Taiwan 2025 - Daoist Temple, Main Worship Area

As the last chapter in this overall series on our Taiwan trip of 2025, we'll visit the temple complex where Chenjean's mom's ashes reside.  It has become a custom every year for us to pay her a visit, and once there we duly made our way to where her urn was located in a vast mausoleum, accompanied by a minder from the facility of course.  She denied permission to take a picture when asked, so I kept the phone pocketed (usually on excursions of this nature I keep the Bigger Cahoona at the apartment).

But later on, while visiting the temple itself, the manager stuck with us and said pictures were no problem, so I snapped a few in this room.  It is here that we learned that the large figure in the center - typical of what is seen in Buddhists temples everywhere - is not actually that of Buddha himself, but rather a disciple of his.  Interesting...

Actually "Buddhist" is a misnomer here, because the religion to which Amá belonged was Daoism; she was technically a Daoist, not a Buddhist per se.  Analogous to denominationalism in the Christian world, this is an offshoot from the original group.

There was absolutely no one in this entire complex except us, so we got quite the tour, stopping for tea at one point in their kitchen area.  This is when we were given a book as an introduction to what Daoism is all about.  While drinking our tea I perused through its pages, reading the first chapter fairly closely, and discovered that the concepts regarding "The Way" (what Dao means in Mandarin) to heaven are identical to what is described in the Bible concerning spiritual bodies, souls, and angels among other things.  After describing my own experiences and studies in such matters, the manager and the custodian (who joined us for tea) became quite excited at hearing about the commonalities between Daoism and Christianity.  They encouraged me to keep the book, which I did, and to join them for a study one day with an eye to becoming a Daoist myself.  I said No thank you, that the Bible is all we need and I'll stick with that.  Still, we all enjoyed the mutual respect earned as a result of this interaction.