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Showing posts from March, 2010

Golgul Temple Stay- The Sunmudo Training

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SUNMUDO Martial Arts Training We arrived at the temple gate and drove through forest and hills and soon stopped at a large three story building which was more like an apartment building except it had similar features of a palace; tiered roof, bright colors, and Buddhist statues around the perimeter. This was where we were going to spend the night, so was took our stuff, or in my case, lack thereof, and chose a room to stay in. We were then directed to follow a trail up a hill and towards another temple-style building where we ate dinner. It was a meal of Buddhist food, no meat, lots of vegetables and rice, side dishes of bean sprouts, white and red kimche and bean sprout soup. For Buddhist temple food, which has a reputation of not being the best cuisine around, this was actually pretty tasty. It was at dinner when I saw a group of young monks that must have been about 12 years old. They all had shaved heads and red robes on, and they were serving the temple-stayers food and...

Golgul Temple Stay

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The Accidental Adventure Continues (To see part 1 of this story, scroll down) After lunch was walked to an outdoor museum that had these huge mounds about 5 stories high that were the burial mounds of Ancient Shilla Kings. We followed a trail that winded between a dozen of them. Then we came to an old brick structure built in the year 647 AD, which was an old astronomy tower used in the Shilla dynasty. We passed some more burial grounds and got back on the bus to drive to the first of many Buddhist temples. This first one was called Bulguksa, the Temple of the Land of Buddha, and is located mid-slope on Mt. Tohamsan. It had acres of brightly painted Buddhist structures, pagodas, and gardens. At the entrance of the temple grounds we had to walk through a covered entrance way that had four enormous painted wood statues of men holding dragons, weapons, and/or musical instruments with grins on their faces. They were the guardians of the temple grounds, also called the statues of the fo...