Seoulscapade

As soon as I saw on the list of servers that one of them was using a map called de_bulguksa, I knew it had to be some kind of Korean temple design. In Korean, “sa” means temple and bulguk would be the name of the temple, so in English it simply translates as Bulguk Temple. At the time I thought it might be a kind of joke name or something.

But when I started playing, there was definitely something familiar about the look of the place. I’ve been to a couple of Korean temples, and I kind of thought it was a kind of composite design. I was able to have a look around before attracting gun fire because not many players were on. It’s a pretty good rendition of temple grounds in Korea.

Only later did I realize the reason it looked so familiar. It’s based on an old Buddhist temple called Bulguk in the south of Korea, in North Gyeongsang provence, and I’ve been to the place! It’s a major tourist destination.

It didn’t click with me that it was the actual place I’d been to because, while the design might be faithful, the outer surrounds aren’t anything like I remember. In addition, there aren’t any tourists cluttering up the scenery, as I had experienced–just gunmen running around, which, quite frankly, is what I prefer to see in this context.

None of them showed me any of the compassion and mercy, the virtues at the heart of Buddhist philosophy.

You can find out all about it [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulguksa]here[/url]. This is some information about the temple from the site:

Bulguksa is a Buddhist temple in the North Gyeongsang province in South Korea. It is home to seven National treasures of South Korea, including Dabotap and Seokgatap stone pagodas, Cheongun-gyo (Blue Cloud Bridge), and two gilt-bronze statutes of Buddha. The temple is classified as Historic and Scenic Site No. 1 by the South Korean government.[1] In 1995, Bulguksa was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List together with the Seokguram Grotto, which lies four kilometers to the east.

The temple is considered as a masterpiece of the golden age of Buddhist art in the Silla kingdom. It is currently the head temple of the 11th district of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism.

Also, on that website, in the structure section, you can see a map of the temple. The CS map is pretty much the same layout. Of course, if you were really picky, you could go to the trouble of such things as counting the number of steps, and so on, which would have significance according to Buddhist scriptures.

I don’t think I’ll go to that much trouble, but I bet the CS mapper did. I wonder how they did the Buddha, located in Daeungjeon (대웅전), the Hall of Great Enlightenment, as shown here. That was as hard for me to answer as to imagine the sound of one hand clapping.

At that point in the game, I laid down my weapon and camped with Buddha to achieve enlightenment.

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