We were in Taiwan over the past week. It was the first time I’d been in Taiwan without my parents, the first time I was forced to speak Taiwanese so often, the first time Abigail had been in Asia. We came to pay respects to my aging Grandpa and to meet the rest of the family. I have, to my knowledge, fourteen aunts and uncles and forty-eight cousins. This is not including spouses or anything. That’s on both sides of the family, but this time, with only a few days, we only met about 30 people, which was quite enough for us. It was, overall, an interesting but exhausting visit.

I’ve been to Taiwan over a dozen times, starting from early childhood. Despite that, however, I’m unfamiliar with seeing Taiwan on my own terms. My parents have always been with me, and my conflicts with them have extended to the entire Taiwanese culture, because they are so quintessentially Taiwanese. The culture highly values academic success, because that leads to social status and material wealth, both of which are quite prized; and it values close family connections — my father’s family all lives in the same area. I’ve been academically successful, but I’ve found it empty of meaning, so I’ve come to disdain academics and material success; and more recently, I’ve been judgmental of the environmental degradation and overpopulation that scars Taiwan, the price they’ve paid for modern industrialization. I’ve thus built up a habit of pushing away from my Taiwanese identity.

Without the charge of my parents’ presence, and with a comfortable companion with whom to relax, however, this time I was able to be more accepting of my surroundings, more open to perceiving and experiencing the way things are in Taiwan.

I came to see that Taiwan is a different state of consciousness — indeed, that all acts of perception, all experiences, are simply different states of consciousness. This can range from the simple shift in attention that occurs from word to word while reading a book, to the vast difference between existing in American culture and existing in Taiwan. A different culture, a different language, is literally an altered focus of attention.

I started to see my experience in Taiwan in this way because I felt different energetically. As I used Taiwanese and Mandarin far more than usual, and immersed myself in this world of people with very different values and culture, I began to move more into their realm; the more open I was, the more I allowed myself to be absorbed. And as I became more absorbed, my mode of perception somehow shifted, such that the state of being Taiwanese — mostly dormant in me — began to assert itself through my mainly American identity. It was more than a mental experience; it was a body experience.

Because of this, I also began to realize how judgmental toward Taiwan I had been in the past, and how detrimental that was to me, because judgment becomes overly limiting. From this new, broader awareness of Taiwan, I realized that a culture is too large, too complex, to judge. Judgment involves simplification, a stereotype. A culture must be perceived, and perception means stepping out of one’s usual modes of understanding and one’s internal dialogue, and being present in the silence. That is the essence of being, that silent knowledge of the moment.

When I went back to Taiwan last June, I hated it. I tried to escape as much as I could, because I hated the crowds, the pollution, the implicit family pressure to have a good career, all of it. But the hatred itself prevented me from simply experiencing things as they were. This time I saw all of the same things, but I also saw some good things. The smiles, the kindness, the understanding. A bustling local marketplace. The closeness of family, even people I haven’t seen in years. I realized that my judgment was a way of preventing myself from changing consciousness, because I feared and hated what I thought I saw — but I only saw those things that I already decided I wanted to see.

Ultimately, Taiwan is more than just “great” or “terrible.” It can’t really be judged as either, if taken in its totality. Taiwan is. A culture is.

One day, Abigail and I walked through a big, loud market, and that was great, to have that kind of intimate and personal marketplace experience that rarely exists in the States anymore, to see people organizing themselves in this chaos. And yet it was loud and dirty and who knew if the produce on sale was clean. Good or bad experience? Depends on what details you pick out.

Judgment means not seeing the totality, but only those experiences that fit the pattern you have in your head. Freedom is the opposite: clear perception.

Freedom is the ability to move easily among different states of consciousness, whether that be the small or the large.

As I contemplate Taiwan, I realize that for much of my life I’ve been pushing away from my Taiwanese identity; and that has limited my freedom to be who I am, because I am Taiwanese, and I can’t simply sever that tie without severing some part of myself. So I need to learn to be free to be Taiwanese, or not.

I used to struggle with my parents without understanding where they were coming from, but just resisting many of their beliefs and decisions that seemed to come out of nowhere. Up to now I’ve seen them as individuals with broadly different values from myself, and resented it.

But with this new experience of Taiwan, I begin to see that they’re just slices broken off from this greater whole, the Taiwanese culture, which supports and encourages a certain structure of belief. I begin to see that many of those beliefs and values have a context, have a basis, that didn’t make much sense in white-bread Kansas, but make complete sense here in Taiwan.

And just as the culture is too large and complex to judge, so are they, microcosms of that culture, too complex to judge, or at least judge simplistically.

For instance, the fears that my parents have about their children’s financial security are fears that many parents in Taiwan hold collectively. It’s from their personal and collective history of struggle, poverty, hunger, oppression, and war. My parents were participants in those struggles, and thus their fears grew out of their experiences, quite legitimately. Like all of us, they are products of their culture and their times.

Nonetheless, the fact that they weren’t quite free enough to let me be “American,” or that I wasn’t free enough to accept (or even perceive) their Taiwanese-ness, has been the source of a lot of friction. Values which celebrate academic achievement and financial success have led them to seek and achieve liberation from poverty and oppression, and have brought them to wealth and comfort — very positive results. As one of my cousins said to me, my father lives a life that everyone envies: He makes a lot of money, has a nice home, a nice life, has the luxury to play golf all the time, he’s well respected because of the status his job and money afford him. What’s not to envy?

But those values are the same values that I perceive also to be contributions to the domination and oppression of others, and the rape of the earth.

It’s difficult to argue with others’ personal experiences. And it’s clear to me that all of these points of view are perfectly valid and fitting. Again, the gestalt is far too complex to judge easily. Had I been immersed in Taiwanese culture all my life, and had to define my life primarily based on my relationship with people in this culture and based on the socioeconomic conditions that they dealt with on a daily basis, doubtless I would have similar beliefs.

But I wonder what a healthy interface is. How do I relate to Taiwan, and to my Taiwanese heritage and values, without judging them, without rejecting them, but also without giving up myself and those values I hold which seem to be at odds? Values which led me to spend a year in the woods, wild and dirty, rather than pursuing a Ph.D.?

This has been a constant struggle. I had thought that it was a struggle between me and my parents, but in a sense it’s a struggle between cultures. It may not be easy or possible to judge different cultures, but that doesn’t mean a culture clash can’t bring out their differences in stark relief.

I suppose I am a product of the Taiwanese culture insofar as I was raised in an environment where academic excellence and ambition was encouraged and seen as positive. Certainly, the rigidity of the Taiwanese school system was absent here (thankfully), but the Confucian values esteeming scholarship, respect for elders, etc. were not lost on me.

Still, I’m also a product of my own experiences and explorations, which has led me to my own values. I see how powerful and necessary connection with Spirit and Earth is, and that means being connected to energy, to dreams, to self in a deep way. And that brings me to clash with ideas of material success as an end, with ideas of respect and the prestige of high social status within the Taiwanese culture.

These things I still find difficult to reconcile. But at least I’ve made a start, by stepping back and finding a little more space to perceive, to be free to accept what I see, rather than to leap to harsh judgment.

I never thought I’d start thinking about all these things when I went to Taiwan. But I guess I didn’t count on the shift in consciousness that travel creates. I’m glad we went, and glad to use the experience as a mirror for my own learning.