The Country Mice

On the approach up the stone steps to Haein-sa Temple, a walkway guides visitors through a series of gates, one of them called The Gate of Nirvana. I don’t believe I found it.

Lining the walkway are a series of trees, some in substantially more vigourous shape than their neighbours.

The story behind this withered fellow is that it was planted 1,200 years ago to commemorate the founding of the temple where it grew until its well-earned old age in 1945.

As a gesture of respect, I suppose, passers-by press pebbles into its corrugated exterior.

Other little piles of rock wait, inukshuk-style, gestures of time slowed, even for the few moments required to balance one stone atop another.

And a final meditative pattern — clay tiles.

Complexity in simplicity. Simplicity in complexity.

Maybe I found the Nirvana Gate after all.