Land of 10,000 Buddhas

I've been in Korea for nearly 3 years. In that amount of time, I have seen shockingly little of the country out of the greater Seoul area. Shockingly little. So last week when I traveled out of Gyeonggi Do and into smaller, lesser known areas of Korea, I was indeed shocked to discover that I don't actually hate Korea- I just hate living in the city. Specifically, I hate hate hate living in Seoul.

Last weekend in the midst Typhoon Whabi, the General Secretary and I traveled to Gyung-ju, a smallish city nestled between the mountains and the East Sea. Gyung-ju was the seat of the Silla Dynasty, the last of Korea's three kingdoms. It was also the time when Buddhism, which had traveled to Korea via China, became popularized. Mountains, the sea, monarchy, rich history and Buddhism make for a stunning weekend trip, despite the steady downpour and lack of decent public transportation.

The photo you see above is of a seated Buddha, typical of the Late Silla period. It was taken at Golgusa. Further explanation below...

Saturday took us to Seogeolam and Bulkugsa, two temples situated on the side of a small mountain.

Here I am at Bulguk-sa. This is a big temple that houses several Buddhas, which we were not supposed to take pictures of. We rarely followed this rule- the GS would stun (ie distract) the monk or volunteer with his fluent Korean while I took the pictures, usually shielded by our umbrellas. The results of our clandestine photo taking are mixed:









These photos come from the places we visited on Sunday: Golgusa (which means "grotto" because the main attraction is a seated Buddha which is actually carved into the face of a very high limestone rock. Though it does have other things to see such as the buddhas (newish looking because they have all been replaced recently) that sit in the caves below the grotto. When we went to Golgusa, we were granted a brief respite from the rain, but climbing up the slippery rocks to get to the grotto was a bit of a challenge. I would say that Golgusa was definitely the highlight of our trip....

Golgusa is also the training grounds for a Korean martial art called Sunmudo. We saw some students there, their dorm and their training ground, but it was Sunday, so no one was practicing.

This photo came from Girlimsa Temple where we saw even more Buddhas. Another place where we weren't supposed to take pictures, but did anyway.


We also made it to some other sites like the East Sea, pagodas, royal tombs and the museum, but Blogger seems unhappy with the number of photos I've posted here, so that's all folks~