I’ve got to be honest, I’ve had a hard time coming up with a bucket list for South Korea. Not because there is very little to do (in fact, I think the exact opposite is true), but because I did little to no research before we moved here. Since everything was so up-in-the-air for so long, I made a conscious effort NOT to do a lot of research on all the cool things to do in this country. I didn’t want to get my hopes up and then have them dashed if it didn’t work out that we got to come. But one thing that I KNEW I wanted to experience from the get-go was some Buddhist Temples. And so, after church one Sunday we made our way to Simboksa – a small Buddhist temple about 20 minutes from our house.
Simbok Buddhist Temple
As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I have a love and respect for the idea of temples. Our own temples are very important to us in furthering the work of God on the Earth and binding families together for eternity. And so maybe it’s my love for the temples of my OWN church that makes me so interested in those of other faiths. But, excited as I was to visit, there was some hesitation. I didn’t want to be disrespectful to another’s faith and culture, and so I made sure to read up on some Buddhist Temple etiquette so I could make sure we knew what was expected of visitors.
In short, there aren’t any crazy rules for visiting Buddhist Temples (at least, not in Korea). The main rule is to make sure that you remember that first-and-foremost, the temples are places of worship. Therefore you should act in a way that will show respect. Modest clothing is preferred to show respect, and it is also encouraged that you leave some kind of donation in one of the donation boxes (although this absolutely is not required). There are other rules regarding the prayer halls too, but we’ll get into those in a later post.
So no, we did not dress up specifically for this temple visit. Because it gets dark relatively early here, we wanted to be able to come during the day, so we headed out straight from church. It worked out too – because it is a quiet, sacred place, we felt better being dressed in our Sunday best anyway.
We saw this visit as kind of a trial run for our kids. I want to see as many temples as we can while we are in South Korea. I just wasn’t sure how well our kids would be able to contain their energy (and honestly they were AWFUL at church). But I was so impressed with them. They walked around quietly (for the most part) and admired the buildings and the statues and asked questions and were so interested. M was just happy to be outside and H was just happy to be included in the adventure.
Even when we went inside Neungin Hall (where the Stone Seated Vairocana Buddha rests), the kids were so quiet and reverent. At the time I was unaware that pictures are allowed inside the Prayer Hall, so I didn’t get any. Still, it felt like a reverent place, so I’m not sure I would have felt comfortable taking pictures anyway. It smelled of incense and it was so peaceful. It was beautiful to see just a glimpse into how some worship.
The Buddha itself has an interesting history to it. According to legend, this Buddha statue had been buried in the sea before it was recovered by some elderly fishermen, who then went around looking for a temple to place it in. Unable to find a temple, they rested on a hill for a time. When they went to lift the Buddha again, they found that it had become very heavy. They took this as a sign that this hill should be its resting place. They constructed Simboksa as the home of the stone Buddha – and constructed a temple to the Korean Mountain God as well, so as to not cause contention (Korean was not largely Buddhist at the time). Because of the stone Buddha’s unique design, it’s believed that it was originally made sometime during the 10th century.
This temple was the perfect first temple to visit. It was small enough that we didn’t need hours to see it all. And there was nobody there besides some women who work there. We’ll call this trial-run a success!
’til next time…
Ash
How to visit Simboksa in Pyeongtaek
Directions: To get there, simply paste 심복사 into Naver. When we went, there was some construction going on – you can just drive through the dirt roads to get to the temple.
Cost: FREE
Parking: There is a small parking lot for this temple and it is also FREE.
Amenities: There are bathrooms available at this Buddhist Temple.
