Why does no one in Taiwan believe in reincarnation?

If Taiwan is predominantly Buddhist, like everyone claims they are, why does no one believe in reincarnation?

Please don’t post in Chinese. Especially Chinese with funny characters.

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What? A lot of people believe in reincarnation. They always talk about karma from previous lives. This thread is silly.

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Sorry, what does this have to do with the title of the thread? :thinking:

And some buddhists worship buddha as a god haha this is a very strange thread.

If americans are Christians like they claim why do they eat shellfish and not give away their wealth to the poor and downtrodden?

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Please. Some Americans. Some Americans worship Darth Vader. Some Americans worship Tennessee Ernie Ford.

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According the woman in the video I posted in the other thread, differences between Taiwanese and Indians include, Indians tend to take things easy because they believe in rebirth. If they don’t do something in this life, they can do it in the next lifetime. What’s the rush. And sometimes Taiwanese people have a hard time adjusting to that. Now that there’s a lot of business between India and Taiwan now, when Indians are they’re holding things up, know that they’re not intentionally delaying things, they’re just taking it easy.

I said everything I needed to say in the subject line, and there’s now a 20 character lower bound so I just post gibberish.

Only Seventh Day Adventists don’t eat shellfish. Most Christians don’t observe Mosaic dietary restrictions because supercessionism.

My mom does this. She refers to the Boddhisattva as “my God” and Jesus as “your God.”

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Yes, but the point is the ones that call themselves “Christians” only follow the parts of the Bible that are convenient for them and not the ones that might entail sacrifice or charity. Not all, but many.

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Gibber in English. Otherwise we think you got some special Chinese skills we dont know about. :rofl:

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Anyone can make a hot take on YouTube. Indians and Taiwanese have different temperaments, yes. However, this sounds like a stereotype, or at least a generalization. I’ve met plenty of laidback Taiwanese and plenty of antsy or rushy Indians over the years.

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Please don’t do that.

My impression has always been that outside of a subset of more committed Buddhists, Buddhism is mostly a nominally acknowledged layer over Taiwanese folk religion, which is the real game.

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So why cherry pick the rules to follow? Same goes for the Buddhists.

The book of Leviticus is the reason for all of these health laws. They like to focus on a man not lying with another man but forget about not eating animals with a split hoof.

I personally think the rule to exile women from camp while menstruating is a likely candidate for a comeback.

Leviticus 15:19, it just keeps going. Good reading.

19 “Whenever a woman has her menstrual period, she will be ceremonially unclean for seven days. Anyone who touches her during that time will be unclean until evening. 20 Anything on which the woman lies or sits during the time of her period will be unclean. 21 If any of you touch her bed, you must wash your clothes and bathe yourself in water, and you will remain unclean until evening.

I was visiting temples in Myanmar with a Taiwanese friend, Americans, locals. She asked me to explain Taiwanese Buddhism to them because her English wasn’t very good. Very different from Myanmar.

So I said it’s basically a mixture of daoism, Chinese folk religion and Buddhism. There are people that are pure Buddhists, but the ‘mix everything together and bai bai to whatever god will get you what you need’, seems to be the most common.

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That’s precisely my take on it (and how a few Taiwanese friends have described it).

Reincarnation is definitely in the mix somewhere, but they tend to view it in these terms:

  • If something bad happens to you, it’s because you were a bad person in the previous life.
  • If something goes wrong in this life, you’ll have a chance to fix it in the next life.

I’m sure those two are mutually contradictory in some way, but I guess that’s the hallmark of a good religion.

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There are some very serious Buddhists here in Taiwan, and then there’s everything thrown together all over the shop. My favourite are the temples who just line up all the different Gods in a row and it’s simply ‘take your pick’.
And full on Daoists…Who knows what those folks do be up to, even Taiwanese people tell me they are weird. :grinning:
For the real bentu Taiwanese and Hakka towns and villages, the most important Gods are still variably TuDi Gong , Guanyin and Matsu sometimes with JiGong thrown in too.

It’s not cherrypicking.

I’m surprised how little about Christianity people here know.

The Levitical/Deuteronomic code was superceded by Jesus, so Christians don’t have to follow them anymore.

Seventh Day Adventists and some other “Judaizing” groups still celebrate the Sabbath on Saturday and follow Old Testament dietary restrictions.

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Cuz it’s what those wacky foreigners believe…

Here = Forumosa.

This

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