Of the major religions, Buddhism is the one most amenable to a world slowly losing its interest in belief systems based on the supernatural -- sons of gods, celestial interventions, heavens and hells, and so forth. With its concept of the pure mind available to all through meditation, its peacefulness and sense of the sanctity of all life, it is a philosophy congenial to men and women in all geographical and political contexts.
New books on Taiwan in English are relatively thin on the ground. But this one is not only a welcome addition to a select band -- it is also a pioneering guide for English-speakers in an area often little understood by foreigners.
Its author, an assistant professor at the Catholic University of America, but a specialist in inter-religious dialogue, chooses to begin his survey 400 years ago when Chinese immigration to the island really got under way.
In those days, he says, Taiwan was an outlandish place, mountainous, thickly forested, rough and ready in its ways, and far removed as regards spiritual usage from the sophistication of China.
Ordinary people, for instance, were in the habit of building temples for themselves, despite an imperial law forbidding the practice. In doing so, they often mixed up Buddhist and Daoist deities, butchering pigs and chickens as offerings to the Buddhist figure of Guanyin, for example, in disregard of Buddhism's more ethereal ambiance. Temples were used as general meeting places where anything from trade to the settlement of local disputes might take place.
Taiwan was very much an untamed frontier, characterized in the eyes of Chinese by rain, mist, shifting soil, plague, corruption, and a tendency to hoist the banner of revolt against the central authorities at more or less any opportunity.
As a result, the more spiritual monks and nuns were disinclined to cross over from China and set up temples here. In their place often came dubious figures masquerading in a spiritual role. As likely as not fugitives from authority, they set out to dupe the rain-drenched and impoverished locals with invented doctrine and imitation or spurious idols.
In the absence of officially-sanctioned forms of Buddhism, various brands of folk-Buddhism came to dominate the island. People would adopt a vegetarian diet and worship the Buddha within the confines of their own homes.
This kind of "vegetarian religion," or zhaijiao, became typical of Taiwan, and of course survives to this day.
But it is impossible not to warm to this form of cheerful independence from more austere, and no doubt often more pretentious, Chinese ways. Nor is it fanciful to see this kind of stubborn, down-to-earth self reliance as still characterizing the modern Taiwanese character.
During the entire Qing period, until the Japanese arrived in 1895, anyone wanting to be fully ordained as a monk had to travel to China. After 1895, there were attempts by Tokyo to import Japanese schools of Buddhism and their related sects here. But after 50 years of active proselytizing, less than 1 percent of Taiwanese had been converted. This is a great tribute to the faith of Taiwanese during this period, considering that the chances of their ever ceasing to be Japanese citizens must have appeared remote.
When the Japanese left Taiwan over four months in late 1945, they were allowed to take with them only 1,000 Japanese yen and one backpack, with two suitcases to follow. Everything else, including of course the many temples they had erected and their contents, had to stay.
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