Taiwan Insight
Date: 28 February 2020
By: Wen-Ren Liu.

When travelling around Taiwan one will inevitably encounter small temples whose religious affiliation is not immediately evident. The prevalence of such temples reflects an area where Chinese religiosity generally differs from the monotheism prevalent in many other societies – while many Chinese believe in the existence of a realm of invisible, non-material existence, they are less inclined to confine their belief to a specific God. In line with this, many religious sites in Taiwan demonstrate an interesting juxtaposition of spiritual beings and symbols pertaining to different religious/spiritual traditions, the main ones being Buddhism, Taoism (and Folk Taoism), and Confucianism, and when visiting these temples, many Taiwanese tend to pay respects to spiritual figures they are not familiar with in addition to those they came to worship. In short, Chinese folk culture has been the incubator of a harmonious co-existence of different religious/spiritual traditions, and this is arguably most evident in contemporary Taiwan.

An interesting example can be found in Northeast Taiwan near the main monastery of the Dharma Drum Mountain organisation (DDM) – one of the so-called ‘four great mountains’ or major Buddhist organizations of modern Taiwan. 

The founder of DDM, the eminent late Chan Master Sheng-Yen, chose as the site of this monastery a beautiful and tranquil hillside in Jinshan District, in what is now called New Taipei City. Sheng-Yen, who had engaged in extensive academic studies on Chinese Buddhism, intended that the temple reflect the spirit of the architecture of Chan Buddhism in the Tang period – the so-called ‘golden age’ of Chinese Buddhism, wherein the religion flourished and reached new heights. In line with this, while the DDM is both large and replete with the technologies and necessities of the modern world, its architecture appears humble and low-profile, while its buildings are confined to bland and non-stimulating colours; namely, gray, brown, and white. The calming ambiance this generates is enhanced by the temple’s landscape, where distant mountains appear to blend seamlessly with a more immediate vista of trees, rocks and small streams.   [FULL  STORY]