Travel. South Korea. Meditation.
Why I Hated My First Time Meditating at a Buddhist Temple Stay
What goes on inside your head that first time?
I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t have high spiritual aspirations when we booked our Buddhist temple stay. I can be something of an obsessive travel list checker, and this was something that you’re supposed to do in Korea. Golgulsa Temple is just outside the historic city of Gyeongju in South Korea. It’s a beautiful, green, peaceful place tucked inside the shadow of Hamwolsan Mountain. The unique thing about Golgulsa was that the monks practice, perform and teach you Sunmundu, a type of moving meditation and martial art during your stay. How cool is that?
On the first day, they took us to the beach to practice. My ex did karate for years, so he was all pumped up for this. I was less pumped. In self-defense classes at school, I would run away from my partner rather than fight! What we were taught felt a lot more like Tai Chi or yoga, so I was happy. What I was less happy about — we walked across the lovely, soft, white sand to a nasty patch of rocks, stones, and pebbles, and this is where we practiced. Bare feet on small stones hurt! I kept glancing over longingly at the soft sand, thinking, “WHHHHHYYYYYY?!”
The early evening performance, now that was exciting! I didn’t know monks could bend that way. I felt like I had an exclusive behind-the-scenes ticket to filming a hot martial arts film.
Not so exciting was being woken up at 4 am to meditate. Why couldn’t we do this at 4 pm? I’ll never know. It seemed strange to disrupt real, good, healthy, natural sleep to do this stupid, fake sleep instead. We were sat on top of a chilly hill in the darkness with dogs barking in the background. I was tired, grumpy, and uncomfortable. My mind was turning round and round.
“OK, here we go, inhale, 1,2,3,4,5,6, urgh why does my arse feel so bony right now? It’s not exactly a small one. Ow.
OK deep breath, 1,2,3,4, I’m cold.
5,6,7,8, I wish those dogs would shut up.
9, 10. 10, 9, 8 I’ll take a sneaky peek at everyone else.
7, 6, why do they look so calm and happy? What are they doing that I’m not?
5, God, I’m so tired.
Why are we doing this in the middle of the bloody night?
OK, OK, let’s start again, 1, 2, 3, 4
Urrrgghhh, I want to go back to bed.”
After what felt like hours, we started our moving meditation, which consisted of shuffling around in a sad, little circle to the beat of a drum. I feel like I’m part of a cult. “Oh God, is this a cult?” I thought for a brief moment. We were taking the moving meditation back down the hill. It took us an hour to walk back down the hill that took 10 minutes to walk up. Shuffle, shuffle, teeny, tiny, toe-length steps. I tried not to let out a giggle as I thought about just how much we looked like a zombie apocalypse with our serious, synchronized shuffling. At the bottom of the hill, we formed a circle, then came the chanting. God, I hate chanting.
After this spectacle, the day could finally begin with a healthy breakfast, archery, and exploring. I would love to go back now years later because I would appreciate everything much more and be a lot less skeptical and resistant. I have since trained to be a yoga teacher and practiced many, many different styles of meditation. It’s something I slowly fell in love with and try to practice a little bit every day.
Meditation is not easy in the beginning, and like everything in life, it takes practice. You can’t expect to find yourself in zen-like bliss the first time you close your eyes. Your brain will chat to you because that’s what it’s used to doing. And if you don’t like it the first time, that’s cool. There lots of different types of meditation to try. I count running and savasana at the end of a yoga class as meditation. And, I’ve certainly never done it at 4 am ever again!
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Georgina Nelson. Traveller. Writer. Photographer. Yoga teacher.
Sh*t Happens — because the things that go wrong make the funniest stories.
