Gwangju News - Miracle on the Mountain:Haeinsa, Temple of Dharma

This is the first of two pieces I wrote for the Gwangju News, a magazine for the international community in our city.  Since the pieces haven't been published on their website yet, I'm posting them here for everyone to read.  If you want to see the piece as it appears in the magazine (including pictures), let me know and I'll give you the .pdf.  Enjoy! 

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We left the city limits and soon we were driving through freshly-plowed fields still shrouded in early-morning mist. It always surprised me how suddenly Korean cities ended without any of that suburban sprawl that I was used to back home. The towering futuristic apartment blocks gave way to old farmland so abruptly, it was as if they had been dropped in from space, squashing some poor farmer planting rice and seriously ruining his day.

The bus continued onwards through the idyllic countryside. A couple of ajussis in front of us chattered like schoolboys, pointing out the window at unknown sights as the bus drove on. Muddy brown rice fields spilled down the side of the mountains before settling into valleys. A girl in a pink sweatshirt watched us indifferently as we passed through her small farming town: a cluster of houses and sheds, a mini-mart, a school, a salon and a norae-bang. The two-story buildings were dusty and faded, and I was reminded of a drive through the town in the Shenandoah Mountains in western Virginia where my Mom grew up.

After an hour or so, we arrived at a bustling tourist village nestled in between two large mountains. A short hike through the woods brought us to the entrance to Haein-sa, one of the Three Jewels of Korean Buddhism. Haein-sa, the 1200-year old temple of Dharma represents the teachings of Buddha. It is home to the Tripitaka Koreana, the oldest and most complete collection of Buddhist scriptures carved onto 81,258 wood blocks sometime during the 13^th century.

Tourists and the faithful shuffled through the gate and up the steep stone steps to the entrance. An elderly woman stopped at the top to bow before entering the temple courtyard that was bathed in sunlight.
Administrative offices, an information center and two separate gift shops occupied the buildings surrounding the courtyard. In the center, a large maze-like design was made from stones set into the ground. Parents walked through the labyrinth slowly and quietly, with their hands together while their children scampered around the twists and turns, peals of laughter ringing through the courtyard.

The woodblocks are kept in four 700-year old storage halls at the top of the temple complex. Inside, tall racks of woodblocks stretched down the long halls loaded with hundreds of woodblocks. Official-looking people walked around, warning us to put our cameras away; there would be no pictures of the woodblocks. A man hawked prints in the courtyard.

Though the halls' varying shades of brown were aesthetically simple by Korean temple standards, the methods to construct them and preserve the woodblocks are surprisingly complex.

Large windows were spaced at even intervals around the buildings, and when I peered into the darkness for a better look at the woodblocks, a soft cool breeze blew through thick wooden bars that obscured my view—strange because the air outside was perfectly calm.

Our guidebook noted these methods and others, and with some awe pointed out that they have yet to be matched by modern science. An attempt was made in the 1970s, but was abandoned after test blocks began to mildew.

That I was peering through the windows at these blocks in the first place struck me as the greater miracle. These blocks had survived 700-some years of Korean history: the fires that had destroyed the temple time and again, but left the storage halls untouched, foreign invasions that sought to wipe out Korean culture but ignored the woodblocks, and a civil war that bombed and shelled the country into rubble but spared Haein-sa because of an insightful, observant Korean pilot who remembered what treasures it held.

It's easy to forget the length of Korean history when most buildings I see were built in the last 60 years, when ancient temples still smell of fresh paint, and when Gyeongju seems more modern resort than historical capital.

Peering through the bars at these woodblocks however, I saw tangible evidence of that history. Just as the Gutenberg Bible is remembered not only as the first printed copy of the West's Holy book, but as the beginnings of a printed revolution that would culminate in the Enlightenment, the Tripitaka Koreana seems significant not as a complete, errorless copy of Buddhist scripture, but as proof of an ancient history, cultural relics to remind Koreans of their past.

To get to Haein-sa, take a bus from Daegu's Seobu Bus Terminal (1.5 hours) to Haein-sa. When you arrive, walk back down the road, then follow the signs up the path to the temple. Admission is free. Temple stay programs are available, call (055)934-3105 for information.