Esoteric Tao Experience in Taiwan

JI opened google map and hit the explore nearby for a vegetarian restaurant, I found one about two and a half blocks away. I started going there because they served a full platter of my favourite veggies. After a couple of visits the owner spoke to me about visiting a temple with him and his wife. I will be the first to admit that I love temples, in broken Chinese I arranged to meet them the next day and accompany them to this said temple to pray. 


I arrived the next day for dinner at 6pm, also asking my roommate to come accompany me to this 'cultural experience'. We were given a good serving of food where the owner's wife told us that it was free so as long as gave 100NT when we arrived at the temple. I wasn't opposed since the amount of food that they gave us was worth more than that. 

After we finished our meal we were escorted into a vehicle, now I know what you maybe thinking, 'stranger danger' but if you knew how friendly people are in Taiwan you wouldn't have second guessed the siutation to be a bad one. Of course i wouldn't have gone if it was just me. 

'' Our tickets to heaven''

A short car ride later we arrive at a building and ushered into a room with a shrine on the side with 5 kneeling placements. They didn't force us to do anything but to watch the first prayers and gave us some reading material 'The testimony of the American Pastor' a story of an Angel that tells the man in the story how to receive Tao through a folding paper analogy.

This is when it started to become a little transmundane, we watched the ceremony. As it continued on with multiple sessions of bowing, offerings and lighting of incenses, there was a parchment with our names written on it ( we 'registered' upon arrival). I didn't think that it would be written on anything but here it was being said in a chant in a language I didn't understand. I thought to myself that I didn't feel threatened but like a cryptic puzzle that I couldn't solve. More entertaining the thoughts that were going through my head and theirs.

• How does bringing/inviting foreigners to join/receive Tao as their god so they can go to heaven help them?

Talk about a random experience, maybe if I understood the language and they were so charming I wouldn't have gone. Next was a laminated card with our names on it and a short explanation of the three things we needed to know. The hole on head where the horizontal and lateral axis meet, this will shine the light in and out of our bodies to help us ascend into the heavens. Five words to me memorized and a hand gesture used for when we kneel then bow on the ground. I assume there are years of teaching that follows this but....not today.

At the end of the evening we were given a booklet that shared more information about The First Step To Chong-De Tao Cultivation. Alongside with apples, radish cake, a melon and an alcohol free beverage and this was all after thet served us fruit and water during our short teaching.

Why am I always getting myself into these interesting predicaments? Oh right...I remember now. :P