The Outsider Goes to Taiwan

      A new year and a new place to visit. This year I was given the opportunity to visit Taiwan, specifically the town of Dajia. Dajia is a great place for the blog for many reasons, one of which is its closeness to other cities (and how close Taiwan is physically to other nations) and the three Temples here in town.

      Over the course of this year I'll be covering holidays with friends and visits to the Temples.

    I look forward to what the future holds in regards to these explorations and others. I can hardly speak on the religious makeup of Taiwan but I plan to explore wherever I am and wherever I go in my time here, and hopefully through it all continue to grow.

   I look forward to your feedback and thoughts and look forward to seeing you on this side of the Earth or when I return to the USA. Thank you for your continues support and conversations that this blog has sparked. I would not have lived as long as it has if not for that interaction with people, community, you. So thank you.

  Here goes to this new year and time inTaiwan and all the possibilities to come.

Don't Panic - Lima Airport Chapel - August 25th, 2013

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     Don't panic. The words rushed through my head as I tried to figure what my next steps would be. I couldn't find my group where we were supposed to meet and couldn't find the area where I was to pick my last tickets to get back to Seattle. I'd already walked the length of the airport and the food sections a few times before finally realizing I needed to calm down. I was just making it worse. Not having gotten much sleep on the plane or the night before didn't help.

     Breathing I followed the signs to the Chapel that Lima airport has. I sat for a while, gathering my thoughts before saying a quick prayer, a hope that everything would turn out. It was amazing how much it centered my mind. After I stopped rushing and stepped back (which the prayer allowed me to do, like meditation) I was able to see the situation rationally.

    Going through one last time I found the right area to get my tickets (it was pretty hidden) and after that was able to find my group and get through security for the flight to Texas.

    Don't panic. It's amazing what comfortable symbols and quite place can do. The chapel was nearly empty when I had gone there and it was totally quite which had allowed me to put everything that was causing out and deal with it rationally.

   In hindsight it was a good experience, I'd been in a storm and found my calm, while also getting to experience a beautiful tiny religious area in the most unexpected of places, Lima Airport.

Daming Temple - Yangzhou, China - March 10th, 2012

Daming Temple is an enormous Temple, and one of the most popular tourist attractions in Yangzhou. The tourist attraction was the most obvious thing about the Temple besides the giant Pagoda that rose from the interior.

The tourist part was obvious because of the ticket booth, the tourist busses at the entrance and the fact we met a Westerner here, his name was Flowr and he was from the Netherlands. He came to China as a solar engineer to work out the things on the ground in regards the factories that made solar panels. Randy and I talked with him before entering the temple grounds.

It was here there was the second part of the tourist attraction and the most blatant un-Buddhist practice...monks were working gift shops for the tourists. There were many of the the shops right before the large main hall. Suffice to say I felt a bit like Jesus at the Temple...it's one thing if people who are working the Temple to support the monks livelihood are doing it outside the Temple, but inside and by the monks themselves...my mind immediately went to merchant monks (contradictory term, monks are supposed to be non-attached to worldly stuff and live off charity).

Some areas of the Temple would remind me of it's rich history. The Pagoda, a few of the other small halls that most people weren't near...and for what it's worth it was pretty empty so there was time to enjoy the calm, and even teach Flowr a bit about Mahayana Buddhism since he asked. This might have been due to the fact that we were experiencing the last hour of the temple, as to the reason it was so empty.