Lanterns, Lanterns Everywhere!

At last, DOWN TIME. We have about another half an hour before we get on the bus to head to our next concert venue. This morning we went sight-seeing in some of Buddha's shrines.  We went to his temple and to a grotto this morning.  Buddhism is the second largest religion in South Korea, with Christianity being first.  According to Pastor Riemer, Buddhists are not very devout. Buddha's symbol is a fish, and every morning before traditional worship (waaaay back when) the monks would ring a large gong next to a fish statue (and three other instruments in order to call people to worship.  The temple itself was massive, consisting of many sections and shrines for the different aspects of Buddha.  The foundation is the original, but many of the wooden buildings were replicas of the originals because many fires destroyed the others. We saw statue after statue of Buddha, occasionally people entered the temples to pray to the statues.  There was also a stone garden where people can go to make towers of stones and make a wish on them.

Being in these shrines made me wonder what people who are not Christian think when they see depictions of Jesus on the cross. It's such a vast distance: a picture of our Lord suffering on the cross in order to save us from our sin, and then depictions of a semi-obese man sitting in a serene position -sometimes with pictures of hands and eyes surrounding him. Just a thought. For me, the temples and shrines were purely a historic part of Korean history, and I have such a hard time imagining people praying to him and believing that he will really make a difference in their lives. 

After seeing the temples we drove up a mountain and climbed up to another shrine with a very large statue inside of it.  The mountain was incredible, and while the grotto was cool... I really preferred the scenery! One of the other interesting things is that the country is covered in lanterns for his birthday. There are multi-colored lanterns strung from every pole and tree with symbols and pictures of Buddha on them. The grotto and temple had a particularly large number of them, casting rainbows of color all over the ground.  Most were just traditional polyester lanterns and others are in the shape of the national flower -the lotus blossom.

Time to get on the bus and head to concert #3!!!