Buddha on the Beach

In a county with over 10,000 temples and where one-third of the population are practicing Buddhists, it’s not uncommon to see monks walking around, on the subway, or at the grocery store. Having no knowledge of Buddhism beyond the fact that Richard Gere and the Dali Lama all of a sudden are best friends, I’ve recently become interested in finding out more about the religion, its practices, and if the monk robes are as comfortable as they look. Which is why I was pleased to find myself seated next to a friendly looking monk on the beach this afternoon.

Waking up early has become a habit that I haven’t exactly maintained since moving to Korea; when your job starts at 4:30 P.M. and ends at 10:30 P.M., your whole day is thrown off kilter, and you soon find yourself grocery shopping at midnight and cooking dinner at 1:00 A.M. However, the past couple of days I’ve managed to get to bed at a reasonable hour and this morning found myself wide awake at 7:30 with my last day of the Ch’usok vacation stretched out before me. After looking at pictures of our brief trip to Gyeongju, I decided I was frighteningly pale and should spend my last day of vacation at the beach, blinding the Koreans with my Midwestern glow.

A short subway ride later I was at the famed Haeundae Beach, Korea’s most popular waterfront destination. Having seen pictures and postcards depicting a wall of humanity, I was prepared to wade through piles of Koreans and stake out a square of sand on which to bronze myself. However, it seemed that the entire city was still celebrating the holiday, and so the beach was almost empty and I only had to share it with thirty other foreigners spread out over the three-mile expanse of sand. Needless to say, I was extremely pleased with myself and promptly fell asleep listening to my iPod and imaging how golden I would be in a couple of hours.

When I woke up, I noticed two things. I was definitely starting to pass the “tan” phase and enter into the “third-degree burn” phase, and there was a monk sitting about two feet away from me. Dressed in head-to-toe gray scrubs and topped with what looked like a floppy gray fisherman’s hat, he was smiling at the ocean. Noticing the flurry of commotion coming from my towel as I attempted to untangle myself from my iPod which had decided to strangle me in my sleep, he turned and nodded in my direction. I nodded back, flopped over on my stomach and tried to use my shirt to cover my bald, now crisping, scalp.   

To my surprise, the monk began to talk to me – or at least I thought he was talking to me, because I still had my iPod on full blast and could only see his lips moving. I yanked my headphones off, apologized, and said hello. His English was comprehensible, and he seemed interested in my iPod. I scooted my towel closer, showing him that it was a music player. I offered him an ear bud and he accepted, and I was now faced with quickly finding an appropriate song to listen to with a Buddhist monk.  My selection? Here Comes the Sun by The Beatles. It was at the beginning of my alphabetical list of artists, it seemed like a good beach song and it was the most innocuous thing I could find in ten seconds. And who doesn’t like The Beatles? Apparently I made a good choice, and soon we were bopping along and laughing to each other.

Now this is just better than a bloody crucifixion, don't you think?

I think what attracts me to Buddhism is the sense of calm that I get from temples, monks, incense, and the statues of a smiling Buddha with his giant belly. This man was no different; happily sitting on the sand wearing pants and a long sleeved shirt in 85-degree weather he looked as if he could have been in a cool, dark movie theater watching his favorite film. Accustomed to religions that seem bent on judgment and judgment day and commandments and sins, conveyed in lectures from pulpits raised above a seated congregation who follow a best-selling book that was written (and edited) by men but is believed by so many to be the actual “word of God,” I find myself drawn to this religion seemingly based on happiness and quiet meditation.

He asked me more about the iPod; how much it cost, what else it can do and how often I listen to it. I wasn’t sure if he was genuinely interested in the machine or just wanted to continue the conversation; regardless, I can talk about Apple products with rabid enthusiasm for hours on end, stopping only to imagine what life would be like if I was Steve Jobs. I rambled on for a good ten minutes, probably using words that were way out of his vocabulary, until I realized that I was explaining the wonders of technology to a man who presumably had given away most of his earthly possessions and spent a large portion of his days in meditation. Good, Travis. I’m sure the monk is going to run out and buy an iPod. Way to be astute.

He nodded politely at the end of my rant and said wisely, “Too much noise.” I’m pretty sure he was talking about the iPod, but a piece of me thought he was referring to my voice and I immediately wanted to dig a hole in the sand and bury myself in it. Then he nodded towards the ocean and said, “This is my music.” I know, I know. Extremely corny when I retell it, but I promise you, at that moment I was ready to toss my prized iPod into the ocean and follow him back to the temple to live out a life of prayer and reflection.

Which, it turns out, I can almost do. He told me, in very broken English, about temple stays in Korea that offer visitors the chance to stay for three or five nights in a Buddhist temple, engaging in the same schedule and rituals as the monks. I had actually heard about this from a fellow foreigner who had done one herself, and once I can speak full sentences in Korean, I will absolutely be signing up for a weekend stay at the closest temple.

After sufficiently baking myself, I said goodbye to my monk friend and began the trip home. Pulling out my iPod on the subway (because while the sound of the ocean may be music, the sounds of the subway is definitely just noise), I selected a playlist and settled into my seat. However, instead of delivering Michael Franti to my ears, I got a jumbled beat accompanied with severe static. Panicking, I shook and blew on the headphones, hoping to dislodge whatever was intent on ruining my subway ride. After five minutes of rubbing, wiping and hoping they would work, I decided my monk friend had placed a Buddhist curse on my favorite accessory. Working myself up into a furor, I glanced around and noticed that my fellow passengers were staring, perplexed at my odd behavior, as if to say “simmer down, it’s just a pair of headphones. It’s not that deep.” Realizing I was the farthest I could possibly be from Zen at that moment, I took a deep breath, calmly put the iPod away, leaned back and tried to appreciate the noise music of the subway car.