Trip to the Buddhist Temple

Hi folks,

I'm so glad to see your comments. There's no easy to way to reply to your comments (we aren't on Facebook, ya know), so I'll say here thank you so much for your comments and I'm so glad to hear from some old friends like BLANDINA! Girl, I was so happy to see your comment. So there's my mini shout-out and thank you to all of you who are commenting. I love them and I love hearing from all of you.

So here are me updates. Nothing new to report at school really. Just getting into the groove of things. Next week I'm going to teach about Thanksgiving since next Thursday is the day o' giving thanks. I'm really going to miss going to Grammy's with my fam and eating all the delicious food until I feel like my stomach is going to burst, but mostly I'm going to miss the company. They don't eat turkey here and they hardly have any bread products besides sugary cereals and white bread so it's not like I can even try to cook a Thanksgiving meal with turkey and stuffing, etc. Oh well. I hope you all enjoy this festive and delicious day. I'll definitely be thinking of home next Thursday!

This past Sunday I got to do something really special. Rachel and Ryan's mom took us to the Buddhist Temple that she attends. The temple is in another town, about 25 minutes away, out in the open surrounded by mountains. When we first arrived we visited the Buddhist museum on site that had ancient relics and information ... that I couldn't read because they were either written in Korean or Chinese! Fortunately, Rachel and Ryan's mom served as a tour guide and with her good English guided Val and I around and explained what we were looking at. As she explained some things I started to remember some of the information I learned in my Buddhist Traditions class I took at Muhlenberg sophomore year. I remember it being a terrible class because the professor was not good at all, but I also remember the material being interesting. As we walked around the museum I remembered flashes of information and it was nice to be able to ask questions and have somewhat of an intellectual conversation with her. At museum I got to "write" on parchment using ancient printing, meaning there was a slate with raised Korean characters and a raised picture of a temple. We brushed ink onto the slate and placed the parchment on top, then we gently rubbed the paper against the inked slate with a clothed wood so the ink transferred onto the paper and created a design! I got to try twice (didn't go so well the first time... I smeared it everywhere) and bring them home. I also got to taste flower tea, which was just tea made from a flower (it looked like wild daisy to me) soaked in water. It was so earthy and delicious!

After the museum we headed to the main area where the temples, statues, and ancient gong was. We got to peak into the temple which was very beautiful, surrounded by candles, statues of Buddha, and scented with incense. R & R's mom (I actually don't know her name!) explained that the statues of Buddha are not sacred and when people bow and pray they are not bowing and praying TO the statue. The statues are simply there to remind the believers of why there are there. I thought that was interesting. I sort of wanted to go into the temple and just sit but I chickened out about asking! There was another small temple where there were supposedly 1,000 Buddha statues. Crazy, right?!

As we walked around the temple she pointed out the mediation area (outdoors but secluded by tall trees and bushes) and we studied the paintings on the outside of the temple depicting Buddha's life. As she explained the paintings much of what I learned in my Buddhist Traditions class came back to me and I could determine what the paintings were depicting! That felt really cool...I had no idea I learned so much in that class. We continued to walk around and admire the scenery and the colorful accents of the leaves that were turning orange. It was such a special experience for me and she was such a great tour guide. I hope maybe I can go back and learn more about it. I know there are often crossovers with Judaism and Buddhism (Jewdhism?) so I wasn't surprised about how connected I felt there. I remember feeling connected to Buddhist beliefs during my class at 'Berg but actually being at a place devoted to them touched me.

One of the core Buddhist symbols is the Lotus flower. When Buddhists meditate they put their hands in the "lotus position" (pads of the middle finger and thumb touching) and there are symbols and metaphors of the lotus all over Buddhist art and scripture. The Lotus flower, if you don't know, is a white flower that grows out of mud and dirty water. The basic significance of the L is that we live in a world that is dark and dirtied with crime, greed, and deceit but by meditating and following Buddhist beliefs we can rise out of the "mud" and exist like a beautiful, pure flower. I liked the idea that you are not leaving that dirty world behind you, but you can exist purely and beautifully among it. Just like we can't escape all the terrible things in this world, but we can learn to not let it take over us and bring us down.

As you can tell, I really enjoyed this experience and I could tell it was nice for Rachel, Ryan, and their mom to share this with us. I had been looking forward to the visit ever since she mentioned she wanted to take us there and I'm glad we got to do it on a beautiful fall day. After the temple we ate at McDonald's (the kid's choice) and then went home. What a great day! The picture of Lotus flower, I must admit, is a Google image. I didn't have my camera handy when we saw the one growing in the pond at the temple!

Love to you all!

Love,
Mel