a small parade

Goyang City is just a satellite of Seoul, but this doesn't mean the town won't engage in its own modest echo of Seoul's much larger festivities on the Buddha's birthday:



I went for a 22,000-step walk this past Monday. I had the day off, so I had time to devote a 3.5-hour chunk of my day to a long stroll. At about the halfway point, which takes me into downtown, I espied the above parade, which consisted of about a hundred people—some in traditional costume, some gray-robed Buddhist monks, and mostly regular folks—holding lanterns, banging on folkloric instruments, and generally having a good time just wending their way along a major thoroughfare of Goyang. They were all wearing big, happy smiles. And why not? A great teacher had been born over 2.5 millennia ago, and this was the day to celebrate his arrival in our midst.


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