Martial arts retreat at a Buddhist temple carved into a South Korean mountainside offers a deep sense of peace - eventually
The hollow donnngg of a bell gently burrows into my sleep. It is a comforting, if unfamiliar, sound, accompanying the strange new dreams of a foreign place, a new bed, an unfamiliar night.
Again and again, with increasing persistence, the bell calls me out of my sleep, sounding like a bullfrog in the woods. Donnngg … donnngg. I am still swimming towards consciousness when the ringing stops and the deep baritone chanting of a monk fills the predawn air.
As I awake, I slowly remember where I am: in a narrow bunk bed in a dormitory at the Golgulsa Templestay, on South Korea’s Hamwolsan mountain, about to start a second day learning an ancient meditative martial art. I have signed up to be a Buddhist warrior for a few days. To practise or to pretend, I am not sure.
As the monk’s voice drones over the loudspeakers, I rise, wash and walk through the morning dark to the practice hall for meditation.
