A couple of weeks ago, we visited Beomosa Temple, located on the outskirts of Busan near the end of the Orange Line subway.  This was our first real excursion to anywhere other than work, the grocery store, or the places we had been required to go in order to get our residency paperwork established.

Beomosa is the fourth largest temple in Korea, and it houses several national treasures and religious artifacts. We were looking forward to an unforgettable day, and Beomosa didn’t disappoint.

The temple is located just off the Beomosa subway stop.  You can choose to take a bus the 2.6 km up Mt. Geumjeongsan to the temple, or, if you’re as brave/foolhardy as we were, you can choose to hike up.  As far as we can tell, the photo below of Busan is the only advantage of the hike up.

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The temple itself is gorgeous, full of intricately carved and gated areas.

Further up the hill were the temple buildings themselves.  We were particularly impressed by the statues of the four devas, god-like figures who are believed to watch over the city and foster goodwill.  There were won notes tossed in to the statues from people who had doubtless asked the devas for special favors.

This guy was my favorite.  His job is to change the hearts of mean-spirited people and make them kind again.

We wandered through the temple buildings, but since there were so many people there at prayer, we didn’t take a lot of photographs or do too much snooping around.  Now that we live in a foreign culture, we have accepted the fact that we will occasionally commit a faux pas or two with respect to customs and etiquette.  But one of the things we DID NOT want to trample on was someone else’s faith.  So, we took a couple photos when we came upon an empty temple hall, but kept our distance where people were worshiping.

As you can see, this place was absolutely amazing.  And what might make it better, you might ask?  Well, let me tell you. Mountain streams ran all through the temple grounds, which filled the air with the sound of running water.  There were places where you could sit on rocks and rest your feet in the cool stream water.  There were hiking trails all over the area.  It reminded us so much of Wilson’s Creek back home in Lenoir.  Don’t believe it? See for yourself!

We will definitely be back to this beautiful, peaceful place.  Beomosa offers temple stays, and we are thinking about doing one of those to see what monastic life here is like.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Busan, Korea