Man Mo Temple

In the excitement of yesterday I did forget to write about one really cool thing – the Taoist Temple in Hong Kong.  Interestingly enough, organized religion appears to have gained a foothold in HK at about the same time regardless of ideology or denomination.  This temple goes to about 1840.  St. James Anglican Church, the first established in the far east, dates to 1847.   It seems like the Catholics made it in about the same time, but I didn’t catch the date.

Anyhow, in all of our travels this was our first Taoist Temple.  To the uninitiated, it really doesn’t look that much different than a Buddhist Temple.  Then again, I would bet most Taoists can’t tell Baptists from Methodists, either, but they probably have some version of Wednesday Night religious education to separate the anointed from the heathen so those in the know can tell the temples apart.

The first thing you notice when you come into the Temple (aside from the fact that we did not have to take our shoes off as required in many other holy places) is the smoke from all the incense.

It’s free for the taking, which probably explains why Taoism hasn’t taken off like so many other religions.  They don’t have their marketing and sales add-ons down very well and are giving away sale-able product, although there was a counter where you could upgrade your incense and offerings, although even that was on the honor system as far as payment went.

Anyhow, for each of the various points at the assorted alters established in the Temple, you were to light 3 incense sticks to go in each of the pots.  Considering that there were four or five different alters, each of which had from three to five pots of sand to hold incense, that mean you could be lighting and sticking for a very long time.

With no cost basis to act as a check on things, the incense waste seemed to be running somewhat rampant.  There were some people there with fistfuls of incense, lighting them and putting them in each pot before praying.  Even the Buddhist monks that took care of the Reclining Buddha in Thailand had a system down where you made a donation and got a scoop of coins to put in the 100+ vessels around, then they just recycled the same coins.  Upper management for the Taoists need to get their return on investment ratio down if they hope to remain profitable in this lifetime.  It’s hard to transfer receivables from the next lifetime back to this one, and things probably ought to be contained in one incarnation, if not the same quarter.

One of the coolest things there were the hanging incense sticks.  They were coiled, kind of like a citronella coil you might put on the patio, but they also hung 3-dimensionally, like the Christmas ornaments that un-spiral kind of like a Christmas Tree when you pick them up.

Some of these had trays under them to catch the ashes, and in the middle were red cards (red being a good color in the Asian culture) with writing on them.  I was never clear whether these were honorariums, prayers, or something else.  The place was very interesting, though, despite the fact that I had to leave sooner than I wanted because the incense smoke was making me a bit queasy again.

I’m being tongue in cheek, but absolutely mean no disrespect.  If I had felt better, I would have really enjoyed reading more of the literature they had out explaining their beliefs, but I was thinking back to how mad the cabbie was that I  blew chunks on his turf; the monks, regardless of how patient and forgiving they are, would undoubtedly have been a bit miffed had I done so in their temple.