(Note: The Idiots are back in their Arizona home... this is a flashback episode from early February...)
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Is that a church… or a temple?
Cruising along the river through Sa Dec in the Mekong Delta one is confronted with this colorful sight. Clearly religious in nature, but what is it? The Idiots knew that Vietnam is predominantly Buddhist and that the French Colonial period left a significant Catholic imprint on the country. There are also Hindu, Muslim, and Protestant minorities. So they were used to seeing many Buddhist temples and a number of Catholic churches…
But this one left them stumped. It looks like a blend of a Christian church and a Buddhist temple, with colors and symbols not common to either one.
The answer is Cao Dai (“Gow [rhymes with cow] - Dye”) - a truly homegrown Vietnamese religion.
In 1919, Ngo Van Chieu had a vision during a séance. He received a message from God that it was time to start the Third Period of Enlightenment. He founded a new religion that seeks to bring together the deep basic truth of all the other great religions. Cao Dei has the structure of the Catholic church – Pope, cardinals, bishops, priests… and the Buddhist beliefs in reincarnation and karma… and the social guidelines for a good life from Confucianism… and various aspects of Taoism including occult practices like communicating with the dead.
There is one God, represented by the Seeing Eye. But Buddha, Kung Fu Tse (Confucius), Lao Tsu (Taoism) and Jesus Christ are all recognized as aspects of God. And the list of saints can be startling to the uninitiated, including such diverse figures as Joan of Arc, Victor Hugo, Louis Pasteur, and Sun Yat Sen.
The Cao Dai banner has three colors: Yellow representing Buddhism, Blue representing Taoism, and Red representing Confucianism. These colors are prominent in the temple – and color and energy are a dominant feature of all Cao Dai temples.
People tend to scoff at new religions and they are often called cults. It seems to be easier to believe in miracles and the supernatural if the basis of the religion is ancient. A quick look at Cao Dai might result in a sense that it is a colorful mish-mash… easy to dismiss. Still… it is hard to disagree with the intentions of Cao Dai:
“The noble effort of Cao Dai is to unite all of humanity through a common vision of the Supreme Being, whatever our minor differences, in order to promote peace and understanding throughout the world. Cao Dai does not seek to create a gray world, where all religions are exactly the same, only to create a more tolerant world, where all can see each other as sisters and brothers from a common divine source reaching out to a common divine destiny realizing peace within and without.” http://www.caodai.org
The Idiots tour guide’s mother is Cao Dai, so their tour of the temple included personal insight into how the religion works in every day life. It is hard to identify how many adherents there are as the movement immediately branched into groups with differing approaches. Estimates range from 2 to 6 million in Vietnam. Due to the emigration of so many Vietnamese following the end of “the American War”, there are also Cao Dai temples in other countries including quite a number in the US… perhaps 20 in California alone. A large, elaborate temple was built in the past decade in Garden Grove, California.
The windows give some of the colorful impression of stained glass but are much more practical in the hot, humid environment in southern Vietnam. They allow fresh air flow – especially important when ceremonies can be long, crowded, and involve lots of burning incense. It seems every surface is decorated – even the ceilings.
The three colors of Cao Dai are prominent in neon… red and yellow on the sides and blue over the main altar.
And what an altar! God – represented by the Seeing Eye – dominates but there is so much more going on…
Above the altar – top to bottom – Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Lao Tzu.
On the roof, is that a Buddha… with a dragon on his chest, seated on a tiger, and surrounded by yellow neon and crowned with a light bulb? The Idiots don’t know! They just know their short visit was a visual feast and once they got past the trappings, the underlying principles and goals of Cao Dai are a pretty attractive template for living well.
Can readers spot a “First World Crisis” in the making?
Idiot He grabbed a picture of a window from the outside as he completed putting on his shoes… and rushed off to catch his group. Idiot He is frequently the last person back as he has a bad case of justonemoresotitis. After the group boarded the tender and headed back to the ship, the guide got a cell phone call. “Did anyone leave a bright pink IPhone at the temple???” It took a couple minutes, but one woman in the group realized that she put her phone on the railing as she was putting on her shoes and forgot it. It was only a couple weeks later that Idiot He realized he’d captured the errant phone in his photo. In any case, a nice man from the temple found it and called the ship and they in turn contacted all the groups.
Thus, while others were enjoying their gin-and-tonics on the top deck of the Amadara, the Idiots group made the watery trek back to the temple to pick up the pink necessity. Idiot He was secretly pleased – the phone owner replaced him in the dunce corner, a position he earned by taking so long to take pictures he was actually in another tour group, boarding another tender while his group was waiting nearby. Shaddenfreude!
