PIFF pt. 2
Saturday morning we awoke to join the rest of the weekender tourists in the two-hour ticket line at the Haeundae Megabox. Tickets had been available online for months, but for whatever reason the Busan trip wasn’t real to me until we took off. I hadn’t even booked a bed, and it was after touching down that I received the news from my good friend Jason. I had a place to sleep. June, the owner of Zen Hostel, gently scolded me upon my arrival. “Why didn’t you plan better? Beds have been booked for four months.” Friday and Saturday I slept on the balcony. It was more comfortable anyway. The dorm rooms were too hot.
Zen Hostel Balcony
We passed the time in line singing Gillian Welch and a song we made up called “Captain Awkward” to the tune of “Captain Planet.” Tanner and I get a lot of stares. Of course, we’re white, which isn’t normal. More importantly though, there seems to be a moratorium on being boisterous in certain public spaces: lines, subways, buses, airports. It’s not a social rule we honor well. Bad foreigners. Only once have I embarrassed myself. I backed into an old lady doing the moonwalk at a subway stop. She was fine. I was ashamed. It’s over now. We were joined in line by James, also from the hostel. Dahee taught us to say “easy, tiger” in Korean. It’s “sal sal heyo.” Then she drew a picture to round out the lesson. The first movies of the day were sold out, so we went to Yonggungsa temple.
Sal sal heyo
After the Korean War, South Korea was marked by oppressive rule. Capitalist dictatorships, coups d’etat, and fast-paced economic development. For this reason the bio-luminescent dictionary and cargo container highrises. Everything happened all at once. Build build build. No time for transition. No time for a Great Generation to make cookie-cutter suburbs and spawn rebellion in myopic teenagers. No time for hippies. No time for the family unit to deteriorate. There was a busy world to join. Hank past Hendrix. Hank Williams to the Backstreet Boys in one move. Democracy arrived in 1987.
There are two Koreas, one atop the other. The first is the grandmother who runs the small convenience store across from my bus stop in Hamdeok. She can no longer stand upright, but walks with her back parallel to the ground. I see her high school classmates on the way to work. Some of them pick sesame or barley by hand in the fields that line my bus route. Others carry onto the bus heavy boxes like backpacks strapped on with rope. The flower of their youth came and went during Japanese occupation and the Korean war. Perhaps their parents were working in a Hiroshima factory when we dropped the bomb. Maybe they were communists in the Jeju uprising. U.S. and South Korean soldiers worked together, at times killing of-age men indiscriminately. Sung Chan’s grandfather lived because he hid in a kimchi pot. Koreans love kimchi. So do I now. Sung Chan is a good man. I have asked him to teach with me next semester.
The second Korea is made of the hyper-mobile tourists who ride the circle bus, the one I take every day, to Manjang or Seonsan. Their first commandment is not to wear cotton. North Face, Black Yak, Bogner, or Kathmandu top to bottom, including gloves. Visors, day packs, maps, walking canes. Some times they stop at Jongdal Chodo Hakyeo to see the quaint country school or use the bathroom. Sometimes they come onto the field to take a group picture and interrupt a T-ball game. I wish they wouldn’t. Their colors are rainbow on black.
Yonggungsa
The second Korea was of course present at Yonggugnsa. So were we, tourists at a working temple. A monk chanted devotees into eternity as we checked our various recording devices and wondered whether we were crossing the line from welcome visitors to intruders. Maybe I was the only one asking that question, but I have a feeling if other people were, they probably did as I did. I stepped just ever so slightly over the line, popping my head into the main temple to snap a few shots during meditation.
Prayer Call
Here people practice knowledge of the Four Noble Truths. One must escape from samsara and the chain of interdependent origins. Sensation leads to thought. Thought leads to desire. Desire leads to action. Action leads to sensation. If you quell your desires you will cease to suffer. You are simply a collection of aggregates which to you seems permanent. There is no “you” or “I,” just interconnected strings of existence which for a brief moment have come together in such a way. Even this building will one day fall and be ground to dust. It is nothing but causes and effects. If you watch long enough you will see that it does not exist any more than the flower which blooms one day and dies the next. Plato was wrong. There are no forms. Right concentration, right mindfulness, right effort, right vocation, right action, right speech, right intention, right view. Develop these things. Be mindful. Click. “I need new batteries for my camera. Hey, let’s go eat at that samgyetang place down the road. It looks great.” Yonggugnsa is beautiful. In the gift shop I bought myself a Chinese Zodiac keychain. For Jason I bought a solar-powered flashing neon Buddha keychain.
