Samgak-san  Taego-sa
Ancient Hermitage of a Living Buddha
West of Yongam-bong Peak, above Jungheung-saji   --   within Goyang City and the National Park
--   Southern Sector of the Bukhan-Sanseong Fortress  --  Visited August 2010
Interior of the Sanshin-gak.  This relief-carving on the rock-face is crude but evocative.  The
monk living here told me that it was carved by Taego himself, but I have to doubt this.  It was
obviously re-painted recently.  The pine-tree can barely be seen, and the crane-feather-fan that
San-shin holds is black -- highly unusual.  The
dongja boy offers a single Peach of Immortality.
The Budo cremains-monument of the monk who restored this hermitage in 1964, and the North Star Spirit
in the clouds (with
sam-shin triplets and celestial Buddhas), in the modern Chil-seong painting
Simple Main Hall, with typical Life-of-Buddha paintings on its outer walls.  It is recorded that
Great Meditation Master (called a "Living Buddha")
Taego Bo-u built this as his personal
hermitage in 1341, while he was supervising the reconstruction of
Jungheung-sa just below.
He called it simply
Dong-am [East Hermitage], but after his death it was renamed Taego-am.
After both of them were destroyed in the Korean War, this was rebuilt as a humble temple in
1964, and the
biseok stele-monument to Taego was moved here from the Jungheung-saji site.
It remains today a small but significant temple of the Taego Order of Korean Buddhism.
The Sanshin-gak [Mountain-spirit Shrine]
above the
Yongwang-dan and spring;  and
a modern ritual-portrait of Taego Bo-u.
The Sanshin-gak entranceway, and good signboard (below).  The right-hand
wall of this shrine is the face of the unusual boulder-outcropping that it was built against.
Folkish votive-offerings left on the "natural altars" of the outcropping
Samgak-san's Yongam-bong and Shidan-bong Peaks above the Residence, on a humid August day.
Ordinary Shin-jung painting, but with no identifiable San-shin;  notable that
this protective-guardian icon has a fire-extinguisher placed next to it!
The simple modern Yong-wang [Dragon-King of the Waters] shrine and painting
entranceway to
Taego-sa