[quote=“Salvatore Armani”]I just don’t understand why some people have to be so inconsiderate with their practices.[/quote]A friend of mine runs an auto repair shop but his wife (God bless her) is a frothing-at-the-mouth Taoist nutcase. She had a huge paper incinerator built behind the shop (literally 3m high and 2m in diameter) so she could improve efficiency and keep up with her pollution quota. Trouble was all the ash would blow into the shop and all over whatever was going on there. One time I was borrowing some space in there to rebuild an automatic transmission, the inside of which needs to be absolutely operating-theater clean in order to function correctly. I swear I ended up washing and drying all those parts four or five times before I could assemble the damn thing. My buddy was also having problems. For example he’d have the cylinder head off some car for service, the ash would blow into the bottom half of the engine and then he’d have to strip the whole engine. I asked him why he couldn’t persuade her to do the burning outside of business hours but he said there was nothing he could do or say to change her habits, even though it was very bad for business.
There is no point trying to talk reason into people who are operating on a plane where reason has no place. No point at all. It’s like trying to tell a suicide bomber that statistically there couldn’t possibly be 40 virgins waiting for him in paradise. Your right to breathe means nothing at all to these people, it’s just irrelevant to their ‘bigger picture’.
My sister-in-law married about a year ago and had a baby recently. It was’nt out more than an hour before her mother-in-law walzed in and notified her that the fortune teller informed her that the baby shall not visit the paternal home for the next 5 years or very bad luck will come to her family. Her life has been hell with all of the superstition and she’s already talking of divorce.
My wife is a Daoist, and when we lived in England there was no unwanted intrusion of various superstitions, or if there were, my participation was optional. Here in Taiwan, I’m under pressure to conform because of my mother-inlaw and other inlaws here. In the end, a lot of this ghost stuff is just a way for people to control each other: It’s really a control issue. In a society where it’s rude to tell someone off to their face, I’m sure this kind of indirect manipulation is quite desirable and difficult to relinquish.
During the recent tropical storm, the ceiling began leaking above the bed in the middle of the night. Of course, because my wife is pregnant, we’re not supposed to move the bed. :loco: I also wanted to make some brick enclosures in the garden, but was told by my mother inlaw and brother inlaw that I should not move heavy objects around the house, because it would cause a miscarriage.
This kind of crap is much harder to ignore than the cute little superstitions about feng shui and not drinking cold water. Fortunately, a lot of Daoist superstition is as inconsistent as it is illogical. I’d heard from other posters on Forumosa that I could move the bed when she wasn’t at home, and so that was what ultimately happened.
After being rained on all night, I told my wife to get over to the temple and get things fixed so that the bed could be moved and to prepare for the garden to be built, and that I wasn’t looking for any god’s opinion about the matter, either. :fume: I got her to work the system, and now we can have things both ways. Job done!
Exactly my point in the above post!
[quote=“Salvatore Armani”]
After being rained on all night, I told my wife to get over to the temple and get things fixed … I got her to work the system, and now we can have things both ways. Job done![/quote]
Ha! so you figured out there’s always an angle 
how can we compare a backwards belief to any of the great religions of the world? taiwan’s practice of burning money is mindless at best. most people just go thru the motions. not only that, it seems to me that TWs make themselves into Gods. to think that doing this and that will make God on your side is to make oneself higher than the diety you worship. my image of God is of one who is higher than myself,One whose terms I must meet and not the other way around. i doubt that God cares for or needs our activities.
i think the worst “religion” in taiwan in Matsu.
It’s inconsistent and illogical. There is no orthodoxy in Daoism, and so everything is open to interpretation, and everyone is subject to manipulation. Sure, you can do what the lady across my street did. She got tired of selling fried pigeons on the main street, so she opened an illegal Mahjjong parlor… much easier than slaving over a wok full of greasy squab. Soon after that, she got tired of being hassled by neighbors and police about the cretins who came to gamble, get drunk, and fight at her place until late every night.
One evening not very long ago, she was suddenly taken with the spirit, fell into a trance and began talking with the voice of a god ( I have video). I doubt she’s at all sincere, and she’s never been a particularly nice person to me or anyone else around here. She simply needed another change of occupation, and a Daoist temple was just the ticket. It goes to show that you can fool some of the people some of the time, some all the time, and then jerk the rest off. Force your own narrow mindedness on others. Manipulate and control them. Joke 'em if they can’t take a f***.
anyway, as I’ve said in other posts on this forum, I truly am a respectful observer of my wife’s faith. There are some charlatans and insincere people in Daoism just as there are in every human institution. Unfortunately, the tentacles of this superstitious faith have come out to grab me lately. I refuse to be manipulated and controlled, and so here lies my rant.
I certainly empathise with your sister inlaw’s situation. Again, a possible answer is to work the system. There are three temples on my tiny little street (up until last week there were four). I often see people shuffling off to the other temples for second opinions.
Go out and find another temple, find another fortune teller. Hire some old guy to chew a root and walk up and down the street giving the stink eye to every ghost he meets. Find a temple which has gods that are “associates” with the family gods, but are more powerful. Find a god who is a big dog god, who is meaner and has stinkier pee, so to speak, and get them to lay down the law to your satisfaction. Get a spirit medium to summon a god and get the responses that you’re after. It’s all so chaotic and contradictory, so work it!
[quote=“Salvatore Armani”]I certainly empathise with your sister inlaw’s situation. Again, a possible answer is to work the system. There are three temples on my tiny little street (up until last week there were four). I often see people shuffling off to the other temples for second opinions.
Go out and find another temple, find another fortune teller.[/quote]
Trouble is; her mother in laws word is the last word. The forune teller she pulled into it was just to try and make it as painful as possible.
If my sister in law pushes the issue; bottom line is…go ahead an leave but hope you have more money than we do to hire a good lawyer for the child custody battle.
Anytime anything goes wrong she will blame my sister in law for breaking rules set by fortune tellers (her rules of course) and rub her face in it. “Well you mother and father are sick now because you did/didn’t do this”…etc…
Ugh, what a horrible story. What on earth (or anywhere else) could motivate her to be so peevish and cruel? Emotional abuse masquerading as the will of the spirit world. In secular terms, this woman has some issues.
she favors the daughter in law of #1 son who doesn’t like my sister in law.
#1 son and wife follow her orders and of course will inherit the throne and take care of mother. I guess the abuse is to keep #2 daughter in law in check so that when mom gets old eveything continues to go her way.
Not that it makes much difference–but she’s a step mother on top of this.
Basically I think it narrows down to;—it’s her turn to abuse now after going through it herself at a younger age.
taipei is nothing compared to rural taiwan. fuck and double fuck! they’re backwards. bad luck? send your daughter to sleep with the “ji tong”. burn paper money in the middle of the road! gotta drive around it.temples everywhere. people build better temples than the houses they live. altar takes up half the house!
if you live in rural taiwan, you’ll hate this place. you’ll be asking the God of Moses to send fire down upon them. damn, these people are pagan!
Dear Mr theposter: I’d like to clarify my previous posts and distance myself from your opinions. Yes, it is true that I have issues with some insincere, manipulative, and rude people, who do things that annoy me, and who just happen to be Daoist. By the way, the nuns who used to lock me up in the study hall with all the other kids who didn’t want to go to Friday mass (instead of letting us go home early) just happened to be Catholic. So what? I had a nice little rant on this thread, and I’m fine now. The neighbor lady burns her shit on her side of the road now, the family god stays out of my personal business, and everything is ducky here in BFE.
True, I’m not a Daoist, but my wife and her family are Daoist, and we all live in Southern Taiwan. They are not “backwards”. Among my wife and her four siblings, there are four bachelor’s degrees, three master’s degrees and a phd. Yes, they are pagans… by definition. Daoism is a pagan religion. It’s a pejorative word to some, but it simply means that they worship multiple gods (and ducks fly and bears shit in the woods… but I digress). I find Daoism interesting to observe as a guest of this culture, and I respect the faith of my inlaws and my neighbors. I don’t always like it, but I respect it. For the short while that I’m in Taiwan, I will accomodate the family religion. In turn, the family religion is obliged to accomodate me.
So, I ain’t askin’ the God of Moses for nothin’… and if you are asking, then please send your fire somewhere else. I don’t need your smoke, Southern Taiwan is plenty hot enough, and there’s more than enough ghost money, grass, and garbage burning around here already!
look,
jewish comedians make jokes about Moses all the time. why can’t I? and nobody hates the taiwanese. just can’t stand 'em sometimes. distance yourself all you want to. makes more room for me on the straight and narrow. come on brother, lighten up!!
Dao isn’t a religion. It’s a way of manipulating the gods to “like” you. And if this god don’t like you, you can find another one. So many going around. And before anyone tells me I don’t know anything, I’m married too with an ex-Dao (now Christian like me) and live with his Dao mother and father who prays every night that I’ll give birth to a son one day soon, and who are not so happy about their son giving up his Dao believes and moving the bed opposite our bathroom door. (Very bad fung-shiu - Father’s bad health are blamed on us!) In the beginning they told me I couldn’t do this, couldn’t do that. If they told me, no towel on the head after washing my hair, I would do it purpously just to show them that the world isn’t going to stop moving just because I’m wearing a towel on my head!!! Now I just keep to myself, and they keep to themselves and everyone is happy.
As I said, this is not a religion. It’s a “do-this-just-in-case” way to live your life. (Can it even be called a way of life? I doubt it.)
bump for a merge
woohoo! a pile of old rant he man posts to brighten up my day!
So it’s like finding a girlfriend, right?
I am glad puberty is over. Don’t need that again. Daoism isn’t for me then.