Golgul Temple Stay

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 four heavenly kings. One is the guardian of the north, the other the south, east, and west.

We followed a wide trail to get to the main temples of Bulguksa, and I was happy to see that most of the structures were original, whereas many temples/palaces in Korea are all remakes because of the Japanese destruction of nearly all significant Korean heritages. This temple was featured beautifully painted wooden buildings that were all enclosed by gates with openings that connected each other. This temple had gates with low openings that you had to duck under to get to the next temple, and this made the whole temple grounds more exciting, because once you reached a temple and assumed it was the end of the grounds, there was another hidden opening that brought you into another courtyard that was almost twice as big and then you find another opening and . . . you get the picture. That’s what makes palace/temple hopping so fun, it’s like wondering around a maze, but it’s ancient and beautiful and you have so many possible ways to turn and countless nooks and crannies to explore and must see them all at once but can’t, so you run around and try to find every unnoticed corner and keep going until you think you have found every secret passage. Then I see catch a glimpse of the palace that looks the exact way it did centuries ago and then I begin to picture ancient Koreans going about their daily lives as though I had strayed back in time of this place’s golden age. This my brain on temple/palace hopping. I’m like a Frisbee dog running after the same darn Frisbee no matter how many times it’s thrown, it never loses its excitement.

This temple had plenty of endless courtyards, but what made it more special than a palace was then each building within its gate had its own shrine with a huge Buddha statues or paintings that had so much variation to it that even though you were looking at Buddhist artifacts, you never felt like you were looking at the same thing each time. The entrance to the main temple had this gate with a long walkway held up by stone arches. It looked more like a medieval castle than a Korean Buddhist temple, but it was the most breathtaking place of the grounds. The inside had a huge golden Buddhist statue, and I stole a picture of it from a far, because taking pictures of the insides of the temples was not allowed and I wanted to respect this, though it was hard to resist capturing the beauty of the shrines with a camera.

The meet up group then drove to another temple in Gyeonju, called Sokkuram and it was located high up on a mountain range. This temple was built in 751 AD in the Shilla dynasty. It took a 20 minute hike through a trail that wrapped around the mountainside through woods to get to the temple grounds. It was neat having the temple grounds be removed from the roads and parking lots. This gave the temple a more rustic air, and when I arrived at the entrance of the shrines, I saw how this Buddhist site utilized its surroundings and built the temples right into the mountains. We saw the insides of the shires which were built halfway into a cave, but we were only able to go inside to the doorway and no further. It was enough to see an enormous stone Buddha carved right from the rock of the mountain, and it stood in the back of the cave shrine with skylights reflecting off of it and it was simply magnificent. It was a sitting Sakyamuni Buddha, about 15 feet tall and with a gold jewel in its forehead. We saw the other shrines on the temple grounds that had walls covered in small glowing lights that were in the shape of lotus flowers which gave the inside of the temple a soft golden glow. Then the meet up group and I hiked back to the bus and headed to the Gulgol Sunmudo temple.