Browsing the archives for the Zen tag
Continued from part 1… Usually built in the mountains, a lot of folks enjoy visiting Korea’s Buddhist Temples for their relaxing atmosphere and serene architecture. Appropriately, most temple buildings are decorated with mystical portraits of Bodhisattvas, pastoral images of the Ox Hearder Parable, or scenes from the life of the Buddha. Occasionally though temple visitors [...]
In Korean Seon (선) Buddhism (Ch. “Chan”, Jap. “Zen”) practitioners often meditate on paradoxical or nonsensical riddles known as koans (공안 or “ kong-an” in Korean) to gain insight into the nature of thought, perception and reality. One of the most famous of these riddles is “Why did the Bodhidharma (Kr. “Dalma” or달마) come from [...]
I was sorting through my video archives a while back and discovered some great footage from one of my first visits to Gyeongju back in the Spring of 2003. I had stumbled into a Korea-Japan Buddhist Culture Festival in Tumuli Park and was lucky enough to catch the performance of the famed Korean Zen Master Beomju [...]
Last month my University asked me to help guide a tour of Korean-American students around Gyeongju for a day. That afternoon we stopped by Golgulsa (골굴사) Temple for a short lesson in Seonmudo (선무도), or Korean Zen martial arts. In all the times I’d been to Golgulsa, I’d never actually seen what Seonmudo actually is. [...]
The other week my wife and I were walking through an older neighborhood of Gyeongju on our way downtown to grab a burger at McDonalds (Yeah, yeah. I know, but she’s pregnant. I’m not going to argue.) About a block from the courthouse, we turned the corner and stumbled on something we’d not seen since [...]
Okay, I admit it: I’m a Korean temple junky. Big or small, I get a kick out of visiting Buddhist temples over here. Maybe It’s because they’re something excotic we don’t have back home (and no, Yogaville doesn’t count) or just that I find them very relaxing places to be. But whatever your religious preferences, Buddhist [...]
