New Post

Yeah, stupid title, but who cares? After all, who reads this anyhow?

Tomorrow is Mothers Day. That is Mothers Day as in the US one, the day honouring mothers, not Mothering Sunday as in the UK which is completely different and is a religious festival honouring the mother of the supposed christ and happens 12 days later. I have set my alarm and will be making an early phone call to my mum back in Oz.

I have joined a yahoo group on Taoism in Singapore. The address given to me by a lovely lady at the Taoist Cultural Centre. Naturally, I am already engaged in a hot discussion, namely about the similarities between what Xianity did to Europe and what Buddhism is doing to Taoism (well, Chinese religious beliefs, philosophy, and people in general).

And I am psyching myself up to the (most probable) inevitability of my returning to South Australia in two or three weeks. The chance of finding a decent job here in SG in two weeks when I haven't found one in three months being negligible.

Engaging in such a discussion in Australia would have a very different dynamic. Here in SG I feel free, liberated. Followers of our faith having been in forced hiding for over a thousand years; yes, technically the open practice of our religion is legal in Oz, but the reality is not so pretty. Here in SG I find many similarities between my natural faith and what I perceive to be the natural faith of what I had hoped would become my adopted country. Naturally I was therefore horrified by the incursions that Buddhism is making into Taoism. (I actually have difficulty with that term, and would prefer to use Shenism, but some readers might be at a loss on that one.) (Hello? Readers??? There are some???)

When I return (when? should?) such discussion in public venues would cease for me, to be restrained to friends and family, people that I know only after long association that I can trust.