Once Temple

When we moved to Seoul we opted to stay in a service apartment on the grounds of the Swiss Grand Hotel; not far from the Bank’s main office.

500 years ago a Buddhist temple rested on the precise spot where the Swiss Grand Hotel now sits. This locale was chosen for its tranquil beauty and open spaces. A small stream spanned by sturdy wooden footbridges ran though the Temple grounds. Here the monks would live out their lives in peace and harmony.

In 1983the Swiss Grand Hotel purchased the property and built its hotel. But the builders respected the land and maintained the gardens in and around the property. The hotel itself was built into the hillside, so as to blend in with the land’s contours. The stream flowed unimpeded; the rugged footbridges maintained. As you approach the hotel from below, you can still imagine the Temple it once was, and maybe catch a ghostly glimpse of a humble monk contemplating the vastness of the universe or the infinite depths of the soul.

The park was one of the defining aspects of the Swiss Grand Hotel, and sounds of children and adults playing and laughing in it would fill the evening air. Not quite the serenity of the original Temple, but not a bad alternative.

Six months ago the great engine of progress shuddered to life once again, this time to build a convention center where the park stood. Like mindless metal locusts the construction equipment arrived, and within a week the green land was laid bare, the park replaced by an enormous weeping wound of rock, clay and mud.

I’m sure the convention center will be architecturally pleasant and will add economic value to the area. Fred, The God Of Irony, will probably demand they hold environmental conferences right on the spot where the environment didn’t survive. And I’m sure that laughter will at times fill the great halls as one speaker or another amuses his/her rapt audience with tales of business and commerce and technology.

But this entertainment isn’t the same is it? Something very difficult to find will have been lost, and the feeling that the loss will be permanent permeates the Once-Temple. And though we know that in less than 50 years the soon-to- be-completed convention center will go under the wrecking ball, we also know that it is unlikely a park will be re-constructed in its place. A spaceport perhaps, but not a park.

But it’s just a park you might say, just a few blades of grass, just a tree, a song, a river, a smile, a mountain, a single teardrop.

Just the world.

Just us.

In the lobby of the Swiss Grand stands a magnificent clock, its inner mysteries exposed for all to see. It could be the ancient caretaker of this hotel, this Temple, this place — a silent observer of deeds large and small. As its massive hands sweep slowly around, pushed by the complex interaction of gears and wheels, we think about the inexorable pressure of time, and of the machines at work just outside the walls, grinding our memories into sand.

And if we listen carefully — fists clenched, throat dry, head tilted just so — we can hear the fading sound of children’s laughter as the echoes stop and the world runs down to nothing.