Today, Andrew and I set out for a temple I visited a long time ago. I believe it is the “working mountain temple” closest to my home. It’s on the side of a mountain called Gobong-san (고봉산), which is north of the railroad tracks in the part of Ilsan I think of as “old Ilsan”. It is my opinion that this is the “one mountain,” of the various mountains around, that is the best candidate for the origin of the name of the city of Ilsan, which means “one mountain.”
We visited the temple on this mountain called 영천사 [yeong-cheon-sa]. It’s a small, unpretentious working temple. I met a monk there and had an actual conversation with him – I lived in Ilsan, I had been in the cancer center, my brother was visiting. He wished me good health. Then he ran down and told one of the men hanging out near a storage shed, “OMG there’s a foreigner speaking Korean up there!” I didn’t catch the exact words in Korean, but that was the drift of it.
I felt flattered.
I bowed.
Here are some pictures.
Andrew on the trail up the mountain.
The temple garden.
Behind the temple outbuilding (monks’ quarters).
Standing on the stoop of the temple looking toward Tanhyeon towers.
The main temple building and administrative building to the right.
A smaller shrine behind the main temple. These are always my favorite places to go to do sitting or prostrations, rather than the main temples. They are dedicated to various saints (bodhisattvas) and I have no idea which one this one was dedicated to – I don’t really see that it matters.
The interior of that small shrine.
Andrew took a picture of me doing a few prostrations there.
I took a picture of Andrew sitting quietly there.
Looking down on the larger temple from the stoop at the shrine.
A trail leading up into the forest behind the shrine.
A buddha in a stone niche near the shrine.
A very large number of kimchi pots behind the administration building.
A closed door detail on the shrine.
I like how in random spots you can find little figurines enacting scenes.
Some other figurines.
Here is a picture of a woman getting a drink of water at the public fountain (every temple has one) and a laughing buddha. Slightly out of focus…
Here is another smaller temple we passed while walking down the mountain.
A jang-seung [장승 = traditional shamanistic totem] I saw amid some flowers on the main road at the base of the mountain at the end of the trip.
Here are a ton of “temple-panel paintings” that I snapped. I love these things and am trying to build up a collection of images of them.
