Modern Religious Experience: Reflection #5: Bongwonsa Temple and Nature Walk: "After visiting the Zen Buddhist Temple, Bongwonsa and attempting to see nature as a Taoist, answer this question: What is it about creation,..."
As I walked through the trees, Carlee made a comment to me about how Seoul was often like this: beautiful trees everywhere, and then just beyond, skyscrapers and highways and taxicabs. I'm not used to city life, but a good chunk of people are and have lived in cities their entire lives. I started thinking about the city, and how the buildings are built and designed for functionality and sometimes aesthetics. These buildings and structures that take sometimes DECADES to plan and then more years and months to build, and either get torn down or fall apart in sometimes half the time. But then how can a tree know how to grow, to be beautiful and functional, and last ten times longer than it took to reach its full height?
I think that this question and ones similar to it make people turn to religion. The constant wonder of how nature is so effortless, and humans have to put forth such effort to even attain a likeness to what the forces beyond our control have created. In Shintoism, they explain it through kami, the forces within everything in nature. InTaoism, they explain it through the Tao, the "life essence" that flows and conducts life on earth. Eastern religions have an intense focus on creation and life, which I experienced on this walk, and was led to many of the questions I'm sure people on quests of spiritual discovery have been on before me.
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