BEAUTY IN TERMS OF
THE CAODAI AESTHETICS
1. A
simple concept of aesthetics
In a few centuries before the Common Era,
“beauty” was discussed in the manuscipts of such eminent Greek philosophers as
Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Socrates, Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle, etc. Later
on, their thoughts gradually became a source for establishing primary
principles concerned with beauty, but the term aesthetics did not arise in those early beginnings.
In the 18th century, the term
“aesthetics” was coined, and aesthetics became a branch of philosophy exploring
the nature and expression of beauty as well as approaches to beauty. Nowadays,
the study of aesthetics is very bountiful and so significant to human
activities. Aesthetics seems to present itself in every domain, so much so that
one often discusses many things with others but does not think they all are
relevant to aesthetics. Thus, it is not surprising that numerous topics which
have been preached in Caodai congregations are merely considered religious
issues while they are in fact part of the Caodai aesthetics.
2. Is
there really the Caodai aesthetics?
Available in Caodai teaching are
philosophical attributes. In consequence, of course, there is the Caodai
philosophy which embraces the Caodai aesthetics. The critical problem is that
all things related have not been explored or exploited intensively enough so
that they can be developed into a system worthy of being denominated the
philosophy or the aesthetics of Caodaism. This fact naturally results from the
early fragmentation emerging inside a fledgling religion like Caodaism.
3. “Self-cultivation” as defined by the Caodai aesthetics
Aesthetics does not study no more than
beauty; however, this essay just focuses on beauty, based on numerous holy
sayings which might be considered reflections of Caodai aesthetic viewpoint.
Caodaism teaches humans the way of
self-cultivation. Basically, self-cultivation means self-improvement; thus, it
implies beautification. Self-cultivation is also defined as self-perfection or,
further than that, as self-sanctification. By the second meaning, beauty is
maximised.
Caodai teaching asserts that the origin
of each human (a micro sacred light) is God (the Macro Sacred Light). Thus, God
and humans share the same nature which is named “sacred light”. During an
evocation at the Heaven Principle Seance (in district 3, Saigon )
on 04 April 1926, Caodai God maintained:
My
children, you’re beings of sacredness on earth,
And
of the same nature as God’s, say sacred light.
Being a sacred light (i.e., possessing
the same nature as God’s) does not mean that humans are already perfect. So, by
the aesthetic language, self-cultivating means improving the immanent beauty in
humans through their day-to-day worldly and sipritual lives. When beauty is
successfully maximised, mortals become immortals denominated Immortals,
Buddhas, etc. In Caodai teaching, the success of maximising human beauty is
also designated “phối Thiên” (matching Heaven).
As stated above, self-cultivating means
improving the immanent beauty in humans through their day-to-day worldly and
sipritual lives. Accordingly, beauty is developed in two directions: inwardly
or spiritually, and outwardly or socially. The former is nothing else but every
individual’s obligation or duty to himself. The latter involves each
individual’s obligations or duties to his own family, society, country, and the
world.
Obviously, the beauty expected and
created in terms of the Caodai aesthetics is nothing abstract or unspecific.
Contrarily, the Caodai aesthetics helps humans look for and attain beauty
through practical activities in their own lives, and such beauty is proved by
their own daily routines in the relations between individuals and their
communities. The closest community is each individual’s family, and the
extended ones are respectively his society, country, and the world. The beauty
of those who master the principles of Dao is how to win the harmony between the
private and the common, or between individual and community.
4.
The individual’s beauty
Caodai teaching helps each person by
establishing principles of self-cultivation, or those of creating his own
beauty. After an individual has been beautified, his beauty will constructively
affect the surrounding community. During an evocation seance at the Ngọc Minh
Đài holy meditation house (in district 4, Saigon )
on 13 June 1970, the individual’s beauty affecting a community is expressed by
Great Immortal Lê Văn Duyệt as follows:
Individual
self-cultivation
makes
a change movement,
Better
people make a better society.
Indeed, a good community must be
constituted by good individuals. During an evocation seance at the Vietnam
Organ for Universalising Caodai Teaching (in district 1, Saigon )
on 18 November 1971, the individual’s beauty affecting a community was called
into attention by His Holiness Dharma Protector Phạm Công Tắc as follows:
“My
siblings, you should remember that a member of a nation is a member of importance
in the future.
Whether that member is bad or good, useful or useless, will correspondingly
affect the future of his nation and its people.”
The Caodai aesthetics does not approve a
kind of “isolated” beauty. This disapproval is implied in such phrases as “tu thân hành đạo (self-cultivation for
doing the Dao)” and “hành đạo độ đời
(doing the Dao for saving the world)”, which are frequently reiterated in
Caodai teaching.
The two phrases just mentioned above may
serve to correct a mistaken idea that those who pursue a religious life are
irresponsible to the community, and neglect their obligations to the nation.
According to Caodai teaching, “Hành đạo (doing
the Dao)” means taking responsibility to the community. During an evocation
seance at the Vietnam Organ for Universalising Caodai Teaching on 24 March
1972, His Holiness Minh Đức Đạo Nhơn clarified the true meaning of “doing the
Dao” as follows:
“No
one should think that his doing the Dao is to serve his self-cultivation only;
if successful, it’s good for himself; if not, it harms no one else. If he
thinks so, he’s wrong. Doing the Dao is not just enclosed within a holy house,
monastery, pagoda, or temple. Doing the Dao means building a whole generation
and one after another unceasingly. Doing the Dao means sowing the good seeds
for a country and its people.”
Thus, the true beauty of a true
self-cultivator is the unselfish beauty, arising from his broad heart as well
as his ideal of serving others. During an evocation seance at the Ngọc Minh Đài
holy meditation house on 05 April 1965, so as to help humans consciously
transcend the selfish beauty, Great Immortal Lê Văn Duyệt advised:
In
the universe where a country and its people exist,
How
can a citizen on his own enjoy happiness?
For a person ungrateful to his family and
ancestry, who dares believe that he really loves his compatriots and nation? To
create his own beauty, consequently, a man must not ignore his family and
ancestry, who are his closest beginnings. During an evocation seance at the
Ngọc Minh Đài holy meditation house on 19 June 1974, Great Immortal Lê Văn
Duyệt advised:
Gratitude
to citizen is not detached
from
that to family,
Bond
with country is attached
to
that with ancestry.
The above advice does not mean regarding
family and ancestry, or nation and its people as the centre of all activities.
According to Caodai teaching, humans should consciously transcend the limits of
locality to attain the immense world of colourful mankind. During an evocation
seance at a temple named Trước Lâm Thánh Đức Thiền Điện (today in Vĩnh Long
city) on 02 May 1971, by saying, “Myriads
of fragrant flowers are of the same root,” Saint Phan Thanh Giản compared
all races of multiple features to myriads of multicoloured flowers growing from
the same root (God); and then His
Holiness Phan advised man to win the harmony between nation and the world,
compatriots and human beings:
Love
for a country is parallel to
that for humanity,
Bond with a country is of the
same source
as that with all living creatures.
During an evocation seance at the Ngọc
Minh Đài holy meditation house on 11 February 1973, the utmost beauty of those
truly doing the Dao is expressed by Great Immortal Lê Văn Duyệt as follows:
“A
life worthy of living involves both outward and inward duties. The former are
efforts to help the world and save humans; the latter are focused on
self-cultivating, improving one’s own virtues and merits, so as to be qualified
for seeking the people’s well-being and building a harmonial life in the
world.”
To achieve such a virtuous life, man must
be egoless and ignore all merit acknowledgements. During an evocation seance at
the Ngọc Minh Đài holy meditation house on 16 June 1967, Great Immortal Lê Văn
Duyệt advised:
“You
must consider yourselves a particle of dust in mid air, and consider all humans
an immense ocean.”
To attain the egoless and unselfish
beauty, man needs a proper attitude. During an evocation seance at the Ngọc
Minh Đài holy meditation house on 01 December 1967, His Holiness Cao Triều Phát
referred to that attitude as follows:
“Regard
others as yourselves, and yourselves as others, without discrimination.”
That proper attitude should be ensued by
a proper action. At the same seance as mentioned above, His Holiness Cao Triều
Phát said:
“Loving
others, do perfect others. Loving ourselves, let’s perfect ourselves.”
These two short holy sayings embraces
both the individual’s and the community’s beauty.
“Loving
others, do perfect others” means creating the community’s beauty.
“Loving
ourselves, let’s perfect ourselves” means creating the
individual’s beauty.
5.
The community’s beauty
The individual’s and the community’s
beauty mutually affect each other. Lacking good individuals, it is impossible
to constitute a good community. If a community has only one good individual
while the rest are bad, the fact is just like a fine yarn woven into a piece of
dirty cloth. Contrarily, if a whole community are good besides one individual,
the community’s influence will constructively affect that individual.
When seizing the mutual relationship
between individual and community, one can comprehend the relationship between individual karma and collective karma.
In the conculsion of Kiều’s Tale, Nguyễn Du (1766-1820) writes:
With
the karma being burdened,
It’s
no use for you to blame Heaven.
The karma in the above-quoted verses is
the individual karma which each person has invited to himself.
By cultivating himself, each self-cultivator
aims at getting free from his own karma. However, since each person is a member
of his community, he is inevitably to share his community’s collective karma.
That collective karma is the total of all individual karma of those
constituting his community. Each person is to be affected by the collective
karma from his family, society, country, and the whole world. During an
evocation sence at a temple named Trước Lâm Thánh Đức Thiền Điện on 01 May
1970, Zen Master Vạn Hạnh maintained:
Being
born into this world,
No
one is free from the collective karma.
Accordingly, deliverance from individual
karma is not sufficient. Every true self-cultivator is also to deal with the
collective karma actively by doing the Dao for others’ salvation,
simultaneously practising self-deliverance and helping others get deliverance,
i.e., creating his own beauty and the community’s one. This is a feature of
Caodaists’ self-cultivation. During an evocation seance at the Vietnam Organ
for Universalising Caodai Teaching on 10 October 1973, Bodhisattva Quan Âm
(Guan Yin, also Avalokitesvara) asserted:
“What
you see or hear, whether existing or imminent, is the inevitable retribution
for your whole people’s collective karma. Thus, while sharing such collective
karma, each person who consciously cultivates himself and does the Dao can
gradually discard the burden of his individual karma. A community that
consciously cultivates itself and does the Dao can gradually discard the burden
of its collective karma. The people of a country consciously cultivating
themselves and doing the Dao are those who expect to discard the karmic burden
of their country’s and people’s sins in the past.”
*
Through
preliminarily surveying beauty in terms of the Caodai aesthetics, one can
realise some notions as follows:
- The
true beauty is the one attained through real life activities so as to perfect a
community as well as each individual constituting that community.
-
Living the Dao means living beautifully because the Caodai aesthetics does not
lead humans away from their communities, but contrarily helps humans get much
closer to humans, attaching themselves to life so as to love others, love the
world, and make life become more beautiful.
- In
terms of the Caodai aesthetics, beauty is not abstract or distant. That beauty
can be attained every day by properly defining each individual’s attitude,
sentiment, duties in relation to his family, relatives, friends, compatriots,
and fellow creatures.
- Beauty in terms of the Caodai
aesthetics is not explored fully in this essay, but it might be somewhat enough
to help cast a light onto the humanistic purpose of Caodaism in the Third
Universalism Era. This purpose was clarified by His Holiness Spiritual Pope Lý
Thái Bạch during an evocation seance at the Vietnam Organ for Universalising
Caodai Teaching on 23 August 1972 as follows:
“In
the Third Universalism Era, Caodaism does not simply aim at training its
believers to become Buddhas, Immortals, and Saints so as to enjoy themselves in
the heavens but neglect their present duty to build an honest, saintly world
where people live in love, harmony, morality, and completely enjoy happiness of
their families, happiness of their countries and peoples, as well as happiness
of mankind.”
Revised, 29 September 2017
This essay is originally part of my talk at
the Organ for Universalising Caodai Teaching
on Monday morning 21 July 1986.
HUỆ KHẢI
*
FOR FURTHER READING
A. For
more knowledge of Caodaism, readers are suggested to consult the following bilingual
Vietnamese-English books by Huệ Khải,
published by the Programme of Joining Hands for Free Caodai Publications in
cooperation with the Tôn Giáo (Religion) and the Hồng Đức publishing houses
since mid-2008:
1.
CÁI ĐẸP THEO MỸ HỌC CAO ĐÀI / Beauty in
Terms of the Caodai Aesthetics. Hà Nội: Hồng Đức, 2017.
2. CẤM
ĐẠO CAO ĐÀI Ở TRUNG KỲ (1928-1950) / Caodaism
under Persecution in Central Vietnam (1928-1950). Hà Nội: Tôn Giáo, 2012.
3. ĐẠO
CAO ĐÀI TRONG ĐỜI SỐNG CÔNG CHÚNG / Caodaism
in Public Life. Hà Nội: Tôn
Giáo, 2015 (collaborated with Thiện Quang).
4. ĐẤT
NAM KỲ − TIỀN ĐỀ PHÁP LÝ MỞ ĐẠO CAO ĐÀI / Cochinchina
as a Legal Precondition for the Foundation of Caodaism. Hà
Nội: Tôn Giáo, 2008, 2010.
5. ĐẤT
NAM KỲ − TIỀN ĐỀ VĂN HÓA MỞ ĐẠO CAO ĐÀI / Cochinchina
as a Cultural Precondition for the Foundation of Caodaism. Hà Nội: Tôn
Giáo, 2008, 2012.
6. ĐỐI
THOẠI LIÊN TÔN GIÁO TỪ GÓC NHÌN MỘT TÍN HỮU CAO ĐÀI / Interfaith Dialogues as Viewed by a Caodai Believer. Hà
Nội: Tôn Giáo, 2015.
7. GIA
ĐÌNH TRONG TÂN LUẬT CAO ĐÀI / Family in
the Caodai New Law. Hà Nội: Tôn Giáo, 2014.
8. LƯỢC
SỬ ĐẠO CAO ĐÀI: KHAI MINH ĐẠI ĐẠO 1926 / A
Concise Caodai History: The 1926 Inauguration. Hà Nội: Tôn Giáo, 2015.
9. LƯỢC
SỬ ĐẠO CAO ĐÀI: THỜI TIỀM ẨN 1920-1926 / A
Concise Caodai History: The Earliest Beginnings 1920-1926. Hà Nội: Hồng Đức,
2017.
10. MỘT
THOÁNG CAO ĐÀI / Brief Glimpses into
Caodaism. Hà Nội: Hồng Đức, 2017.
11. NGÔ
VĂN CHIÊU − NGƯỜI MÔN ĐỆ CAO ĐÀI ĐẦU TIÊN / Ngô
Văn Chiêu – the First Caodai Disciple. Hà Nội: Tôn Giáo, 2008, 2009, 2012.
12. NGŨ
GIỚI CẤM XƯA VÀ NAY / The Five Precepts
Past and Present. Hà Nội: Tôn
Giáo, 2014.
13. TAM
GIÁO VIỆT NAM – TIỀN ĐỀ TƯ TƯỞNG MỞ ĐẠO CAO ĐÀI / The Three Teachings of Vietnam as an Ideological Precondition for the
Foundation of Caodaism. Hà Nội: Tôn Giáo, 2010, 2013.
14. TÂM
LÝ NGƯỜI ĐẠO CAO ĐÀI / The Psychology of
Caodaists. Hà Nội: Hồng Đức, 2017.
15.
THIÊN BÀN TẠI NHÀ / The God’s Altar at
Home. Hà Nội: Tôn Giáo, 2014.
16.
TRONG THỜI ĐẠI CHÚNG TA VỚI TÂM TÌNH MỘT TÍN HỮU CAO ĐÀI / Nostra Aetate in a Caodai Believer’s Sentiment. Hà Nội: Tôn Giáo,
2016.
B. Besides,
all English texts of the above-listed titles can be accessed at
http://understandingcaodaism.blogspot.com
THESE BOOKS ARE NOT FOR SALE.
