flowerthief00 wrote: ↑October 18th, 2020, 5:18 amonethousandknives wrote: ↑October 12th, 2020, 11:08 pmWhat actually prompted me was when I was in Vietnam I'd pass by dog and cat meat restaurants, and saw how much of their relatively low salaries they spent on meat, and the health problems that clearly came from meat consumption....
Multiple dog-lovers in Vietnam have told me of a time that they had a pet dog stolen and knew that their loyal friend was never coming back. Apparently there is enough demand for dog meat that you can make money pinching your neighbors' pet and shipping the unlucky pup off to the butcher.
This is the only case in which I would say that dog meat can be worse than pig meat, whenever I get asked my opinion on the eating of dogs (which I do from time to time). They are creatures of equal intelligence. If the eating of one is wrong, so must be the eating of the other.
I considered Taiwan as a place to live for this reason, before deciding against it because the island is so small that I know I would get bored. They do seem to have a happening veg scene over there even better than Thailand or Vietnam, MUCH better than Japan or Korea.There were a few Buddhist veg restaurants in Vietnam, but not nearly as many as Taiwan, so that's one other reason I liked Taiwan more.
It was Taiwan that forced me to re-evaluate my theory that the closer geographically one gets to the source of Buddhism (or the farther away one gets from the cultures that selectively define their own interpretation of it) the more veg-friendly the culture becomes. Doesn't appear to be the case always.
This guy was a very popular Buddhist teacher in Taiwan. Him and the host talk about how Christianity actually influenced Buddhism in Taiwan. They basically say Buddhism wasn't actually practiced and was reduced to useless ritual after the Chinese Civil War. American Christian missionaries came to Taiwan in the 50s and 60s, and would give out free ice cream and food for kids, the host talked about getting a winter coat, etc, from Christian missionaries, though she didn't remain Christian through her whole life. Master Sheng Yen said Taiwanese Buddhist groups basically copied the structure of missionary activity from the Christian groups in Taiwan, and you can even see it in some basic structures. I passed by basically Buddhist "Bible Study" type groups in TW. In this video Master Sheng Yen and the host express quite a lot admiration and fondness for the Christian missionaries that came to Taiwan and sincerely thank them.
It's a little ironic as despite what the church says, ultimately things like monasticism and vegan/vegetarian Lenten structures were basically ripped off from Buddhism in the late first century AD, so now in the 20th and 21st Century Buddhism basically had to rip off some structural things from Christianity.
As far as getting bored in TW, I just look at comparing my life in USA. Most of the time don't even go out of my very small home state, and Taiwan is bigger than my home state in USA, so I don't personally see myself getting bored there. The geographical proximity to basically everywhere else in Asia makes flying only $100-200 to pretty much anywhere else in Asia as well. I knew people that would go the Philippines just for a 3 day weekend.
