I posted a clip a few weeks ago of lanterns around Korea in advance of Buddha’s birthday. Well, this past Friday, May 5th, was Buddha’s birthday. I found myself at a temple called Shilsangsa in Jirisan National Park, one of South Korea’s most beautiful areas. The lanterns were everywhere as this clip shows. They were particularly cool, because they all used real candles, so you could get a real sense of the flickering, and even one or two lanterns caught fire, probably cause it was a windy night. I’ve seen the lanterns several times, but I never thought about what happens to them after Buddha’s birthday. At this temple, late in the evening at the end of the birthday, the visitors and the monks took down all the lanterns and one by one ripped the paper off, and broke apart the metal frames. It took several hours for 40+ people to dismantle all the lanterns.