tea diaries ~~~~~ groooooovy

Buddhism and Expectations

So, I've being interviewed by the Franklin Country Gazette, my hometown newspaper, and the reporter emailed me a bunch of questions which I answered early this morning. One of them was "What were your expectations going into this and have they changed?" I started to write something loftly about trying not to have any expectations, living right here in the moment all the time by the seat of my pants, immersing myself in the experience, that sort of thing, but a couple sentences in I realized it was absolute crap. It bothered me so much that I actually deleted the question entirely from my response (hope she didn't notice!). But it's stuck with me. I visited Yakcheonsa Temple this afternoon and the question was still bouncing around in my head. This post is an attempt, I guess, to answer that question.

The truth is I had a LOT of expectations coming to Korea. We all did, each one of us Fulbright ETAs and also the hagwon (English academy) teachers - everyone who picked up and left their homes and everything familiar to come halfway across and do something most had absolutely no experience doing - teaching English to non-English speakers. It takes a certain type of person to do something like that, but I think it also takes a certain amount of faith that somewhere in Korea you will find what you're looking for, something that wasn't just around the corner (but maybe was all along - that enigmatic "search for the self"). Anyhow, for me it was a little different, I'd been studying Buddhism and Zen from books for years and I thought it was time I experienced it directly, in its cultural context and in all its native glory. I fully admit to being caught up in a romantic image of "The East" - captured in self-help meditation and New Age books, movies like The Matrix, and permeating almost every area of pop culture. I guess I came out here to find out how much of that is true.

The truth is, I've found more inspiration in a little book I read my senior year while I wrote my thesis than I've found in all the Buddhist temples I've visited here. This is not necessarily a bad thing - I guess I'm just recognizing what my expectations were, and reconciling myself with the fact that I'm a little surprised with what I found. Temple tourism here is similar to cathedral tourism in Europe. I suppose if I were a devout Catholic I might be a little upset by the camera flashes while I tried to pray in the pews of an ancient seat of my religion. Every temple I've gone to here, with the exception of Dea Heung Sa in Mokpo (I'll be posting a little bit about that one later this weekend), has been little more than a tourist zoo. What did I expect? A set of misty stone steps that I might ascend barefoot, to be greeted by a shining-eyed old monk who would hand me a bowl of rice and then teach me how to be the next Batman? Deep down, I think I hoped for something like that. At the very least, I hoped to find the same sort of energy and passion that I read about in books by the Dalai Lama, Thich Nat Hanh, and some of the short works we read in my Engaged Buddhism class back at Wheaton. Whenever I've approached monks (even with a translator) or Buddhist laity here, they can give me no answers about Buddhist ethics. As the pictures below show, there are some beautiful gardens in front of Yakcheonsa, but my repeated efforts to indicate I'd like to help out with the temple community and lend my labor have been met with puzzled stares.

I've always known that there are different types of Buddhism in the world, and I think I'm seeing that more clearly now. The Engaged Buddhism I read about is prevalent in Southeast Asia, and things are much different here, in a highly Christianized and mostly Confucian society. Buddhism is just one small part of the social picture. I'm currently in contact with a professor from Maryland and his research grantees that volunteered at a Engaged Buddhist sustainable community this past summer - I'm 90% I'll end up there for a few weeks this winter. :) But I'm not in Thailand right now, I'm in Korea.

At the same time, I feel like I'm getting half the picture here. As I sat and inwardly grimaced at the tourists, I watched young mothers and their children, older women in visors and baggy Jeju pants, and men in full business suits silently take off their shoes and do bow after bow in front of the Buddhas. I watched a little boy not more than 4 make a very formal bow in front of the temple and then run grinning back to his mom. It's times like this that I feel the language barrier the most strongly (although I did hear the mother say "Cha-de-sa-yo" - good job! to the beaming kid). There's something here I'm missing, there's a Buddhist culture here that I don't understand. And I think with the right attitude, that mystery, that challenge, is more than enough get me excited again about Korean Buddhism. :)