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August 26th, 2024

Seogwipo, Jeju Island, South Korea

The lifestyle of a traveling nomad can be avoidant and escapist.  The morning after I opened my heart to Adam and Victor at Tottott Guest House, I abruptly left for Seogwipo, a city one hour down the shore, certain that I’d never see them again.  Selfishly, I was seeking distance from the projected trauma they spewed all over me.  

Once settled at my new dwelling, I indulged in introversion.  The withdrawal brought me solace.  I spent my entire first day in Seogwipo roaming the city with my headphones on, bearing no intention of conversing or exchanging energy, simply trudging through markets, nature parks, and beachy boardwalks.  Once dusk began to fall, I regressed towards my bed.  Buying a kilogram of Jeju tangerines from the fruit stand in front of my hostel solidified my evening itinerary of grazing on citrus in solitude.  

But those plans were immediately squashed: as I took off my headphones to purchase the fruit, an unintelligibly piercing scream startled me and visibly shook the elderly fruit vendor.  It came from a man standing on the rooftop of a ten-story hotel across the street.  He was frantically waving his arms over his head.  My myopia prevented me from discerning his finer features; despite strained squinting, all I could make out was a lanky blob of pale skin and green clothes excitedly bouncing up and down.  It seemed like he was trying to get my attention, though. 

He called out, “Wait right there! I’m coming down!”  

Confused and fearing stranger danger, I shouted back, “Sorry, I have to go to sleep!”  Not giving the interaction a second thought, I popped my headphones back on and retreated into my hostel’s common room, intending to start working on my pile of oranges.  But, before I could sink my fingernail into the peel of my first tangerine, the man from the rooftop burst through the door.  Locking eyes with him, now at close to enough range for my vision to focus, I recognized him as Vincent from Tottott.

Shocked, I squealed, “It was you!  Sorry I didn’t recognize you!  I’m completely blind.”

Thankfully, Vincent didn’t hold a grudge.  Delighted to see me, he joined me at my table.  We shared my kilo of fruit and caught up a bit.  Removed from the hurricane of Adam’s alcoholism, he became a very pleasant companion.  

Yesterday, we spent all day together, hiking the Olle Trail, a trekker’s footpath that lines Jeju’s entire perimeter.  As we pranced over basalt rocks and waded in the cobalt sea, I probed Vincent about his endless knowledge of chemistry, geology, and history, while he urged me to introduce him to my tool belt of breathing exercises and stretches.  

From Jeju’s southern coast, we peered up at Mount Hallasan, the active volcano that birthed this island countless lifetimes ago.  Its spouted lava has cooled into the fertile land beneath our feet, cradling evergreen, deciduous, and palm trees that all grow alongside each other.  If I stand still in Jeju’s wilderness for long enough, I start believing that I’m just another tree.

​​August 28th, 2024

Baekyangsa, South Korea

My final adventure in South Korea led me deep into the mountains of its mainland in pursuit of Jeong Kwan, a world-famous chef.  She’s quite the anomaly: her gourmet food is not served in a restaurant, but instead in a Buddhist monastery.  Jeong Kwan is simply a monk who cooks for other monks so well that she frequently travels the world to teach about the intersection between Buddhism and gastronomy.  My dear friend, Camilla Ffrench, introduced me to Jeong Kwan years ago when she implored me to watch the episode of Chef’s Table highlighting the venerable monk’s talents.  Vivid memories of that hour-long TV spot popped into my head a month ago as I prepared to travel to Jeong Kwan’s home country.  Innocently, with no expectations, I googled her name only to find that her monastery, Baekyangsa Temple, offers overnight cooking-class retreats taught by the master herself!  I signed up immediately; it was a no-brainer.  Thirty-six hours of immersive monasticism topped off with a lecture by one of my heroes sounded like a perfect finale to my South Korean escapade. 

Two days ago, I left Jeju Island, headed towards Baekyangsa.  I broke up the journey by stopping for a night in Gwangju, the airport-clad urban center closest to the sea of rolling hills protecting Jeong Kwan.  In a haste, the night before my flight from Jeju City to Gwangju, I reserved accommodation in a hostel called Pedro’s House without reading a single review or looking at a single photo of the establishment.  It would just be a place to lay my head, no frills needed.  In the taxi from Gwangju airport to Pedro’s House, I prepared to zonk like a timber log, thinking only of the bed rest that would bisect my pilgrimage.  When the driver dropped me off three entire blocks away from my destination, I fought back complaints and self-victimization as I trudged the final stretch towards Pedro’s House, my knees shuddering under the weight of my duffel bag, backpack, and guitar case, but, as I was warmly greeted by Pedro himself, before I even had time to put my bags down, the woe that I’d so tightly cocooned metamorphosed into relieved jubilance.  My host was smiley, youthful, and effortlessly stylish.  He donned a knit beret with its brim swiveled to the side, tortoise-rim Montcler spectacles, and bright green socks.  His guest house was decked out with shelves of paperbacks and vinyl records, walls covered in vibrant art, and cozy oak tables accommodating the customers of the lobby’s coffee shop.  The photo print of Lake Fewa, Pokhara, Nepal that hung above his fridge transported me back to the afternoons I’d spent walking the circumference of that same lake during my yoga teacher training.  The traditional Balinese art beside it resurrected memories of the edenic island on which I began this voyage back in May.  God had led me to a hostel designed, down to its finest detail, to nestle in my every nuance.  Not only was Pedro a fashionably metropolitan meditator, but his spouse even ran a yoga shala just across the street.  Sensing our compatibility, Pedro doubled down on his hospitality, handing me a warm welcome beverage of hot herbal tea and granting me a free upgrade to a private room.  Predictably, I didn’t want to leave his side, but he convinced me through his persuasions to visit Gwangju’s city center, a hub rich in cultural museums, authentic eateries, and vibrant foot traffic.  

What really sealed the deal was his description of Tokyo Juice, a thrift store specializing in vintage Japanese garments.  I simply couldn’t resist.  As I tore through the racks of Tokyo Juice’s stock, ripping back hanger after hanger in anticipation of encountering emotionally-stirring pieces, my duffel bag back at Pedro’s House surely winced in fear of being overstuffed.  Knowing me well, it had valid reason to worry: I emerged from the secondhand shop with three pairs of pants, two shirts, one handbag, and a bucket hat.  

But, the splurge didn’t leave my duffel bag any heavier: once returning from the city center, I seized the opportunity to sacrificially donate my two Balinese sarongs to Pedro and his spouse, simultaneously expressing my appreciation for the couple and relieving my luggage of excess weight.  As a token of reciprocated generosity, Pedro’s spouse invited me to practice yoga at her studio the following morning.  Of course, I obliged ecstatically before tucking into the soft sheets of my private suite’s queen bed.  

Pedro woke me up at six-thirty by knocking on my door.  Fifteen minutes later, we moseyed over to the shala together, where his spouse led the two of us through a gentle and restorative floor-based flow.  She handed us each two inflatable balls, roughly equal in volume to our fists, and then guided us through several postures that sandwiched the balls between our bodies and mats.  These spheres became muscle rollers, inducing euphoric self-administered massages as we shimmied our body weight back and forth over their surface.  The prop allowed me to knead and soften subtle muscles deep in my abdomen and lower back that I hadn’t felt in ages.  I definitely let out a few audible moans, the vibrational manifestation of releasing stuck energy.  Our teacher concluded the session with a tranquil tea ceremony.  While I sipped the delicious jasmine beverage she brewed, she surprised me by gifting me a weighted eye-mask, the same one that sent me to another dimension during the savasana I’d taken just a few minutes before.  I thanked her as thoroughly as I could before Pedro dragged me out the door so that we could make it back across the street in time for him to begin serving his guests’ breakfast.  I’ve learned not to be seduced by hostel listings’ promises of “free breakfast” — these complimentary meals usually amount to nothing more than a box of stale corn flakes — but, once again, Pedro’s House was different.  On a plate that he arranged himself, my host served me kiwi, peach, tomato, roasted sweet potato, almonds, walnuts, and a hard-boiled egg.  I was in heaven.  

Before departing for Baekyangsa, I met up with another temple goer, miraculously named Adi.  In unbelievably divine serendipity, my sister’s namesake continues following me to every single country I've visited this year.  Adi singled out my email address from a chain of twenty-five temple goers, asking me, specifically, for directions to the monastery, unaware that she shared a relatively uncommon name with my only sibling.  We laughed about the coincidence over an early lunch of Korean barbecue pork belly.  “Shit,” Adi joked, “Now we’re gonna smell like pork when we get to the temple!”

I giggled, “The Buddhist vegans are gonna know we’ve been eating meat!”

But, after a forty-five minute taxi ride that wound us tightly around the curves of hair-raising mountain roads, our driver released us into a forest so cool and dense that the thick phytoncides swarming us masked all barbecue scents.  Wilderness surrounded us.  Crickets chirped.  A stream trickled.  The only indication of our proximity to our destination was a modest trail marker; there were no sounds of human civilization to guide our path.  The Buddhist compound’s auditory footprint was so slight that my first optical glimpse of its ornate temple architecture, vibrant hand-painted tiles evading the translucent cover of green leaves, felt like a jump scare; even once the trees cleared and we entered the Baekyangsa grounds, the monastery was so quiet that I had to doubt whether its buildings were really there at all.  Nuns assigned to monitor our dormitories spoke in hushed voices as they handed us bedsheets and temple clothes.  

My room, which I shared with three visitors from our group of twenty-five, was devoid of all furniture, barring a dozen bag hooks on the walls and four fold-up mattresses neatly stacked in the corner.  Besides that, it was just a hardwood floor bordered by three white walls and one sliding door.  The minimalism played tricks on my eyes, making the dorm look far more spacious than it was.  Its emptiness invited me to breathe deeply and relax.  Usually, when I decide to stop what I’m doing and meditate, I defy my environment.  Within Baekyangsa, however, meditating was an unavoidable impulse, an inevitability that I was funneled towards.  As soon as I made my bed and changed into my temple clothes, I sat on the floor in padmasana and closed my eyes, remaining that way until a nun invited us all on a tour of the grounds.  

After we were shown around a sprawling expanse of classrooms and prayer rooms, we were led into a dining hall for supper.  Our meal, a delectable vegan buffet that rivaled South Korea’s greatest omnivorous delights, was, per ancient Buddhist customs, taken silently.  If somebody had dropped a grain of rice in that room, I’d have heard it.  The concept of a silent meal was entirely new and uncomfortable to me, but I embraced the opportunity.  As a result, I felt enhanced focus and enjoyment towards my food.  I was entirely present with each incredible bite.  As I walked my licked-clean plate back towards the buffet to grab a second helping of veggies, I thought about all of the show-stopping dishes I’ve eaten throughout my young life.  Where had my mind been during those moments?  It dawned on me how difficult it’s been for me to give my undivided attention to food.  My present company, my phone, or my intrusive thoughts are constantly vying to distract me.  I still love the rapturous intimacy of a roaring dinner table, but I love it for the conversation it invites.  To truly honor food, I now prefer eating in silence.  Why shush someone for speaking during a movie but remain passive when someone blabs through an equally-masterful meal?  It’s fascinating how our societies contextualize various art forms, cooking included, each medium with its own assumed etiquette.  Is the behavior of the audience not part of the art itself?  

I checked myself whenever that philosophical train of thought led me away from the texture of the cucumbers and the flavor of the gochujang in my mouth.  

Honestly, I worried that I wouldn’t be tired by eight o’clock, the hour of our strict bedtime, but my food coma, coupled with the intoxicating effects of our post-dinner crystal singing bowl meditation, left me wiped.  If fate hadn’t placed me in a room with three loud snorers, I might have even caught a wink before midnight!  

We awoke the following morning at four.  Scattered around the waning crescent moon of this early hour were boldly twinkling constellations, pinpoint perforations pricking the black curtain of night.  The air was temperate and still.  The monastery’s default silence was harshly cut by the repeated striking of a giant bell, serving as a signal for monks, nuns, lay Buddhists, and visitors alike to congregate in the main prayer hall.  Alongside my fellow visitors, I trudged up a hill towards the site of our worship.  The bell’s piercing overtones grew more and more shrill as I neared it.  When it came into view, I could see that its height was nearly twice mine, its diameter longer than a minivan.  The catalyst of the bell’s intonation was a wooden battering ram, thick and long as a tree trunk, suspended in mid-air by a rope.  An elderly monk stood beside the bell, repeatedly lifting the battering ram over his head and releasing it to clang against the resonant metal shell.  He must have been deaf, for my ears painfully rang as I brushed by him at the moment of sonic impact.  However, the sustained bass frequencies that lingered in the wake of the abrasive crash soothed me deeply, harmonizing my cells.  

As visitors, we were instructed to meekly enter the temple through its side door.  Cushions along the hall’s back-right corner were laid out for us to sit on.  We saluted the three refuges of Buddhism, bowing once for the Buddha, our teacher, once for the dharma, his teachings, and once for the sangha, our community of practitioners.  Following our final bow, we rested at ease, sitting in vajrasana and listening to a senior monk chant sutras.  But, before I could settle into my seat, a giant grasshopper, as large as my middle finger, flew rapidly through the side door and, as though the insect had predetermined it, landed with swift grace directly on my sternum.  It happened so fast that I wondered if somebody had shot the bug out of a gun aimed at my chest.  No, I was the grasshopper’s own choice.  It felt wonderful to be chosen.  I closed my eyes and let it perch on the cotton fabric of my temple clothes while I lost myself in the monk’s chants.  Every so often, I snuck a wink of retinal exposure at the insect, checking its position.  It stayed put for several minutes before nimbly exploring the terrain of my shirt.  Our union helped me abandon the false projection of my ego and sink my awareness into the unchanging consciousness that tethered us.  Two animals became one.  

Later that morning, once the sun had risen high enough to scorch, the nun who’d given us a temple tour the day before escorted us, at long last, to Jeong Kwan’s classroom, a journey which saw us panting and sweating as we hiked the incline of a steep hill for thirty minutes.  Such exertion only heightened my anticipation.  We knew we’d arrived when, from behind the thick brush bordering our chef’s territory, we spotted a tray of portobello mushroom caps drying in the sun, Jeong Kwan’s calling card. 

Before we knew it, we’d all gathered in a culinary classroom that boasted a broad kitchen island at its front and two rosewood dining tables along its walls.  All twenty-five visitors sat at these tables and waited.  Before each of us lay a place setting of two bowls, two pairs of chopsticks, one plate, one teacup, and one spoon, all arranged neatly on a tray.  “Please, drink some radish tea,” our nun-guide offered, pointing at the steaming pots in the middle of each table.  “Venerable Jeong Kwan will be with us shortly.”  Still dripping in sweat from our commute, I bashfully sipped my tea.  Thinking about how highly I’d anticipated this exact moment since leaving Jeju, and for an entire month before that, I began perspiring anew.  Preparing to meet the woman who’d inspired me for years made my heart race.  Thankfully, a distraction came: “Please enjoy this black sesame rice cake,” our guide conveyed while a slew of kitchen assistants carried plates of bite-sized treats to our tables.  Just like everything else we ate that day, the black sesame rice cakes came in exactly twenty-five pieces, one for each visitor.  Squeezing my ration between my chopsticks, I lifted it to my mouth.  The warm, squishy goo of congealed rice melted on my tongue as the earthy comfort of powdered black sesame seeds, which coated the adhesive starch, lit up my taste buds.  Right off the bat, our chef was not playing around.

The welcome snack was an act of diversion, an indirect sleight-of-hand trick, that allowed Jeong Kwan to silently enter the room unnoticed as we all coiled under the weight of our one-bite foodgasms.  Nobody noticed her as she calmly walked towards her elevated platform behind the kitchen island.  We only jolted back to Earth once she struck a percussive wooden block with a mallet, in three successive staccato strokes, gathering our attention while wordlessly stating her commitment to honoring Buddhism’s three refuges.  From below her smoothly shaved scalp emerged the purest smile I’d ever seen.  It wasn’t just kind; it was understanding, inviting, and nurturing.  It wasn’t just her lips, either; her cheekbones, eyes, and forehead smiled at us, too.  I wondered, How could she possibly be looking into all of our eyes at once?  She’s like the Mona Lisa in real life!  The hue of her skin was permanently glazed in golden-hour sunlight.  I hesitate to describe this suspended moment as “frozen” because of how warm her presence was, but we certainly stayed still for an eternity, hanging in a state beyond time as we shared that silent greeting.  

Then, she started talking.  Her lecture made me wish I could speak Korean.  Our translator, God bless her, did everything she could to keep up with Jeong Kwan’s impassioned sermon of animated gesticulation and sing-song vocalization, but I couldn’t help but mourn the scraps of communication being left on the metaphorical cutting board as each two-minute soliloquy that our chef imparted was translated as three curt sentences of dry English.  Nonetheless, I learned plenty just through receiving my venerable teacher’s body language, vibrating intonations, and layered facial expressions.  The translated verbal content of Jeong Kwan’s speech, even if simplified, was no less gripping.  Speaking as the chef’s medium, our translator proclaimed, “It’s hotter than it should be today.  Usually, this time of year is cool in Baekyangsa, but this year, it is not so.”  The translator jumped in at every opportunity to sweep up the chef’s abstract projections before they meandered too far.  “I want to explain to you a little bit about the four elements that make our world, that make our food, that make us.  Those elements are soil, water, sun, and wind.”  If the quiet milliseconds of Jeong Kwan’s quickest inhales hadn’t been filled by the translator’s interceptions, then the monk surely would have forgotten to pause, enthralled by the opportunity to share her wisdom.  

She continued, “All the plants that we eat need these four elements in order to thrive.  These elements also exist within us!  Our soil, the element that binds us to this Earth, is our bodies.  Our bodies are seventy to seventy-five percent water, so that’s our water element.  Our sun element is our body’s heat, its temperature regulation.  And, can anybody guess what our wind element is?”  Her audience was too shy to offer any confident conjectures.  Maybe it’s breath, I thought, but I held my tongue.  Patching the awkward silence, our teacher relinquished the answer: “It’s movement!  Unlike trees, we can walk around and change our location!  We can’t say that we’re fully alive if we aren’t moving.  It’s our gift.”  As she explained this, our wise chef effortlessly bounced up and down, spun her body, and wagged her feet, her fluid mobility confusing all of us who were already struggling to guess her age.  “We’re now in the middle of a technological revolution that’s keeping us stuck in front of our computers.  We’re not moving enough!  I predict that the next revolution will be immunity.  We will no longer get sick.  But this won’t last, because it opposes nature.  Nature always prevails.  We can try to outsmart it, but that’s impossible.  That’s why today we’ll be eating wild plants, to get closer with nature.  These plants grew in the rugged jungle.  It’s not the same if the plants are genetically modified or grown in sterile greenhouses; they won’t have the same energy from all four elements.”

There was no discrepancy between the words she spoke and the food she prepared.  An hour into her speech, Jeong Kwan motioned for us students to huddle around her kitchen island workstation.  In a flurry of stirring, whisking, and tossing, she married mushrooms, seaweed, cucumbers, pineapple, fresh herbs, and countless other harvested plants, utilizing fermented soybean paste, homemade fruit syrups, sesame oil, and vinegar as aromatic flavoring.  These wild ingredients, exclusive to the region, were hardly transformed, simply honored.  Nobody asked her to clarify her recipes; nobody posed any questions at all.  The chef was clearly improvising, engaged in a wordless state of meditation.  

By the time she switched off her induction burners, our tables were each filled with two dozen dishes of mesmerizing temple food.  We retreated to our seats and, once our teacher gave permission, dug into our feast.  This food went beyond merely stimulating my taste buds.  Its medicinal qualities reverberated across every cell of my body.  I did not feel bloated or fatigued by the end.  Instead, I brimmed with vibrant energy.  This food lifted me up, dodging the curse of indulgent heaviness that plagues most plates.  Every bite of napa kimchi, zucchini curry, and fresh tofu nourished, hydrated, and satiated my entire vessel, head to toe.  Thinking of the Buddhist training I’d undergone the previous day, I took this meal in silence, staying present for each fleeting bite.  That moment of culinary quietude was unspeakably precious.  Its conditions could not be recreated as long as I was outside Baekyangsa.  My plate was a kaleidoscope, a looking glass through which I interacted with the lush scenery beyond the classroom walls.  With these plants in my mouth, I felt even closer to the landscape than I did on the lengthy solo hike I took after breakfast.  

Tasting Jeong Kwan’s food was a rare privilege.  I am so grateful for the opportunity and the ability to come all the way to this remote temple, tasting the endangered beauty of wild plant food.  Most humans on this planet lack the resources – or desire – to make this pilgrimage, nor do they have the necessary access to eat such sacred ingredients in their hometown.  Tragically, the freely regenerative polycrop agriculture present in Baekyangsa is an anomaly, a maintenance of natural perfection that is globally diminishing by the day.  As such, my session with Jeong Kwan was more of a novelty experience than a copy-and-paste circumstance that I could emulate back in New York.  Planting a tomato vine in my backyard won’t cut it.  Neither will buying the fanciest produce from Brooklyn’s most bourgeois supermarket.  Where in my city is the untouched wilderness, cradling fertile soil and expansive biodiversity, that Jeong Kwan’s cuisine demands?  Where can my people find nutrition?  Will our species ever return to the humble purity I found in Baekyangsa?  Is there any other antidote to serve our burning planet, or is that the only option?  It’s an impossible conundrum, constantly gaslit by the trickery of capitalist industry.  If Jeong Kwan is right, then soon we’ll all be sold products that’ll make us live forever.  But what kind of life will that be?

Love,

Etai