The Lotus Lantern Festival (5/20)

I    S L E P T  like a rock after our crazy Saturday at the temple and in Busan, but woke nonetheless to the morning gong around 5am. I tagged along with my roommate Andy for a run along the river in the crisp morning air and had a great conversation about International Affairs, Buddhism, Korea, and the world in general. He's on a year-long Fulbright scholarship to study Environmentalism among Buddhist nuns-- his blog can be found here-- so you better believe we had a lot to talk about! Between the exercise, the scenery, and the conversation, it was a phenomenal way to start the day!

Dr. Yi's morning lecture session

A S   W E  returned to the temple, we learned just how busy the day would be for our study abroad group and for the temple at large. It was a week and a day before Buddha's Birthday, and the temple was swarming with people practicing and preparing for the festivities on top of the usual templegoers. The mix of people-- young and old, from near or far, working or worshipping, etc.-- was something I'd grow accustomed to in my stay at Hongbeopsa: it illustrated just how embedded the temple is in its surrounding community.

Dr. Yi sat us down, laid out or schedule for the day, and asked for our reflections on our previous day's adventures. I was shocked at how densely populated Busan was, and apparently it's got nothing on Seoul! The number of people, the sheer number of different stores and how closely-packed they are, the ads and lights and sounds, the number of fish in the fish market... it was all extremely impressive, exciting, and alluring! And I even found an international ATM!

Finally got some won!!

O U R   F I R S T  mission for the day was helping make paper lanterns for Buddha's Birthday.

Just a few of the lanterns for Buddha's Birthday

 L A N T E R N S   I N  Korea have a very different connotation than in the States. Whereas Stateside they're often cheap, kitschey, and vacuously symbolic of some culture from somewhere else (à la cultural appropriation, the negative kind--think Chinese restaurants or Oriental-themed proms), in Korea, lanterns memorialize deceased loved ones, bring wishes and luck for the year to come, and otherwise mean something.

Lanterns play a central role in the festivities surrounding Buddha's Birthday specifically because of all that they symbolize. Temples around the country overflow with lanterns of all shapes, sizes, and colors, making Buddha's Birthday an especially beautiful time to visit Korea. There's even a bit of good-spirited competition involved-- temples compete to see who can make the most ornate, complicated, and beautiful lanterns! I saw massive, moving, glowing dragon lanterns; a phoenix lantern that breathed fire (!!!); lanterns of people, buildings, and symbols; and everything else you can imagine!

Our temple, Hongbeopsa, had a fierce lantern-making team. Allegedly, the three or four women who we met that day had been mass-producing lanterns by hand for over three days, day-and-night, without stop! They'd made everything from large, hanging lotus lanterns to little bird lanterns, with some massive crane lanterns and an army of tiny watermelon lanterns as reinforcements! The women feared they wouldn't have enough lanterns by the time Buddha's Birthday rolled around, so we were enlisted to help speed up the process.

Dr. Yi translates instructions for making watermelon lanters (like the finished one on the table below her)

W H E N   I  asked why the lanterns were watermelons, Dr. Yi explained that it was because it was the easiest design to produce. I'm sure that there was some deeper significance there, but I never figured it out. Regardless, they were easy to produce, albeit time-consuming. That's where we came in!

The skeleton of my first watermelon lantern!

W E   S P E N T  a few hours bending wire, tying the joints, and then gluing carefully with "401", some sort of super-strength Korean super glue that Dr. Yi threatened would "mangle our hands" if we weren't careful. The stuff DID heat up like crazy on contact, but besides the usual crusty, dried-glue residue all over my hands, my hands and I made it out in one piece.

Lantern-making provided my second significant linguistically-transcendent experience (my first having come a few hours earlier when an angsty teen flipped me off for saying hi to him). Not too long after we got started, we ran out of the pre-cut metal for making the rings you see above. We notified the lantern ladies, who began measuring, cutting, and pre-bending more wire for us. Having already completed a lantern, I decided my time would better be spent getting wire ready for the others.

I sat with the oldest of the three ladies--the one heading the wire-making operation-- for a good hour or so, learning her technique and helping her out without the common crutch of language. Neither of us spoke enough of the other's language to communicate, so we worked in silence. It was actually a lot of fun to learn by observation and trial-and-error without the aid of language; we both had to be pretty light-hearted about our actions and interactions due to the difficulties of understanding each other, which made the whole process very fun and stressless.

The wire was sharp and had a tendency to lash out after being cut, so there was a good bit of trust involved when the lady handed me the wire cutters and let me begin. We exchanged a few lines of pleasantries through Dr. Yi's translation--she thanked me for controlling the wire and not letting it whip her and complemented my abilities; I complemented her for being such a good teacher. I can't explain how much our exchanges meant to me-- it made me feel so good to be helping out, to be picking it up without help, and to be so flatteringly complemented and to complement so flatteringly back.

It was a lot of fun to be thrown into a situation with someone I didn't really know in a capacity that didn't require language to be effective and productive. We were churning out wire infinitely faster as a pair than either of us alone could have, which inspired a lot of the complements-- after days and days of doing this again and again by herself, I could tell that the lady appreciated my help a lot.

So far, this may just sound like I'm romanticizing a very mundane experience, but I swear there was so much more to it than that. For some reason the experience made me think of my mother, who, as a fiber artist at heart, has spent her whole life making beautiful things with her hands between the demands of life. The lady was around the same age and had a similar kindness about her beyond the creative resemblances to my mother; her role as an older and more knowledgeable guide through my introduction to a productive process was very motherly to my daft, dumb, youthful ignorance. I never found out if she had children or even what her name was, but during that hour, she was very motherly towards me-- having another lady bring me a cushion to kneel on to save my knees, making sure I wasn't going to cut myself with the wire cutters, and the like. I was so thankful for such an unexpectedly beautiful experience. It was a much more meaningful linguistically-transcendent experience than my first one (being flipped off)!

The Lantern Ladies-- the one in purple was the one I worked with. Such an awesome lady! Also note the hanging lotus lanterns to the right and the wire-frame bird-in-progress to the left.

T H E   R E S T  of the day was a blur of faces and fun. After lanterning for quite some time, we were given Hongbeopsa polos and herded onto a bus headed for Busan with the rowdy Baby Monks for the Lotus Lantern parade. The initial plan was for us to march hand-in-hand with the Baby Monk who chose us the day before, but as the proceedings stretched on and on and the kids grew more tired and sun-sick, the powers that be were forced to reconsider.

The Baby Monks waiting for the Lotus Lantern parade

After an hour or so in a stadium filled with Buddhists under the hot Busan sun, the Baby Monks disappeared (perhaps to get some shade and something to drink, although I wasn't told at the time). Somehow I ended up with a Hongbeopsa banner, which I was given the privilege of carrying in the seemingly never-starting parade. We watched a MASSIVE worship service take place in the center of the stadium (easily the largest one I saw in my time in Korea) before being led out of the stands and then back into the stadium, this time on the field, where we waited for all the others to assemble and arrange before the parade. The sun set and the crowd began to party, whilst I took it all in, without a clue as to what was going on or when it would happen.

Massive worship service in a stadium in Busan

W E   W E R E  treated with such kindness by everyone we met! It was here in the stadium that the uniqueness and awesomeness of our trip began to sink in-- not only was it incredible that we were in Korea at all and that we were there for Buddha's Birthday and all of the festivities surrounding it, but we were invited to participate and were included in places of privilege! We were wearing the shirts of the temple that was housing us and carrying its banners after just a day of being there, and without having provided anything but our presence! There was no trial period, no distrust, no discrimination because we were new or foreign or anything. We didn't have to pass any tests or jump through any hoops, we were simply and completely accepted from the first moment onward. I have never experienced anything so inspiringly tolerant, egalitarian, and inclusive. I think my experiences would have anyone saying, "This is Buddhism?! SIGN ME UP!!!"

People didn't stare at us for being foreigners. They didn't relegate us to spectators or keep us at arms length. In fact, many were very forward and open with us, giving us food and drink, introducing us to interesting people and events. The whole experience was overwhelmingly incredible-- the kindness, excitement, and novelty seemed to stretch on forever (and in reality did last a good many hours). There were too many people doing too many amazing things to take in, but I did my best to get a good sample. You'll get a glimpse of what I saw in the pictures that follow, but the best way to share the experience is through the video I compiled at the end of this post-- there you'll not only see the sights, but also hear the sounds and see the movement that I saw. Check it out! It was an experience of a lifetime!

First Kimbap (김밥), and example of the food we were given. SOOOOO GOOOOOOD!!!

The stadium filled with thousands of marchers, drummers, dancers, musicians, banner-wavers... and partying ensued!

Ready to march!

The GLOBIS crew reppin' Hongbeopsa temple (홍법사)!

LASER SHOW FOR BUDDHA!

Fireworks!

A N D ,  T H E  video! You can watch it in HD here!

Here is my reflection for Dr. Yi's class from today, if you're interested :D