Day 5: Jogyesa and Insadong
After lunch at Star Café Miss Lee, I continued West one street over from the main road in Insadong and walked South to Jogyesa Temple. When I got there, it wasn’t exactly how I envisioned it would be. After having been to palace and shrine grounds that made me feel sheltered and isolated from the rest of the city, I kind of expected that the grounds of a temple would be that much more peaceful and tranquil. What I actually found was a busy temple that felt very much a part of the urban environment instead.
As I approached the main building of Jogyesa, I encountered a couple of detailed looking monuments. I seem to recall reading that the large tower was only erected not too long before I visited but I could be wrong.
When I got to Jogyesa, there seemed to be a fair number of people flowing in and out of the area and the demographics reflected an older crowd. From a distance, I could hear that a sermon was being held in the main temple building and broadcast over loud speakers. As I got closer, I could see the capacity inside was already full (not including the presence of 3 large golden Buddha statues) and the crowd had spilt outside where people were sitting along the ledges of the temple building. In front of the main building, mats were setup on the ground for additional people to sit, listen and pray. Most of the people I saw simply sat or had their heads bowed but there were a few who people taking part in 절 (praying and bowing in the Buddhist fashion where they would repeatedly move from a standing position to a double kneeling bow position over and over).
The main building was made with the same detail and design that I saw with other traditional style buildings in Seoul at palaces and shrines.
Here is a collection of clips I took while I was there.
There were several smaller surrounding buildings where people congregated in large rooms to bow and pray also. They also had signs and information regarding temple stays where one could learn about Buddhism and take part in the daily activities carried out my monks. These temple stays though are usually only several hours or perhaps overnight. While researching my trip, I thought about doing a temple stay but if I wanted to do one, I wanted it to be for a longer period of time and far away from people and civilization like in the middle of a mountain somewhere and not part of a package or program. I have these thoughts every once in a while about going to a mountain temple and living the simple quiet life of waking up early in the morning and doing temple chores. Of course, the grass is always greener on the other side and I’m sure temple life is nowhere near as simple as I just described.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about taking pictures while at Jogyesa. On the one hand, I wanted to take pictures of people bowing and praying and to see what the inside of the temple was like but on the other hand, I didn’t want to be disruptive or disrespectful to what was going on. In the end, I never did get close to the building and just stayed to the outside perimeter, taking a picture or video here and there from a distance.
Walking past the building again to head back, I saw a line up of seniors at the back and later found out that they were lining up for free 떡 (rice cake) and that the reason why the area might have seemed busier that day was because it was the first day of the month according to the lunar calendar.
I headed back to Star Café Miss Lee as that was the start of the main road in Insadong. I had read in my book and from various internet sources that Insadong was a must visit place for tourists and that you could find old world Korea on display here. While that does ring true, I for some reason thought that I was going to see a more natural, unaltered state of old world Korea like I had just walked through a time machine and appeared in the yesteryears of Seoul. Instead, what I found was a very modern and commercial business district that sold traditional and modern items alike. Here I am starting my walk down the main road in Insadong.
Although many of the stores in the area seemed to be quite modern, I came across the occasional store that looked like they had been in business for a long time selling items such as traditional Korean art supplies like rice paper and paint brushes. There were also many souvenir shops and I couldn’t help but wonder whether the area was slowly becoming, if not already, a tourist trap. The main road was wide enough that I found it inconvenient to be zig-zagging back and forth across the street to window shop all the stores so I just committed myself to one side and stuck to East side of the street all the way down. Initially I had thoughts that I would then go back up and check out the West side but I never did.
In addition to the stores, there were your share of restaurants and cafes and street vendors selling white cotton candy which I kind of wish I took a picture/video of because the process of making of it was a neat. What’s interesting about the area is that it is also infused with a modern day craft presence. Towards the middle of Insadong I found an area that was dedicated to selling hand-crafted items such as jewelry and accessories. Some of these stores had signs in their windows advertising the fact that their items were worn in Korean dramas and had pictures to prove it.
After I got to the bottom of the road, I headed East to check out Tapgol Park and the glass encased Pagoda. The various entrances to the park were closed except for the main gate so I had to walk all around the perimeter to get to it. Along the way, I passed by several street vendors selling all kinds of used items like you would find at a garage sale. I saw used tape recorders, walkmans, shoes and all sorts of every day items for sale and kept thinking to myself who would actually buy this stuff. When I got to the entrance of Tapgol Park and looked inside, I wasn’t impressed with what I saw and lost the desire to look around and check it out so I decided to head home. Overall, I felt slightly disappointed with what I saw between Jogyesa and Insadong. I don’t think my expectations were high, they were just different but different enough to throw off my impression of those 2 things I saw.
Here is a collection of clips I took while I was there.
There were several smaller surrounding buildings where people congregated in large rooms to bow and pray also. They also had signs and information regarding temple stays where one could learn about Buddhism and take part in the daily activities carried out my monks. These temple stays though are usually only several hours or perhaps overnight. While researching my trip, I thought about doing a temple stay but if I wanted to do one, I wanted it to be for a longer period of time and far away from people and civilization like in the middle of a mountain somewhere and not part of a package or program. I have these thoughts every once in a while about going to a mountain temple and living the simple quiet life of waking up early in the morning and doing temple chores. Of course, the grass is always greener on the other side and I’m sure temple life is nowhere near as simple as I just described.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about taking pictures while at Jogyesa. On the one hand, I wanted to take pictures of people bowing and praying and to see what the inside of the temple was like but on the other hand, I didn’t want to be disruptive or disrespectful to what was going on. In the end, I never did get close to the building and just stayed to the outside perimeter, taking a picture or video here and there from a distance.
Walking past the building again to head back, I saw a line up of seniors at the back and later found out that they were lining up for free 떡 (rice cake) and that the reason why the area might have seemed busier that day was because it was the first day of the month according to the lunar calendar.
I headed back to Star Café Miss Lee as that was the start of the main road in Insadong. I had read in my book and from various internet sources that Insadong was a must visit place for tourists and that you could find old world Korea on display here. While that does ring true, I for some reason thought that I was going to see a more natural, unaltered state of old world Korea like I had just walked through a time machine and appeared in the yesteryears of Seoul. Instead, what I found was a very modern and commercial business district that sold traditional and modern items alike. Here I am starting my walk down the main road in Insadong.
Although many of the stores in the area seemed to be quite modern, I came across the occasional store that looked like they had been in business for a long time selling items such as traditional Korean art supplies like rice paper and paint brushes. There were also many souvenir shops and I couldn’t help but wonder whether the area was slowly becoming, if not already, a tourist trap. The main road was wide enough that I found it inconvenient to be zig-zagging back and forth across the street to window shop all the stores so I just committed myself to one side and stuck to East side of the street all the way down. Initially I had thoughts that I would then go back up and check out the West side but I never did.
After I got to the bottom of the road, I headed East to check out Tapgol Park and the glass encased Pagoda. The various entrances to the park were closed except for the main gate so I had to walk all around the perimeter to get to it. Along the way, I passed by several street vendors selling all kinds of used items like you would find at a garage sale. I saw used tape recorders, walkmans, shoes and all sorts of every day items for sale and kept thinking to myself who would actually buy this stuff. When I got to the entrance of Tapgol Park and looked inside, I wasn’t impressed with what I saw and lost the desire to look around and check it out so I decided to head home. Overall, I felt slightly disappointed with what I saw between Jogyesa and Insadong. I don’t think my expectations were high, they were just different but different enough to throw off my impression of those 2 things I saw.
Comments
Post a Comment