Imagine for a minute what it would be like if your university prof, sports coach, or Sunday school teacher taught like a Zen master. From The World’s Religions (1991), by Huston Smith (emphasis mine):

…it has its own texts… but one glance at these distinctive texts will reveal how unlike other scriptures they are. Almost entirely they are given to pressing home the fact that Zen cannot be equated with any verbal formula whatsoever. Account after account will depict disciples interrogating their masters about Zen, only to received a roared “Ho!” for answer. For the master sees that through such questions, seekers are trying to fill the lack in their lives with words and concepts instead of realizations. Indeed, students will be lucky if they get off with verbal rebuffs. Often a rain of blows will be the retort as the master, utterly uninterested in his disciples’ physical comfort, resorts to the most forceful way he can think of to pry the questioner out of his mental rut… Zen masters may order their disciples to rip their scriptures to shreds and avoid words like Buddha or nirvana as if they were smut. They intend no disrespect. What they are doing is straining by every means they can think of to blast their novices out of solutions that are only verbal… Zen is not interested in theories about enlightenment; it wants the real thing. So it shouts, and buffets, and reprimands… [to] force the student to crash the word-barrier. Minds must be sprung from their verbal bonds into a new mode of apprehending.

Zen masters are determined that their students attain the experience itself, not allow talk to take its place (131-132).

I wonder how often our profs wished they could just haul off and smack us on the head with a meter stick. Probably best not to ask.

But regarding the bolded parts… I think all us grad students ought to be banished to monasteries to meditate on those bolded parts before we’re allowed to open our mouths (or blogs), but I’m in a good mood and this is supposed to be a happy place. :D As a wiser man than me pointed out, I don’t want to end up like those two old guys on the Muppets. Still, I think there’s a point or three to be made here.

After a delicious lunch of famous Taiwan noodle soup, thousand-year-old egg, and stomach strips, we had a good time at the Museum of World Religions in Yonghe, Taipei, Taiwan. There was a class of elementary age kids visiting from Nantou who had never seen foreigners before (according to one of their teachers). I wondered why we were being followed and stared at as if we were one of the museum’s exhibits! We had a fun time talking with them, taking pictures, and of course, letting them measure how tall their were compared to me, how big their feet were and the obligatory “sure, rub my arm hair all you want! Yeah wow. Look at that!” It was fun.

The Museum
The MWR is all about atmosphere. The elevator on the way up dims the lights, plays a moody welcome message, and opens to a display about purification beside a transparent waterfall. This leads to the entrance hallway called “Pilgrim’s Way,” where esoteric questions (in several languages) are played over a background of ambient music and the walls light up with the same questions in Mandarin and English beside life-size pictures of people praying. The hall ends at a heat-sensitive wall on which you can leave your hand prints. All this is probably the least-impressive part of the museum experience, but it sets the mood.

The museum is designed to make a strong impression and send a message, rather than primarily convey large amounts of cognitive information (though there is a lot of info to be had). It’s an engaging multi-sensory experience; it’s easy to get “lost” among the displays. In addition to the main hall profiling ten major world belief systems and traditional Taiwanese religion, there is: a small movie theatre showing “Creations,” an artsy story-telling of various creation myths; a globe-style theatre that attempts to help visitors “grasp the spirit” of the Avatamsaka sutra (“one is all; all is one”) through an audio-visual experience; a tatami-style “meditation gallery” with a giant video screen on each wall and banks of meditation instructions for various religions; a “Hall of Life’s Journey” show casing religious paraphernalia associated with birth, coming of age, marriage, old age, death, and afterlife; detailed replicas of famous religious architecture with movable internal cameras; and more. In the main hall, each world religion has a wall with text, a floor to ceiling video screen, a large, tall display case set in wall with audio selections corresponding to various numbered and encased religious paraphernalia, and a touch-screen computer database.

Critique
The museum was founded by a Buddhist master for the purpose of promoting peace, tolerance, inter-religious dialogue, and for providing a “department store of religions” where people can learn about and choose a religion. On the whole it’s really well done. It didn’t seem to be overly pushy with the Buddhism, though there is a pervasive message of Buddhist inclusivism, or maybe pluralism. Judging from the Christianity displays, they’ve done a lot of homework, but I don’t think someone would have a balanced or basic understanding of Christianity if all they knew was what the MWR told them. It seems to go out of its way to emphasize the similarities and inconsequential differences of each religion at the expense of fundamental, mutually incompatible differences. For example, the Christian meditation instructions in the Meditation Gallery say, “As the aspirant progresses in the ascent to God, he/she experiences a breakthrough en route to a dazzling darkness beyond all desires and concepts” and uses the quote “My being is God” while referring to kenosis. In an Eastern, Buddhist/Daoist context, this will likely be understood to mean things that are actually more Buddhist than Christian.

I should also mention that St. Nicholas gets much better treatment at the museum than he does on their English website.

See our photos here.

We spent 2 hours at Yonghe’s Museum of World Religions. In these photos you’ll see the entrance hall, which has this hypnotic atmosphere created by the lighting and the sound mix of esoteric questions in several languages with ambiant music and other sounds like a baby crying. There are also some of the meditation gallery, some interesting info on traditional Taiwanese religion, and museum staff getting a training lecture on Christianity. We also met a group of kids from Nantou that had apparently never seen real live foreigners before.

We weren’t supposed to use a flash, so a lot of photos were pretty blurry, but the museum sort of intentionally tries to blur a lot of lines anyway. Maybe it just shows in the photos. But there’s much more to the museum than what’s in these photos.

You can read about the Museum of World Religions here:

• Museum of World Religions

Scroll down to read or write comments!

Right now there’s a funeral/memorial/what they do when someone dies in Taiwan going on a couple doors down from our apartment complex on the route to work. These things go for 49 days; this one’s been going for about 10.

The front of a business has been turned into a memorial site with chairs and tables spread from the door to the street. Inside has a table with offerings (food, wine, incense) on it. On the walls are photos of the deceased and pictures of (I’m assuming) the ancestors, with lots of flowers and lotus decorations made from folded spirit money. Outside on the sidewalk around the tables and chairs are big flower arrangements, large specially decorated packages of gifts (like beer and pop) and a big metal holding bin for burning large amounts of spirit money. When we walk through it at 12pm on the way to work, relatives are there eating and talking. When we walk back through it at 9pm, people are also there, eating and talking.

We asked our practicum advisor for information during our last practicum debriefing meeting. Turned up some interesting (and unexpected) details, some of which I’ve bolded. ***These are just tidbits from our notes – the terminology isn’t accurate and it’s not a general representation of Taiwanese funeral rites. We often only learn about things bits and pieces at a time, through experiences like this. Somewhere in our pile of reading I know there is a whole big explanation of funeral customs – but this isn’t it. Still, some interesting stuff.

[Discussion Notes]
Jessica asks about the ongoing funeral/memorial near our apartment, about last night when they were wearing KKK-looking white hoods. White hoods: worn by relatives of the dead. Special ceremony is performed every 7 days for 49 days. Doesn’t know why 49 days (7 7′s?). By the end of 49 days they will perform a ceremony that transports the dead to the place “sort of like heaven.” Fundamental differences: Taiwanese believe people have three souls: one stays with the shrine, one goes for reincarnation, one goes to “heaven.” The body stays there for 49 days: behind the wall of the memorial there is a big freezer with the body in it (if they can afford it they don’t go for cremation).

They want to consider the fung shui of the tomb, and after 5/10 years (unsure how many) or so they check the tomb to check the bones (if there is flesh attached it means there is something unfinished… more ritual/ceremony/sacrifices are required).

Probably offensive not to burn the incense to the dead, although Christian pastors would tell you not to burn the incense. He says this is not the right place to claim your own religious distinction; it’s rude not to burn the incense.

Purposes of the funeral: show respect, and also it’s the final act of your life, everyone has to be there to go through the final stage of the person’s life to lead them to “the West.” It’s a necessary act – step to take – or else the person would be uninitiated (unable to reincarnate, go to the West, or rest in peace, they would be a wandering ghost).

About 90% of the population does this kind of ritual we’re talking about. South and North may have details that are different. When these times come, the service providers have the whole systems worked out.

Is it Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian? They probably wouldn’t even know.

There’s a way to communicate with the god or the spirits – casting new moon shaped lots (jiao1 bei1) on the ground in the temple – the results of their throw tell them what they need to know.

Christian funerals seem disrespectful. Less days waiting, you don’t hear people bawling at the Christian funerals. Who decided what Christian funerals are supposed to be like? Missionaries? Local pastors? He doesn’t know. There is some wiggle room. Death and funerals is a generally avoided topic.

Departed (recent Hollywood movie) based on a Hong Kong movie (English title: Infernal Affairs) that has this very Buddhist message re: suffering and death (Chinese title actually refers to the worst part of hell, but as a metaphor for the life we experience and its suffering): death is a relief from suffering if you’ve cultivated yourself.

This day hike included thousands of steps (going up), big spiders, butterflies, and an impromptu tea party on the side of mountain with a group of very friendly strangers.

You can read about this hike here:

• Taiwan Tea Party!

Scroll down to read or write comments!

Extra day off for working through last week’s, so we played tourists: hiked a local mountain, experienced the infamous “Snake Alley,” and visited one of Taiwan’s oldest and most famous temples.

Huaxi St. a.k.a. “Snake Alley” a.k.a. Hua Hiss St.
We ate snake; it tastes and feels like canned tuna without the the fishy taste and with a whole lot more bones. There was a scary moment when the lady almost served us shots of snake blood instead of snake soup – “No no! Ròu! Ròu!” (meat! meat! – reason #583 way we need to learn this language!) The snake blood drinks are supposed to increase virility, hence the presence of sex shops and the number of prostitutes in the surrounding area.

Snake Alley is one street over two blocks that’s been converted into a nightmarket type venue specializing in seafood and snake restaurants, with a few hard-to-miss sex shops thrown in. It’s seen a fair share of controversy in recent years: from animal rights protesters lobbying for the snakes to feminists lobbying for the (scores of thousands of) local prostitutes to social activists protesting the government’s removal of a shantytown to make way for a park. This sign from said park hints at the character of some of the area’s population, and how the government feels about it.

Our friends here were never very enthusiastic about us checking out this (in)famous tourist attraction: this used to be a really scuzzy part of town, and it some ways it still is. Huaxi St. is now paved, well lit, and more toned down than it was ten years ago. They still have the snake shows at night where they play with the snakes and draw a crowd. But they don’t kill them, skin them, drain the blood and body fluids into mixed drinks right there as a public attraction and sell them to the crowds. Though they do have large flatscreen T.V.’s playing recent footage of the good ol’ days (1990′s), and you can still get fresh meat and blood drinks everyday. They wouldn’t let us take pictures of any live snakes (there were lots), but we did get some of the dead one who became our lunch. Snake Alley photos here.

Xianjiyan Mountain
Up another local mountain this morning for a hike, some fresher air, and scenery. Smaller temples and graves often dot these mountains, and you expect to find some on every hike. This hike was a little different than last because up one overgrown, slippery stone path there was an unattended grave with a big cross on it. Christian grave? We don’t know but we’ll get Mingdaw to translate the inscriptions. We managed to get some interesting photo detail at one of the temples. It had a nice but cloudy view of the Taipei basin and guy playing some soothing recorder music while we were up there. That gave it a kind of surreal atmosphere, but it was much appreciated. Photos and music are here.

Longshan Temple
Longshan Temple is big, busy, has some great artwork and architecture, and was first built in 1738. The outer court boasts waterfall fountains full of big colourful fish. The detail in the wood and ironwork was quite impressive to an architecturally-illiterate person like me. Some of the main supporting columns are covered with single giant spiralling dragons and countless smaller characters. Since it was so busy and a popular spot for local tourism, we were able to score some great photos (click here) of common religious activity: incense and food offerings, casting lots, etc.

Everyone lives a combination of stories. We embody these “world-stories” to various degrees through the way we navigate life as individuals-together. We are being written into these stories, and in/with/through them we interpret our existence: our identity, place, and meaning in the world. We shape and are shaped by the world-stories in which we live.

What you’re seeing in this picture from our hike on our day off is an upperclass family in Taiwan burning spirit money to a deity on top of a mountain in Taipei county. Bundles of money are wrapped in colourful paper that looks like it came from a child’s birthday party (cute dinosaurs and that kind of thing). Their shiny SUV was parked close by. The stack of packages in the foreground was one of two that this family was offering. Given how fast they were burning it, we assume this was an all-day affair. Were it not for the smoke and the haze in the distance, you’d see Jhonghe and Yonghe cities forming the distant horizon in the background. The yellow sign on the left does not say “Please do not swim in the baptistry,” but rather something about if you want to drink the water you have to say a certain prayer three times. We don’t have enough Mandarin or cultural savvy to ask about their business politely, but we assume something big was happening in their lives (crucial business deal? grave illness?). We hope one day to have the language and culture skills to hear, understand, and enter the stories of people like this.