Buddha Story

February 23, 2008

Photo: Xiandu Qiu

What I am going to describe to you is the discovery of another world, experiencing a culture miles from the westernized society.

On this warm sunny morning we roll off the covers and sit up on our tatami mats. The huge cooking pots under our windows are leaking smells of spicy vegetable soup, awakening our nostrils. A quick flick of switch turns on the dim light and extinguishes the floor heating. Some quickly put on their orange monk uniforms and go wash the signs of sleep off, while others start making green tea with our communal boiler. Sweet bread and honey lie on the coffee table alongside huge nashi pears.

Someone yells from downstairs, telling us to hurry and to grab the prospectuses. We slather on sun lotion and gather our mere necessities for the day: water, sunglasses and the precious information sheets we will have to distribute to foreigners passing by. Our occidental group in religious orange outfits is always the centre of attention, but we’ve been living at the temple for a while now so people have gotten used to seeing us wander around, decorating the area with lotus lanterns, sweeping the temple’s main square without allowing clouds of dust to form, running to and from the public squat toilets and photographing the children-monks in their cute tiny orange monk uniforms. We are international volunteers helping out the temple during this busy period of the year: Buddha’s birthday.

We join the groups that have formed by the temple’s office building. Here are the colorful butterfly-ladies with their guitar mandolins, over there are the white and pink samurais with giant hand held catapults, and here are the giggly children groups, showing off their biggest smiles as we gather next to them. They all have to rehearse for the parade and the finale tonight where they will be judged for their performance. We start marching into the streets, planted with tents for the festival, and cheerily accomplish our mission of the day: handing out information sheets to tourists, explaining that today is Buddha’s 5000th birthday and, therefore Seoul is celebrating with activities in the head Buddhist temple; meditation, making paper lotus lanterns and providing feet massages; as well as two parades: a big parade of colorful costumes and perfect cadenced walks ending with a spectacular show, and another longer parade of devoted Buddhist enthusiasts, like ourselves, celebrating Buddha’s anniversary by walking through the Seoulian streets with lotus lanterns. Our little group is taking part in the second one but three lucky ones also get to participate in the fancy parade as flag porters.

The streets are filled with Koreans and foreigners alike, and the thick warm air is boasting with smells of sweet rice balls and fried vegetable pancakes. We have managed to distribute all of our pamphlets and now have some free time to enjoy the activities of the festival. While I learn how to weave straw, others practice using chopsticks or get their names written in the Korean Hangeul alphabet. The three lucky girls from our group who have volunteered to carry the ceremonial flags at the very head of the parade have to leave before everyone else. It’s an honor for them but also a hard tiring task because the flags are very tall and therefore very heavy and we agree to send a replacement team to relieve them from the effort later on.

But very soon, it is time for us to go grab our self-made lotus lanterns and take our place in the parade which has already started to unroll its ribbon through the streets of Seoul. While the replacement group consisting of myself and two other girls hurry on to catch the start of the parade, the others gather the lanterns and slowly blend in the crowd. We run and run, for what seems like miles, squeezing past the columns of marching Koreans. We stop at a street-cart to buy some water and then continue racing through the dense parading crowd before finally seeing the flags, floating a few hundred meters in front of us.

- Hey girls, it’s us, we’ve come to take over the flags so you can get a rest.

- Oh! But we don’t want to give up our places! They’re not that heavy really!

- What? You mean we ran all this way for nothing?

- Sorry but carrying the flag is really great, you get to see everything that goes on! We love it!

We had run all this way and were now at the front of the parade, close to the finishing square where the groups we met earlier: the butterfly ladies, the pink and white samurais, and so on; were going to have to perform and try their best to be crowned the best spectacle on Buddha’s birthday. We simply tagged along with our three flag-porters and, reaching the finale square, we stationed in a corner and enjoyed the colorful dances of swirling ribbons, the enchanted choreographies, the stylized costumes set alive by the theatrical shows… They were all beautiful shows, taking our breath away and making the crowd explode in applauses. At the end, music filled our ears and the public was invited to join the performers on the square and dance the evening away. But it wasn’t long until we realized we needed to rejoin the other parade where our friends had gone with the lanterns…

After more running through the dimly lit streets of Seoul, following the thumping sound of the crowd, we finally found our lantern-carrying section and took our places with our very own lanterns and our Korean friends. We walked in pace to the sound of the beating drums, proudly showing of our candle-lit paper lanterns, saluting our teacher-monks who watched us walk past into one of the most memorable nights of our lives, experiencing the Korean culture to the full.

About the author: Celine Hansen has been traveling since she was a child. Currently living in Peru, she is soon embarking on a round the world trip to experience all those places she has been dreaming about since, well… forever.