strike an enormous drum, wooden fish and a cloud-shaped gong to ensure salvation for all the creatures in the world. It’s not something you can silence by hitting the snooze button.
It’s my cue to leave the futon on the floor of my simple room to join the temple’s monks in their morning chanting ceremony, singing verses to Buddha and his teachings. Intermittently, we prostrate ourselves before a trio of five-metre gilded Buddha statues and a smaller 15th-century effigy.
Outside, the early morning sun lights up the wooden temple buildings, a 10-storey pagoda said to house relics of the Buddha himself, and a riot of purple and gold chrysanthemums. Beyond the courtyard, rays glint off the windows of multi-storey blocks — we might be in an oasis of tranquillity, but this particular oasis lies in the heart of Seoul, South Korea’s buzzing capital.
This is Jogyesa, the central temple of Korean Buddhism and one of nearly 1,000 traditional temples peppered throughout the country. Of those, 27 now allow English-speaking visitors to stay the night under the “templestay” programme, delivering a dose of authentic culture in a country better known for its K-pop and K-dramas than its traditions. Rates typically start at about $60 per person per night.
Today, the monasteries are attracting more overnight guests searching for a slice of inner peace, often as a one-night add-on to a more conventional holiday, but also for longer stays, or with several strung together to form a monastic tour. “Our programme is an antidote to tiredness and busy lives,” says Hye Won, one of two nuns and 18 monks at Jogyesa. “It’s about taking the slow lane and finding stillness of the mind.”
The temple certainly proves to be an antidote to the busy thrum of Seoul, with its skyscrapers and shopping malls, neon lights and night markets, even though there are a surprising number of cultural sites amid the modernity.
They include the 14th-century royal palace of Gyeongbokgung, which was partially destroyed during the Japanese occupation between 1910 and 1945 before a painstaking (and ongoing) restoration was begun in the 1990s. Now, it’s a major tourism draw. On my visit it overflows with photo-snapping Koreans dressed in traditional national costume, making a marked contrast with the more serene Jogyesa, to which I retreat a few hours later.
As in other temples, overnight guests share some of the monks’ daily routine, including morning and evening chanting, tea ceremonies and meditation. I can meditate in my en suite room, too, with its superb view over the courtyard and a sound machine that can be programmed to play the noise of rainfall or waves.
Meals might be vegetarian, accompanied by water (alcohol is banned), but the food is beautifully tasty. In fact, since nun Jeong Kwan from Baekyangsa monastery featured on Netflix’s Chef’s Table, it’s been almost impossible to get a booking at that particular temple stay. Certainly it’s not difficult to follow the rule of eating everything on your plate.
However, a full stomach makes my postprandial activity, the 108 prostrations, even more challenging. Described as meditation in motion in which humbling the ego helps you realise your true self, each descent to the floor is accompanied by a different prayer. My legs are starting to wobble by the time I reach number 24 (reflecting on whether I have lived in unnecessary luxury and vanity). The irony of number 85 isn’t lost on me — to stay composed under duress — and by 105, with my legs in spasms, I’m not sure I can “be grateful for overwhelming happiness of this moment of bowing”. I do, though, feel a huge sense of achievement as I curl up on my futon that night.
The next day, after a breakfast of seaweed soup with rice balls and kimchi (way better than it sounds), I board the bullet train to travel 270km south to Gyeongju, capital of the ancient Silla kingdom (57BC to 935AD). This is a city surrounded by rolling hills dotted with so many tombs, temples, rock carvings and pagodas that it would take days to explore them all.
Chief among them are the Unesco-listed Seokguram Grotto with its granite Buddha statue gazing out over the pine trees to sea, and Bulguksa Temple, an architectural representation of paradise rising symmetrically from a lotus lake. Both were established in the 8th century on the slopes of Mount Toham.
It’s busy here at sunset, and the crowds really ramp up after dark at Anapji Pond, an ancient pleasure garden where a human conveyor belt shuffles round the lake, snapping scenic shots of Donggung Palace. History is clearly a big draw, though it was not always thus.
“When I was a child, this was a developing country and no one had time for culture,” my guide Hong Chang Pyo tells me. “Now we are an important industrial nation and people are more interested in learning about it.”
After a night at a resort by the shores of Bomun Lake, it’s time for my next dose of serenity, this time at Golgulsa Temple, which has its roots in the 6th century and is half an hour’s drive away in the hills.
Unique among the temple stays, Golgulsa is home to sunmudo, a type of martial art combined with meditation, yoga and chi qong. Passed down from monk to monk over the centuries, it was first documented by abbot Seol Jeog Un, who established a training centre here in 2001.
“Now sunmudo is practised around the world,” he tells a group of us during the traditional tea ceremony. “People want to try it as part of the temple stay. They come looking for happiness and I tell them it’s first about finding out who they are.”
Meditation and breath work can also be practised while horseback riding and doing archery, he says; both can be incorporated into a one or two-night stay, along with trekking to nearby tombs and temples and, of course, sunmudo.
We watch a performance on an open-air platform high on the hillside. It’s an incredibly scenic spot, looking out over crumpled, tree-covered peaks under the watchful eye of a 9th-century Buddha carved into the limestone atop hundreds of steps zigzagging up the cliff. But when the sunmudo starts, we have eyes only for the participants. The mix of yoga and martial arts is compelling to watch, more like a ballet as it flows.
Bedtime comes early in the temples, so I make a “Princess and the Pea” affair of the three thin futons and duvets in my room before drifting off. Then it’s up before dawn again for morning chanting in the temple hall, followed by sitting meditation outside in the dark, walking meditation before breakfast, and another sunmudo class.
It all leaves me feeling strangely elevated as I drive two and a half hours to the last of my trio of temple stays, high in the mountains of Songnisan national park, with its hiking trails leading to 1,000-metre peaks draped in forest. Folded into green slopes beyond ginseng fields and a 620-year-old pine tree is Beopjusa, a mountain monastery dating back to 553.
This sprawling temple with a five-storey wooden pagoda and 33-metre bronze Buddha once housed 1,000 monks; now only 40 shuffle around its precincts in long orange and white robes. I set off to scale the peak behind the monastery, and 45 minutes later am rewarded with a view of the Buddha glinting below me. There’s also the chance to string a mala with 108 beads, which sounds calming until I realise that each bead can only be threaded after completing a prostration; these are beads strung with sweat.
In the morning there is time to appreciate the beautiful temple grounds before the day-trippers arrive. Monk Hye Woo, who acts as general manager, gives me a tour of the various buildings, pointing out the 1,400-year-old twin-lion statue.
Stopping before the 33-metre Buddha statue, he explains that its standing posture, different from the more usual seated effigies, shows he is ready to lead his followers. “People come here looking for answers,” he tells me.
This peaceful spot — the name Songnisan means “mountain removed from worldliness” — feels like a good place to find them.
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