Yesterday I wrote about the amazing kalbi dinner I’d had in South Korea two years ago to the day. Today, I’ll once again go back two years to the next evening when I participated in the Beomeosa Templestay program.

In the morning we had traveled to Busan and, after spending a couple of hours exploring their amazing fish market, headed over to the Beomeosa Temple where we would spend the next 20 or so hours living among — and learning about the daily life of — Korean buddhist monks. The first task was to dress the part. Here I am after donning the provided gear (the t-shirt and socks were mine).

Believe it or not, a short Powerpoint presentation came next that explained a bit about what we would be experiencing during Templestay. Soon after it was time for Balwoo Gongyang, the communal Buddhist meal service. We were each provided a stack of bowls wrapped in white cloth and we were led in single file through the temple grounds to the dining hall.

Balwoo Gongyang is no simple event. The entire process was described to us in detail by a young monk. He began by getting us properly arranged and sitting on the floor in four rows. Once we were arranged, it was time to arrange our bowls and other utensils that we had brought with us. There were four bowls and they each needed to be placed in a certain position in front of us and each had a specific purpose. The nested bowls were removed one by one using the thumbs only and placed in their correct spot without making a sound.

I’ll skip ahead here because dinner took several hours due to the lengthy description of each step. I’ll just say that you were to take less food than you needed to be full, you were to eat everything you took, the bowls were rinsed one into the other in a specific sequence, scrubbed with a radish slice which you then ate, and the wash water was then poured into a large pot that was circulated around the room. If there was any food particles remaining in the water when everyone had finished, the water would be divided among all of us to drink. The idea was to teach young monks (and in this case, us) not to waste. And, believe me, we didn’t waste.

After the meal, we had a surreal arts & crafts session with the monks and made paper lotus lanterns out of paper cups and candles. It was dark by now and we went outside where our candles were lit (my lantern immediately burst into flames and was destroyed entirely) and we paraded through the temple grounds passing a variety of huge golden buddhas in small buildings along the way.

Back inside we had a lengthy tea ceremony with teachings on buddhist philosophy and we were finally led off to our communal rooms for the night where we slept on the heated wood floors just as the monks.

While the meal was not memorable in the same way as the kalbi feast of the day before, this was definitely one experience I will never forget.