Daewung-Jeon in Gaeam-sa Temple and The Sculpture of The Animal in Imagination

Daewung-Jeon in Gaeam-sa temple looked not so special at a first glance.
Its location was excellent. It seemed that it sat at the center of this mountain.
This location gave me the feeling of the balance.
Strangely enough, the physical balance always present us the harmony of the mind.

But its size was not so impressive.
I was curious why people told Daewung-Jeon in Gaeam-sa was one of the best relics among Buddhist Building in this area.
At that time one monk came to me and we talked each other.
He introduce himself. He became the monk when he was an elementary school pupil.
So he had lived his all life as the monk.
I didn’t ask why and how he became a monk.
The process of being a monk must be interesting, but I couldn’t ask him about his story.
Sometimes it’s better leaving true story behind, because it sometimes presents us the imaginations.

He introduced me the point of looking Dawoung-Jeon.
At first, he pointed out the strange faces beneath the leaves of Daewung-Jeon.
He explained those faces of Dokaebi which was the mysterious being in the imagination.

But this face was not unique in this temple. I had already looked the similar faces in other temples.
It was not clear to identify what the face looked like, because it was covered by the front board.
It looked like the same face. I photographied this face in Ssanggae-sa temple in Nonsan city

The next thing, he introduced me was the sculptures of the dragon and the white tiger.
The dragon sculpture was general in other temples, too. But interesting was the white tiger.
The white tiger was a symbol of the local religion, Shamanism of the Mountain god, of Korea.
It was strange for me why they made the symbol of the local shamanism on the Buddhist building.

In my opinion it seemed like the Haetae, also the animal in the imagination which protect from the fire.
When we reminded the reason of reconstructing this building, it seemed clear that the sculpture was not a white tiger but a Haetae.

In next posting, let’s enter into the inside of Daewung-Jeon.