July/August 2008 Vol. 171 No. 6
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July 2008
A Taste of WaterBy Malia PolitzerIt is nearly one o’clock in the morning. According to traditional Korean Buddhist temple etiquette, the crack of the moktak—a fish-shaped wooden percussion instrument played by Korean monks to signal the beginning of their day—will awaken practitioners in exactly two hours for the morning meditation. Nodding off, I jerk my eyes back to the kong-an—a Korean Buddhist word play meant to facilitate contemplation—written on the tearoom whiteboard that has been the focus of my meditation for the past six hours.
June 2008
Rebuilding Seoul’s Broken PalaceBy Daniel KaneI’ve been visiting Gyeongbok Palace in Seoul for well over a decade, experiencing vicariously its measured return from the verge of extinction. As a fresh faced American soldier in Korea in 1993, I recall one of my first ventures outside our gated compound was to the National Museum, at the time located on the Gyeongbok Palace grounds. Housed in an austere, rectangular building of white granite, the museum seemed out of place among the traditional wooden Korean structures. As I wandered through the museum’s stone halls and up its grand central staircase, I did not realize I was roaming through the building that was formerly the Colonial Headquarters of the Japanese. Erected in the 1920s with deliberate affront, the Japanese could not have chosen a better location to make a statement of political dominance. Review FederationDow Jones LinksAdvertise on feer.com and in FEER |
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