We take a short hike around the grounds. Tiny insects are swarming, dropping to the ground as they lose their wings, signaling that it's about to rain. There must be some Buddhist message in their final flurry before death, but I can't think what it might be. Lin leads me to the temple's terrace, overlooking a lush valley and a roaring brook. We sit cross-legged, and another novice tells me to close my eyes. "Your eyelids—relaaaax. Your shoulders—relaaaax." In a singsong tone, she instructs me to empty my brain. A gentle breeze brushes my face, and I feel tension slipping from my shoulder blades. Fat raindrops start to fall, cool on my forehead. When the torrent finally begins, we go inside.

We pass handsome young nuns and monks in gray robes, who greet us with big smiles and "Amitofo," a Buddhist blessing. We watch a short film on Dharma Drum University, which is being built on the grounds. "Our university will teach Buddhist education with a global and broad-minded perspective," the narrator says. Supper is a simple mix of vegetables, rice, and steamed buns, which we serve ourselves in stainless steel bowls with stainless chopsticks. We eat in silence, except for the clicking of chopsticks, women on one side of the dining hall, men on the other. I am shown to my spartan but comfortable room, and drift into dreams to the sound of cicadas outside my window.

It's still dark when the knock at the door comes, and I pull on my clothes for the morning chanting session. Monks in brown robes are in perfect formation on one side of the spare, vaulted room, and students, their heads not yet shaven, in black robes on the other. Round brownish-red cushions are lined up in front of each worshipper; if I look at them on a diagonal, there are perfect rows of red polka dots both horizontally and on an angle, like a gigantic game of Go. The monks chant in a droning monotone, facing three large statues of Buddha. When they are done, they file out.

There is nothing like this in mainland China, where religion is permitted once again but is treated by the Communist party as either a vague threat or a folk superstition. And it certainly wouldn't be possible for a traveler to spend time like this in a temple—not without official scrutiny. Walking down a corridor, I see through a doorway rows of young monks sitting at computers. "They are studying e-sutras," Lin says. The monastery is also bringing Buddhism into the modern age with a number of civic projects. She tells me that the afternoon chanting session will be dedicated to the victims of the earthquake in Sichuan; the temple just delivered water purifiers to the cyclone victims in Myanmar. A few months ago, Dharma Drum held a forum in which the abbot led businesspeople and academics in a discussion about the role of religion in civil society.

Only slightly guilt-stricken, I head for a more hedonistic destination, Taiwan's most luxurious hot spring resort, Villa 32, in Bei-tou, just half an hour by taxi from Taipei. Hot springs are an extremely popular recreation in Taiwan, in part because of the island's exotic geological formations and in part because it was colonized for fifty years by the Japanese. Japan claimed Taiwan after winning the first Sino-Japanese war in 1894, and ruled until 1945, when it surrendered at the end of World War II, turning the island over to Chiang's Republic of China. During their reign, the Japanese promoted Japanification of the island's residents, and to this day, many old people still speak Japanese. And the Taiwanese love their hot springs. There are public hot springs and private resorts all over the island, many in Beitou.