Temple Stay

What's a Temple Stay you ask? Don't be embarrassed, I had never heard of it before either. And actually really had no idea what it was until I was well into doing one. After experiencing a Temple Stay with Amanda with our coworker Iris at our side as a volunteer for the event, I can give you my take on what it is. A Temple Stay is an open invitation to anyone, sometimes just foreigners or sometimes just to anyone interested, to spend anywhere between 2 days and 1 night or up to a week or more living in a Buddhist temple as a monk does, practicing the traditions of a strict Buddhist lifestyle. During our Temple Stay we learned about Buddhist history from a monk that happened to be an American, while she also taught us the proper way to do a bow to Buddha (of which we did 108 in a row), what a traditional meal is, how to eat the meal, how to meditate (including on a pad and walking) and a number of other things that we had never even heard of. The real shocker was when we found out we needed to be up at 4:00am to continue meditation... That was not easy. We also had a chance to paint flowers on paper-covered CD's as a souvenir. It was all very new and completely unknown to us. Even though I wasn't a huge fan of getting up at 4:00am to meditate, I had an incredible time and learned a lot more about Buddhism than I ever thought I would.

See full photo album here.