Tongdosa 동도사

Along with Alain, I made it to Tongdo temple(sa) last Saturday (8/28/05). It was originally built in 646 AD. It has been rebuilt since that, after the Japanese destroyed most of it in 1592. Both in the past and currently, it is one of the three most important temples in South Korea. Apparently, it houses three relics from Buddha; a robe, a begging bowl, and a bone from his skull. In addition, it is supposed to contain a lanturn that has been burning for over 1300 years.

Pretty cool stuff.

Since I was travelling with Alain, I didn't take my motorbike. We went by bus.

Tongdosa is located in the town of Andong; midway between Ulsan and Busan. The temple complex is very large and impressive.

















Here we are in Andong, looking at the enterence of the Tongdosa complex.

















More of the same.


















Even the phone booths are cool here!

















This is a pretty stream.
















Let's go tiger hunting!
















I don't think that I'd get very far trying to canoe down this stream.

















A map of Tongdosa. If I remember right, it was about a 1km walk from the enterence (bottom right) to the main complex (middle).

















Click on this picture to read about Tongdosa.

















Damn, I took a good picture!

















A lot of the rocks and cliffs here have Chinese writting carved into them. It's called "hanja" in Korean.

















Here's an attractive shithouse.

















It's a restaurant on the path to the temple.

















The road that we walked on followed this stream. All along the way, people were playing in it.

















Another hanja-covered rock.

















These lanturns lined the path as well. They were probably 100 metres apart from each other.

















Lots of rock piles here. I think that the idea is to add a rock to a pile and make a wish/say a prayer.


















An attractive ditch.


















The temple cemetary. I wonder how old some of the graves are.


















A souvenir shop. I bought something. Two AA batteries for my camera.

















Further down the stream.

















Tongdosa museum.

















A gateway, leading into the temple area.
Chinese is read like Hebrew; right to left. I don't know what the first two characters are, but the last four are mountain Tongdo temple.

















Another totally awesome picture!


















Some temple-like place.

















In the gate into the even-more-main temple area, there were four "deva" guardians/heavens kings guarding the gate. Most people bowed to them. I took pictures instead. In doing so, I stole their souls. At least, I would've if statues had souls.

















The other two "deva" guardians.

















Here's the gate were the deva guardians are.

















Geungnakbojeon Hall
















A three-storied stone pagota in the centre of the main courtyard.


















An even better view of the same thing.

















The gate into the next section of the complex.

















Temple buildings. I don't know what they are all for. Some of them had an alter, often with a statue of Buddha in them. Some of them were housing for the monks. Some of them are probably storage sheds.

















Here's an attractive building.















Another gate into the next section.

















Nice view here.

















I don't think that pictures of Buddha statues are allowed, so I waited until lady that was sweeping the enterance got out of the way and I took this picture.
















A five storied pagota.















Another gate. I'm unofficially renaming this temple to "the temple of the gates".

















Wow, it's another building!

















Here's some dude praying to an inanimate object. Like the deva statues, I opted to take a picture when nobody was looking instead.

















Do monks live here? There were a lot of them walking around.

















This crazy bastard was painted on the side of a building. Many years ago, he would've proved to be quite the challenge in a street fight. Nowadays, he'd drop pretty quickly to the power of my boom-stick.
















After taking pictures of random people praying and laughing at them, the inevidible happened; a monk approached us. What did I do about this monk? Why, I took a picture of him of course!

Actually, he was a really cool guy. He talked to us in coheirent English. Alain and myself had an awesome talk with him. He grew up in Ulsan and even went to university there, where he studied foreign culture and learned Spanish. I talked a little with him in Spanish, but unfortunately he forgot most of it. He said that he understood most of what I said, but he wasn't able to respond. Even still, he was great to talk to. We exchanged phone numbers, and he said that next time that I came to Tongdosa, I could give him a call and we could hang out. He said that he'd happily show me around the more remote parts of the temple, so I definetely want to take him up on that offer.
















Here's Alain, posing with our new friend.

















Our visit with our Buddhist friend was not over. He took us to the temple cafeteria and hooked us up with some temple food. It was vegetarian; consisting of rice, kimchi, tofu, potatoes and other veggies. I was not bad at all. Best of all, it was free!

















After supper, we had to do our dishes. This is where we did them.

















After dinner, our new friend informed us of the evening events. Every day, they play the drums and ring the temple bell at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Then the monks go and pray in front of a Buddha statue.
















Here's the music building. The giant bell is on the bottom, while some very large drums and other instruments are at the top. We listened to some monks go Bonzo on the drums for a while. When they were finished, one of the monks started to ring the huge bell. He must've rang it at least 50 times. The whole event lasted for maybe half an hour. It was amazing.

















Here they are in action.

















When we left the temple, it was dark out. Here we are, looking at the town of Andong thought the enterance gate.


















Andong at night.

















Alain and I found a cool restaurant and ordered a giant beer. This pitcher held 3 litres.