Haeinsa Temple April 30th

Ice-cold

Central Pagoda

Bell and beautiful Gayasan

White elephants are revered in India. It is said that Buddha's mother saw a white elephant as an omen to Buddha's birth.

My lucky pebble pagoda.

Lanterns hung for Buddhas B-Day

I've been on a small holiday from school due to a school wide field trip. On Monday and Tuesday I had class, but I didn't have to go in for the rest of the week, and due to Children's day next Tuesday, I won' thave to be back until Wenesday morning next week. I've spent the time off well and kept myself busy. For the past few weeks I've studied Buddhism everyday, so I've used my free time to visit a couple of the temples here in Korea. On Wednesday I visited Beomeosa which is a local temple here in Busan. (Sa is the Korean word for temple.) It only takes about thirty minutes to get there by bus from my apartment. Beomeosa is a peaceful, quaint temple nestled just above the city on Mount Geumjang. While on the bus home from Beomeosa I decided that the next day I would make the two and a half hour trip from Busan to Haeinsa in Gaya san (san is Korean for mountain).

In Korea three temples are referred to as jewels. Haeinsa is one of them and probably the most important and famous. According to the tourist pamphlet, Haeinsa has been a center for Korean Buddhism for over 1200 years. Haeinsa temple and the surrounding hermitages are home to around 500 Buddhist monks and nuns. For myself, as far as the tangible treasures of Haeinsa goes, the Tripitaka Koreana is the most impressive. The Tripitaka Koreana is a complete collection of the Buddhist Canon carved onto 81,258 wooden printing blocks. According to the tourist pamphlet, the Tripitaka is the oldest set of Buddhist scripture in Chinese script and is designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I read on koreanbuddhism.net that it took about 16 years to complete the 52,330,152 characters which make up the Tripitaka, also due to the uniformity of the characters, the Tripitaka must have been completed by one monk. He must have been a man who knew how to truly live and relate to the present moment to be able to complete such a task.

So Wednesday was a splendid day. I explored Haeinsa, hiked around Gayasan and visited a few of the surrounding hermitages, made my own little pebble pagoda, dipped my feet in an ice-cold mountain stream, and not to mention viewed a most impressive feat of human inspiration and diligence in the Tripitaka Koreana. Not bad for a hump day.