Other People at the Temple #2.

You know what, I just wrote about three paragraphs. Most of it I am pretty sure will not interest anyone of you. So I’ll delete it heavily. Here goes the new, edited version of this blog entry.

There are three monks here. There are two besides Dae-hyo Sunim and they are both sick at the moment! They’re both pretty good humored guys. I talk occasionally with one but rarely with the other. I think he’s been keeping to himself because of a sickness. He’s in the hospital now. The monk in the hospital comes back to help with ceremonies sometimes. I like his singing voice for the chanting. There’s a quality to his voice that is just right. When he doesn’t come for ceremonies the chanting / singing is just not quite as enjoyable! (Piyanuch, you’re probably saying, “Troy, how could you?! They’re singing the chants, and you’re enjoying it? Didn’t you learn anything with Asoke?!” I always enjoyed the singing chanting in Thailand. Yeah, I still enjoy it. ;-))

I really couldn’t tell you much about what they do all day. Even the head monk, I don’t know much about what he does all day. I do know that he’s having another temple built somewhere in the northern part of the country and so he goes there nearly every Tuesday morning and comes back Saturday afternoon. So we don’t see him here all that much. He’s busy with kindergarten administration, coordinating the building of the new temple, and who knows what.

Okay, I just edited a bunch. Still probably nothing very interesting for any of you. Sorry!

I’m typing this in my room on my laptop and will save it onto a “data stick” and send it later, in the office.

There are three young kindergarten teachers. All women. None of them, apparently speaks much English. One of them might speak a bit more than the others but probably not all that much more. They seem like nice people. We talk a little bit.

I’ve gone into their classes on occasion. The kids are great fun. They hang all over me, they are so incredibly cute. They are doing their little activities or playing, running around and just being kids. Makes me think back to my kindergarten years. I don’t remember much really. Wonder if I had as good a time as most of the kids that I notice here. Surely there are kids not having such a good time, and I just don’t notice them. Because they’re not the ones running all around me, jumping up and down, poking their finger in my butt!

I tell them not to do that. Doesn’t seem to be working though. Yesterday a kid did it and I got a little irritated. So I told him to not do that. I let it be known. I’m sure he got the message. But he didn’t really get it. You know what I mean, yeah? I got a bit more irritated after I saw that he didn’t get it. In the next moment, I calmed down realizing that it takes time. We all take time to really understand something. How could I expect a child to learn anything immediately?

I did start to learn this lesson at the English school. But changing our attitudes isn’t usually a quick process, is it? So it’s good to be patient, with ourselves and with others. Especially with kids. I look forward to spending more time with these kids.

They’re all 5 to 7 years old, Korean age. When a Korean child is born, it is one year old. Then on the first of each year everybody ages one more year. They celebrate birthdays it’s just that they don’t add another year to their ages on their birthdays. So these kids are between 3 and 5 in our system of counting age.

By traveling you encounter these different ways of looking at life, and in doing life. It’s pretty neat. But I do understand, to some degree, that it’s nothing to get too interested in. Not long ago I heard a Dharma Talk (Buddhist teaching) where the guy said that someone else once said, “If you can’t meditate, travel.”!! I love that. To me, it means that meditation is the best way to learn about the world. Traveling is the second best way!