The Caodai holy house in Tây Ninh province, temporarily built in 1927.
VII. CONCLUSION
The above overview certainly cannot describe all relations
between natural, social factors in Cochinchina and the birth of Caodaism in the
region. The main points of this thin monograph can be summed up as follows:
– Cochinchina was a new, open and dynamic region where
Western and Eastern cultures, and where different ethnic groups, religions and
beliefs converged.
– Living in a multi-cultural environment, the Cochinchinese
developed their own characteristics which were equalitarian, democratic,
open-minded, and keen to accept the new.
– Cochinchina and its people were, therefore, ready to absorb
and support the new, especially when the new was not only familiar to their
mentality but also able to fill their ideological gap in the early 20th
century.
Founded in Cochinchina in such a historical, natural and
social context, Caodaism soon attracted the Cochinchinese en masse within a short
period of only a few years.
It is worth noting that the Cochinchinese’s zeal for a new
religion like Caodaism possibly reflected their subconscious desire to escape
from traditional moulds of old-age cultural mainstreams to find a new horizon.
Caodaism, however, did not encourage its followers to cast off tradition in
exchange for modernity.
In other words, Caodaism provides a renovation based on
sieved traditional values:
It’s Me [God] who came to Vietnam
On this soil,
To sow the seed of
Caodaism,
Water and fertilize the
existing Three Teachings tree,
And better its foliage,
To help Man harmonize with the Dao.[1]
As a young religion founded on the soil with long-established
ones which deeply impacted the Vietnamese historically, culturally, and psychologically,
Caodaism developed its own approach by basing the modern on the tradition and
Vietnamizing foreign cultures to make them suitable for Vietnamese mentality:
Embracing, profound and
comprehensive,
The teaching of Caodaism
with its new thoughts,
Has gone into the ancient
religious legacy,
Given its sound foundation.[2]
To turn Cochinchina into a fertile region like present-day
southern Vietnam
Of those 300 historical years, Caodaism covers less than one
third. Innumerable hardships and perilousness suffered by Caodaist founders are
possibly not much different from those endured by generations of pioneers in
Cochinchina. They all yearned to open a bright horizon for their descendants.
To some extent, surveying Cochinchina helps to understand
better the beginnings of Caodaism, a belief imbued so much with the national
spirit.
HUỆ KHẢI
