Why be a Caodai scholar ?

Updated 2012-05-14 13:40:20

My name is Chris Hartney and I have been a student in religion at the University of Sydney for more than seven years. The study of religion is one way of glimpsing the thoughts and the consciousness of the people of the world, and I have come to realise that Caodaism is playing a significant part in changing that consciousness.

Caodaism came to Australia only after 1975. By 1983 Caodaists had started gathering together and began building a community of believers. Since then a dynamic and hard-working community has evolved based mainly in Sydney but also working in the other capital cities of the Australian states. By the time I came to study religions at the University of Sydney, Australian Caodaists had already held their Fifth Convention. This meeting gathered Caodaists from all over our continent and took place in the Women’s College of the University.

This stunning building, might be called a “silent teacher” for it boldly announces the Third Amnesty’s presence in the otherwise quite ordinary western suburbs of Sydney. After meeting with Mr Nguyen Chanh Giao and other community members such as his brother Mr Nghiep, I resolved to write a history of how this temple came to be built. My research has shown that the Caodaist community in Sydney had to do a vast amount of work to get the temple started. The whole process drew them into the governmental systems of local and state administrations.

 

Finally the community got the go-ahead to start building, but this came only after a long and sometimes frustrating process. Looking at how the community won out in the end has also taught me a great deal about Australia. Most Australians are very fearful of new ideas, some are not and came to the aid of the Caodaists. But even those who helped the community did not really want to know anything about the religion. On one hand it is comforting to know that some Australians will help a new community settle here regardless of what they believe. On the other hand I find it disconcerting that even such helpful people choose not to know.

 

There were no people who opposed the building of the temple on racist grounds, but there was overdue concern for adequate parking. In fact so many people wrote to local papers and addressed council regarding the temple’s “parking” that I have the suspicion that “parking” was some kind of polite code in which people living close to the temple tried to stop it. Thankfully the temple was not stopped and today it is almost complete. Currently the altar canopy and dragon columns are being added in front of the Bat Quai Dai and a large opening celebration is being planned for next year.

 

Non-Vietnamese-born Australians are visiting the temple in greater and greater numbers. Some school groups have visited the temple already. Students sit in the community room beneath a photo of the Great Divine Temple and listen as the Third Amnesty is explained to them by community members. They then proceed upstairs to look at the highly visual temple space.

 

The temple itself is a site from which many good works have grown. For example, a number of Vietnamese youths, some of whom were not adjusting very well to life in Australia, joined in and started work on the temple. While working they picked up many skills and used these skills get apprenticeships or jobs or study trades at technical institutes, now they have secure careers! The building of the temple has also brought many Caodaists and non Caodaists together as all sorts of people pitch-in and help with the building. There is a strong sense of purpose and a good deal of pride that the building stands out so boldly. Australians travelling on the busy road in front of the temple often look up from their cars. They see a very colourful Vietnamese building. However if a Caodaist from Vietnam were to inspect the building he or she would see that some parts of it are very Australian. Local materials have been used throughout the building, and because of quite stringent parking rules, the whole building sits on two stories with an ancestor altar down stairs and the temple space upstairs. So, as Caodaism brings religions together, the temple bulding brings together elements that are both Australian and Vietnamese.

 

It was soon after seeing the temple for the first time that I approached Dao Cong Tam in the university library and asked for his help in understanding the Religion. Mr Tam since then has acted as an invaluable guide to Caodaism and the Vietnamese language. Mr Tam has also organised a web-site which, as you would probably know, is a great resource for Caodaists texts. Since our first meeting, I have visited him weekly. In these meetings he has helped me understand Caodaism, and after a while he decided that I could help him translate some Vietnamese texts. So far we have been compiling an extensive history to the Holy See in English. When this is finished we hope that it will enable any English-speaking person who visits Tay Ninh to understand the features of the Holy See, as well as how Duc Ho Phap received instructions on how it was to be constructed.

 

Translating any Caodaist texts into English is a pursuit fraught with dangers. This is because English, over thousands of years has been rendered into a very Christian language with mainly Christian assumptions. Expressing Asian and Vietnamese concepts concisely is very difficult. It is, however, a job I am happy to work at because the Caodaist idea that “all religions are one” could make the larger Australian society a happier place. Asian ideas are also a healthy challenge to some of the narrow assumptions Western civilisation has about the exclusivity of religions. The Tam Giao or three doctrines co-existed in Vietnam, with some exceptions, quite peacefully for many hundreds of years. It would be wonderful if we could say the same of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but this is, of course, not possible when we consider, say, the bloody and awful trail of Europe’s past. Australia is part of that past and this makes us a strange land.

 

Australians today are a little confused about the future of our country. We live just to the south of Asia, and yet our society remains extremely British. It is still part of the Commonwealth (once the British Empire) and still has the Queen of England as its Head of State. Many Australians, including myself, find this a little ridiculous. There are moves afoot to reinvent Australia - make it more independent. A referendum will be held later this year and the people will be asked to vote on the question of Australia becoming a republic. As we try to peacefully reinvent our nation, I hope we can stop focusing so exclusively on England and America. It would be good if we could also look to Asia to hep us find a new way forward. This means that an active community like the Caodaists, who promote not only the idea of bringing religions together, but also people and their cultures, could have a very important role, showing that East and West are part of a hidden unity. Caodaism also shows that Jesus Christ, Lao Tzu, Confucius and Buddha can all be worshipped together. This is a message Australia could use.

 

In the middle of last year (1998) with the generosity of the Sydney Community led by Mr Nguyen Chanh Giao and my University, I was able to travel to Vietnam for a few weeks. In Vietnam I met Mr. Tran Quang Canh from Washington, who very generously showed me around. We were able to visit dignitaries in local temples in Saigon, in particular Mr Le Quang Tan, who spoke of the history of Caodaism and fondly remembered the time he served the Ho Phap. I also appreciated the chance of meeting Mr. Nguyen Van Hong, the well-known Caodaist historian. The highlight of this trip, of course, was a visit to Tay Ninh. The hospitality I encountered in Tay Ninh was overwhelming and I will always remember my days there fondly.

 

Unfortunately in Tay Ninh, as readers to this journal would know, we have a very sad situation. It is obvious to anyone who looks in the right places that Caodaism is devoid of any official life. With Mr Canh, I was taken to see Archbishop The, this aging but robust soul was again agitating for religious independence and had just submitted a petition of protest to the Government. He offered me some words of encouragement but his manner seemed grim. He knows that he is among the last officials of the Sacerdotal Council, and it must weight heavily in his heart for him to know that it would only require the death of a few dignitaries for the link between the old hierarchy and members of a possible future hierarchy to be broken.

 

Despite these problems, adepts continue to worship, old women, with an air of devout veneration, still meticulously clean the pathway leading to the Ho Phap Duong and I noticed a small amount of maintenance work being carried out on dormitories next to the Giao Tong Duong but there was an air of sadness and quietude throughout the Holy City. And also an air of decay. It is evident that the whole of Tay Ninh remains poor. Long Hoa market looks exceptionally dilapidated. Of course I met Caodaists in Tay Ninh, who would suffer all kinds of economic deprivation to live so close to the centre of the Caodaist world, but it seemed cruel to me that the only sign of prosperity and newness in Tay Ninh was a row of buildings near the town servicing the Communist Government. There is however in Tay Ninh an incredible potential. The Holy See has obviously been designed as the centre of a great society, one that could change the world. It is a shame that currently it is not being used in this way.

 

The ramifications of this situation extend to Caodaism in Australia. Without any approval or official advice the Caodaists of Sydney have built their temple, hoping that they are doing the right thing. They try, with great effort, to run their community in the way they imagine it should be run, but this is not the same as receiving official directions and this causes a lot of worry.

 

Since my association with the Caodaist community in Sydney, I have heard horrific tales of how people escaped from the South after 1975. But in all this horror, there is a little good. The good is that Caodaism has been spread to the four corners of the world. Though this was done in a way that nobody expected. Caodaists outside Vietnam look on at the mainly inaccessible centre, and it is now the periphery of the Caodaist world that is rejuvenating the religion. The re-establishment of the Caodai Overseas Missionary marks a turning point in this process.

 

Mr Canh is eager to take Caodaism to the world. Following humbly in the footsteps of Gabriel Gobron he is hoping to address a number of international conferences on the current state of the Third Amnesty. As I have already benefited so greatly from my contact with the Caodaist world, I am pleased to be helping him in his pursuit. We are both extremely fortunate that a Russian academic Sergei Blagov, who unlike myself is proficient in Vietnamese, has also joined us. I hope the three of us can make 1999 a year for talking about Caodaism.

 

There is much to discuss. Even when I look at the Sydney community there are many concerns about the future. Most Vietnamese-Australians are worried about the situation in Vietnam while Sydney Caodaists are very much concerned with the future of Caodaism in our country. Although the official opening of the temple will be a time of great celebration, it will also mean that building will cease, and building has been the main focus of the community for the past several years. Some in the community hope that this focus or cohesion will be redirected to plans for the construction of a Holy Mother Temple. Others in the community are trying to encourage the next generation of Caodaists to learn as much as they can about the religion and to learn this in English. Currently courses are being run at the temple on Sunday afternoons for young Caodaists who have committed themselves to studying their religion in the English language. By doing this they can talk about their faith with non-Vietnamese-born Australians.

 

Other plans are also being made that will help more Australians understand the Caodaist pursuit. I said at the beginning, that Caodaism is playing a significant part in changing the consciousness of the world. This is not a glib statement. As a religious scholar I can see that in the previous 150 years, there has been a change in human consciousness which sees religions coming together in ways they never have before. In Persia last century the Baha’i Faith started to do this. Currently the Baha’i are growing rapidly. Their headquarters are on the slopes of Mt Carmel in Israel, and although they have been mercilessly persecuted, they currently do not suffer from the lack of administrative direction that Caodaism does. More recently the Theosophical Society and Anthroposophy have been formed to investigate the great “religion” that exists beneath all religions - in Chinese terms this is equivalent to seeking the “Dai Dao” which of course are the first two words of Caodaism’s official name.

 

With approximately five million adherents, Caodaism is a significant part of this new world movement to see all of the religions of humanity and all the people of the world brought together. What these other religions and societies, that I mentioned above, do not have is Caodaism’s Chinese and Vietnamese background. A background in which it has been proven that religions such as Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism can exist together, speak to each other and encourage, rather than destroy the religious pursuit of the world. Because of this I enjoy being a Caodaist scholar, and I hope that even in my lifetime, I will have the chance to see some very amazing things happen.