the world of the buddha

The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion...If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism. —Albert Einstein

My Korean friend Amy is a Buddhist. She invited me to do a temple stay with her last weekend. I jumped at the opportunity, because I knew going with her would be a more authentic experience than a huge group of foreigners thing at a temple in Seoul. The farther south you go, the fewer English speakers there will be. Which is why my memories from that weekend involve a lot of freaked out Koreans mouthing “waeguk” and doing double takes on their middle-of-nowhere front porches as they saw me ride past in buses and taxis. The temple was pretty remote, it took a lot of effort to get there.

We went to Daeheungsa temple, nestled among tree-saturated mountains in the southwestern limits of the country. I found myself praying to a chubby guy made of bronze, in an intense form of bowing that involved touching my head, both elbows and both knees to the ground, then standing straight up again. Repeated 108 times. One. Hundred. Eight. It's a beautiful thing, but painful. There's a venerating part where you flip your palms up, giving Buddha a place to stand on either side of your head. After around bow number 75, my sweat accumulating on the silky pillow, my heart beating in my ears, I'm pretty sure I could feel him there. And it was incredible to get into the rhythm, to forget everything but the cool night air, a blurry flicker of lanterns, the haunting sound of monks chanting, the reverberant bells fading into nothing.

The evening after the bows, after eating a modest dinner of rice and vegetables and soup, after washing the dishes to earn my keep, the world's coolest monk invited us to drink tea with him and stay the night at his home on the top of the mountain. His name was Moeon. He wore monk clothes and screamed inner peace (or was it indifference?). Monks are pretty stolid creatures, I expected that. I did not in my wildest dreams expect what happened next. Moeon had not only a cell phone, but an SUV, which he wordlessly herded us into for a steep ride through the forest.

His house and guesthouse were built in traditional style. The steps leading from the guesthouse to his made perfect seats for stargazing. And the stars were everywhere in the unfathomably dark sky of the mountaintop. I couldn't take my eyes off of them. I also couldn't get over the fact I was drinking tea humbly poured for me by a man who devoted his whole life to enlightenment.

“You have the most amazing view of the night sky. Do you ever look at the stars?”

“Yes.” He could speak some English, but he was speaking Korean now, with Amy translating.

“What do you think about when you look at them?” I had to know.

A seriousness washed over his eyes behind the Ghandi glasses. His answer: “What's your name?”

Wait, did something get lost in translation? “Um, Amanda.”

“Amanda? Amanda? Do you know your name?” It seemed really important that I should firmly acknowledge my own name.

“Yes, Amanda!” Wait, is this a trick question? “Amanda? I'm... Amanda.”

“What was your name before you were born?” Oh, I get it, this is some kind of riddle. “What will your name be after you die?” He was speaking quickly, as though this were now some commonplace sentiment, as though I'd asked him about beansprouts. Amy was translating rapidly, and I was trying to look him in the eyes and hang on every word he said, because in that moment he looked so solemn and wise. He pointed to the heavens. And I was reminded of the little joke he made as the SUV pulled to a stop after our bumpy ride. “Welcome to heaven,” he'd said. Do they even have heaven in this religion?

But looking up at the stars framed against his roof, that curve so familiar after ten months, I understood his answer. It was such a scary feeling, imagining the immensity of time and the universe, my tiny place in it, and then looking up and it being right there, like looking into the mouth of a merciless monster, all those stars like teeth, and at the same time, strangely enough, the feeling of meeting a celebrity, someone I'd seen so often in pictures, but never in real life. I never see the stars. And now I know they're terrifying, especially on a cold night at the age of twenty-three.

The next morning was spent hiking to the top of a mountain called Duryusan, to a shrine so intimate in its simplicity—an earthy floor of sanded wood, unpainted beams, delicate paper shutters on wooden grids—where I meditated with my friend near an ancient Buddha engraved in a massive stone. I let go of a lot of things up there, sitting with my legs barely crossed on a soft gray pillow, the breeze carrying the smell of incense and autumn, birds chirping. Nature. This is all we were ever meant to hear and to feel.

Some monks were sweeping the steps that led from their hermitage up to the temple. With one of their homemade brooms, Amy encouraged me to sweep for them as a way of saying thanks. We fed their dog some treats, bowed (bowing to everyone all weekend was pretty awesome, by the way) and made our way back down the mountain. After a jjimjilbang-syle shower, which involved hand washing my monk clothes on an old school washboard, after the bows and the hikes, the questions and the thinking, I felt, um, purified.