Road trip to see the buddha

Over the weekend, my mother, Liddle Sis, my cousin and I went on a road trip in my mother's battered and dirty car that she'd bought secondhand from one of my aunts. We left the washing up in the sink (much to the chagrin of my father, who, in a fit of rebellion, decided to leave it all in the sink for the next three days) and the dust on the floors to kick up some more on the highway from Seoul to travel down south of the peninsula to Kyong-ju, a UNESCO designated World Heritage Site.

The dust in the car must have been decades old; my cousin sneezed and coughed constantly for the first three hours of the trip. I sat next to my mother, the driver, and we talked about everything - the car, the meaning of the word 'trajectory' versus 'passage', guarantees and the law, renting, house prices and so on. Liddle Sis sat quietly in the back with my cousin listening to songs with shared ear pieces. The grey sky yielded smatterings of icy snow, and we argued about whether it was hail or snow. The hours passed, the sun went down and we debated whether to stop at the upcoming highway stop or the next. My mother and I ended up singing a children's nursery rhyme.
"You guys are crazy," Liddle Sis shook her head in disbelief.

Early in the morning we washed our tired faces with cold water and took to the road. There are so many historical sites in Kyong-ju, they say if you scratch the earth, you would find an antique, in the same way they used to say the stones lying about in the streets of Sri Lanka were in fact emeralds. I wanted to see the stone buddha in Seokgulam more than anything else.

Toham mountain is the highest in the region - from the top we could see the ridges of other mountains folded out underneath our feet like the ruffles in a brocade cloak. It is said that the mountain has special spiritual presence and the Shilla people setting up Seokgulam wanted to use the spirit to enhance the power of the stone buddha. The truth is, for all its reputed spiritual strength, during the Japanese occupation the man-made cave was dismantled and some of the sculptures looted. During the Seventies, the Korean government made great efforts to restore the cave, but no one managed to replicate the original locked stone structure without using cement.

My mother lagged behind us while we climbed the steps to the cave housing the sculpted buddha. When she finally did come up, huffing and puffing with the effort, we saw she'd bought a bag of rice for each of us to offer to the temple's monks.
"At least we'll have done a good deed, feeding the monks," she said. The white stone interior gently reflected the lights installed at the mouth of the cave.
"These are the spirits guarding the cave," my mother said, pointing to the two sculpted figures on each side of the entrance, their bodies heavy with muscles. I have always loved the sculptures in this cave - they are so graceful and light, it is as if the figures might move at any moment. The face of the buddha is smooth and his expression serene, yet somehow stern. Through his closed eyes, you feel he knows you are watching him. We put the rice bags onto the table for such offerings and bowed our heads three times, a salute to the dignified presence within.