Buddha's Birthday

Buddha's birthday is a week long festival every spring. Bright colorful lanterns are hung through the streets and temples throughout the country, there are lantern parades in many towns on the second weekend, and people flock to the countryside temples to light incense and meditate. I made a trip up to one of the temples in the Insadong neighborhood of Seoul. The temple itself was gorgeous- covered in thousands of bright colorful lanterns. They had some traditional dance performances the weekend I was there as well. On the street just outside the temple there was a beautiful display of paper lanterns showing various Buddhist symbols and scenes of traditional festivities and more of these lanterns further down the way on pedestals in the river. Along the main street in Insadong they had a street festival with booths showing how to make paper lanterns and lotus flowers, selling Buddhist crafts and paintings, and various demonstrations. I particularly enjoyed the yoga and martial arts demonstrations. There were also games to play- many of the children were building tall towers of blocks and learning to make wishes on them and I was challenged to a game of Chinese checkers- I lost the first round but came back to win the second game, much to the delight of my high school opponents! Some of the monks from the temple had come out to do intricate sand paintings and many people were painting gold colored pagoda daranis and signing their name inside- another traditional wish making activity. There was apparently a lovely nighttime parade with all the lit lanterns that night, but I unfortunately had to give it a miss as I needed to catch an early bus back to my town that night so I could teach come morning. A bit of wishful thinking on my part actually as the buses were all full of festival goers and I ended up having to take a bus to another town and stay in a love motel there only to catch the early bus in the morning. Thus a bit hectic at the end, but a wonderful festival nonetheless.