Can anyone point me to a place where I can buy the best and tastiest Chinese wax sausages in KL? I need to store some lap cheong in my cabinet. I’m serious. Let me know asap. Email me if you have the info.
This is a temple me and my Szer visited on a day trip in Vietnam. This is a must for every tourist to Ho Chi Minh City.
Well, Cao Dai (a.k.a. Dao Cao Dai or Caodaism) is a syncretist Vietnamese religious movement with a strongly nationalist political character. Cao Dai draws upon ethical precepts from Confucianism, occult practices from Taoism, theories of karma and rebirth from Buddhism, and a hierarchical organization (including a pope) from Roman Catholicism. Its pantheon of saints includes such diverse figures as the Buddha, Confucius, Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Pericles, Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc, Victor Hugo, and Sun Yat-sen. It was founded in Vietnam by Ngo Van Chieu in 1926.
It was a Saturday afternoon. Worshippers going to the templefor prayers.
In 1919 Ngo Van Chieu, an administrator for the French in Indochina, received a communication from the supreme deity during a table-moving séance. Chieu became the prophet of the new religion, which was formally established in 1926. Caodaists believe this ushered in Tam Ky Pho Do or the Third Period of Salvation, a period marked by direct revelation between heaven and earth. Caodaism is the Dai Dao or great religion of this period.
A Cao Dai army was established in 1943 during the Japanese occupation of Indochina. After the war the Cao Dai was an effective force in national politics; it first supported, then opposed, Premier Ngo Dinh Diem. In 1955–56 Diem disbanded the Cao Dai army and forced the sect’s pope, Pham Cong Tac, into exile.
After the communist takeover in 1975, Cao Dai was reportedly repressed by the government. Centers of worship were established in Vietnamese refugee communities abroad, however, and by the early 1990s Cao Dai was reported to have some two million adherents in Vietnam, Cambodia, France, and the United States.
Today, Cao Dai adherents may number as high as 6 million, at least according to Cao Dai sources. 2 The headquarters of Cao Dai are at Tay Ninh, near Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon).
In its beliefs, Cao Dai draws upon ethical precepts from Confucianism and theories of karma and rebirth from Buddhism, with some influence from Catholicism. It is a very syncretistic faith, and proudly so. According to one Cao Dai follower and author:
“That’s the reason God has founded Cao Dai, in order to bring harmony to different religions. And the principle of Cao Dai is that religions are not different and if we take enough time to study deep –deeply enough in each religion, we would see that they have one same principal, if not identical principal.”
The noble effort of CaoDai 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. CaoDai 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.
The supreme being is Cao Dai (“High Tower”), a Taoist epithet for the supreme god. Cao Dai is regarded as the same supreme being honored in all major world religions, but the term Cao Dai avoids gender, personality or other earthly attributes. God is represented as the Divine Eye, an eye in a triangle, which appears on the facades of the sect’s temples and in followers’ homes. It is a left eye, because God is Yang, and Yang is the left side.
Cao Dai’s saints include such diverse figures as the Buddha, Confucius, Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Pericles, Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc, Victor Hugo, and Sun Yat-sen. These are honored at Cao Dai temples, along with ancestors.
In Cao Dai, the purpose of life is peace within each individual and harmony in the world. Cao Dai followers also seek to gain religious merit and avoid bad karma.
Cao Dai beliefs about the afterlife are derived from Buddhism. Those who have gathered too much bad karma during their lifetime will be reincarnated in negative circumstances, which may include rebirth on a darker, colder planet than this one. Good karma leads to rebirth to a better life on earth.
Salvation is freedom from rebirth and the attainment of nirvana or heaven. “The ultimate goal of CaoDaists is to be reunified with The All That Is, to return home.”
Cao Dai draws upon occult practices from Taoism and includes communication with the dead in séances. This has been outlawed by the Vietnamese government, but Cao Dai leaders also say that it is no longer necessary.
“We don’t see the necessity to have séance any more because we have direct communication from the Supreme Being to people by returning inside to our heart to see the Supreme Being in there.”
Cao Dai encourages obedience to the three duties (between king and citizen, father and child, husband and wife), and five virtues (humanity, obligation, civility, knowledge, reliability) of Confucianism.
Cao Dai’s organization is patterned after that of Roman Catholicism, with nine levels of hierarchy including a pope, cardinals, and archbishops.
Worship involves group prayer in the temple, elaborate rituals and festivals.
Similar to the division in Theravada Buddhism between lay Buddhists and monks, Cao Dai offers two ways of practice its adherents. 6 Esoterism focuses on meditation, with the goal “to progressively eradicate the inferior self and develop the divine element within the self, reaching toward oneness with the Supreme Being.” These are priests of Cao Dai, which can be men and women. Exoterism is the form available to laypersons living a normal family life. These are expected to:
Asked a Vietnamese to take a picture for us and this is what he took. Despite the bright LCD screen where you can see what you’ll get, he opted for the viewfinder and clicked the shutter button. The funny part is that before the shutter and flash open, he already started to pass the camera back to me and at the same time the flash just “chik chak” and this is the result. Arrrgghhh.
My lovely gf, Szer.
Coming next on my installment of my Ho Chi Minh trip is Cu Chi Tunnel. Stay tuned.
Bibliography: http://www.religionfacts.com/a-z-religion-index/cao_dai.htm
Oh yeah. It will be tomorrow morning that we will journey to Temerloh. Just cant wait to breakaway from the city.
Yesterday watched The Number 23 with my Szer. Nowadays, spending time with her is better than spending time sitting in front of the computer. By the way, i’m not as wacky as before. I dont know what to write… nothing significant happen, for me to blog about. Mostly are all personal things which I ain’t gonna blog. I just lost my blogging passion. Wait, let me revive it after Gunung Senyum trip.
There was a lot of rage in my posts before but these days, I’m getting easier with people. I tried to avoid beef and just dont give a fuck in someone else’ affair. Although I would like to diss a friend who quarelled with his wife and now he just walked off his home and back to his mom’s place. He wanna divorce, end the relationship with his wife of 4 years. I dont know what to say.
Work place is ok. Workload is ok. Basically, not much stress at work. Just sometime, they want somthing urgent and you gotta rush like shit. Everyone are playing guns. I wonder if this month end there’ll be salary increment.
Got a call from my mum all the way from golders green that my aunt in 36 got into further pain… cancer (of malignant stage I guess). Gotta check it out with my other aunts. Arrgghghhh.
Then my parents been telling me about my cousin who’s studying in The School of Ox, had been seeing them quite often for consoling sessions… subsequent to a breakup with his girlfriend who currently is now in Czech Republic and befriended a local and they’re going out together.
Ok. Maybe I write again later. Sorry if this shit bores you down.
Szer, what are we eating tonite?
When shit happened… and you made someone grossed/afraid/freaked out of you for your “wrongdoings” or , what will you do?
Maybe you’ll say that you did not do that in purpose and doesn’t realize that it’ll make someone pissed off or freaked… what happened have happened.
I just hope people who were freaked by my odd habits, please forgive me. Sometime I myself couldn’t help it. Maybe its time to think all over again before freaking out people. I’m sorry. You know I love ya’ all.
But then, i was freaked by someone too. Here, to that guy colleague who groped my ass bun, I hope you dont freak me out again.
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If you ask me which is the best chili sauce, I’d say the best chili sauce in the world come from Kampung Koh, Sitiawan. What say you?
A colleague who hails from the small town of Sitiawan brought me a bottle. Yay. Oh, by the way, Chin Peng came from this town too.
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