Golgul Temple Stay- The Sunmudo Training

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 handing out trays. They were positively adorable and looked mature beyond their years, like a 50 year old in a 12 year old body. How does a kid so young decide they want to be Buddhist monk? To be a monk, one must give up all material possessions, live a life of celibacy, wake up at 4:00 am and perform 108 bows every day, among many other life style changes. I hope this stay can teach me more about it. After dinner, it was time for the Sunmudo training session. We were led back down the trail from the building we were spending the night in, towards another direction away from the hills. After a short ways we came in view of the main training center, a huge building with a field that lay in front of it with targets for archery practice and statues of fighting figures in martial arts stances.

It was a modern looking building with its own Buddhist touches. We took our shoes off on the outside of the training center and walked inside a huge room well decorated with murals of fighting monks, scripts, and Buddha paintings. It looked like a great place to train, a mix of beauty and discipline in one. We were given a brown mat to sit on and told to find a place on the floor facing the front of the room, women on one side, men on the other. Our group took up the whole perimeter of the floor. Four monks walked in wearing grey Buddhist clothes, and shaved heads with the exception of one female monk. They walked to the front of the room and bowed towards the Buddha statue and with heavily accented English, one of the monks directed us to do the same. We performed three bows and then sat cross legged on the mat because that was what the monks were doing.
We were lead though a series of stretches, holding each position for a minute and then we were standing and following a sequence of blocks, punches, and fighting stances. The movement was calm and controlled, the transfer from one hit to another was fluid and precise, different from the Taekwondo movements in that Sunmudo is not for hurting or defending oneself, but for the sake of movement, exercise, and spirituality. Many of the motions were done with holding the hands limp and idol, the strength of the motion coming from the shoulders and torso. We learned sidekicks and did kicking jumps in the air. I thought my high jump background would give me an impressive Sunmudo style jump, but when the monks demonstrated the jump, reaching heights that were beyond what I expected them too, my skills were subpar. Someone get these guys to a high jump mat! We did some fighting patterns, moving around the room with a series of kicks, punches blocks. I felt just like Bruce Wayne in Batmen Begins when he was in the training center up in the snowy mountains of Asia and had to find a blue flower and fight the other warriors to become part of Liam Neilson’s fighters. (Except no being high on blue flowers and no killing petty thieves.) Opps, another movie comparison; that must be the Americaness in me.
After our training session, we sat in a wide circle around the room and the monks did fighting demonstrations in the middle to traditional Korean music. They moved with skill and precision. They simply had rubber bands for joints, they could snap their body so fast. We saw the extremely advanced moves that they didn’t teach us (for good reason) and I was wowed by the jumps, spins, and flexibility they possessed. After the demonstration we did a parting ceremony of three more bows and a chant, and then were walked back to the dorms for the night.
That night I had the most peculiar dream. It took me about two or three hours that night to fall asleep because the thoughts firing in my brain would not shut off and, like most Korean hotels and hostels, I slept on a heated floor called Undul flooring, and got stuck with one blanket. Somehow I eventually fell asleep and when I did, it was a really deep sleep and an equally vivid dream.


The Dream

As I write posts for this blog I am careful to write significant details and explain my experiences with both humor and clarity so the reader can almost experience exactly what I did. I try to be honest as possible about my recollections and I mention the details in posts to add depth and interest to it. That being said, the following dream that I am about to tell you about really happened, in every feeling and emotion was all real. It was so profound to me that I wrote it all down the next day so I would not forget it. Here I attempt to recreate the dream that night:

I was in a valley with hills covered in forests rising up high in the night sky all around me. It was a pitch black night, around 2 or 3 in the morning, and I was on a Buddhist Temple ground, but it was not the one I was staying at, nor was it one that I had seen before. Temples lined the outside of the valley I was in, and I remember feeling calm and extremely aware of my surroundings. It was very dark, but there was a golden glow of lanterns that were hanging from the temple corners. Through the dark I could see a group of about 30 monks walk out of one of the temples on my left and line up at a distance facing my direction, and a few walked closer towards me. Then I begin to feel this strong presence of someone or something standing directly behind me. It was an evil and demonic figure and it wished me harm and doubt, and it spoke to me. In a deep and quiet voice it said: “No, it cannot be done. You can’t do it”

Keeping my back to the evil figure, I responded by turning my head toward my right shoulder and said: “Yes I can, watch me.” I then take a step forward and jump high up in the air, but I keep rising, faster and higher. My breath is taken away, my mouth and eyes wide open in the Euphoria of the flight. I see the monks on the temple grounds, then I fly past the trees, then the valleys, and then I am higher than the tops of the mountains. I fly higher up still, into the stars, and I see white streaks of light on all sides of me as I pass through the stars. In the very last second of my dream I see an image of a golden Buddha, with eyes closed and knobs of gold hair covering its head. I see this Buddha for hardly a tenth of a second before I wake up with a gasp, my eyes popping open and my body tenses in a sudden jerk. I lay on the floor with my pulse racing and breath quickening. Did this really happen? What does it mean? It felt so real. How incredible that I have a dream like this while sleeping in a temple that I was never suppose to be at. I consider myself a non-religious person, so this dream was something I just could not explain. I lay awake for a while baffled at what just happened to me, and then eventually doze off again.

Comments

Jessie said…
Hostels will give you personal lockers.

Pousada Do Rio Quente

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