Cao Dai

I learnt about a new religion while I was in Vietnam.

It's called Cao Dai (pronounced as cow-die). It's actually written as such in Vietnamese: Cao Đài (道高台).




We took a tour out to see the first temple built of it, called the Tay Ninh Holy See.

I won't go in too much detail on the religion, you can read it here.

But basically Cao Dai belives in one Holy See (the holy eye) as one true spirit, way before god was born. And that all religions we know of today: Christianity, Buddism, Islam, etc were all of the same origin, we were all taught the same thing:




love and justice.


A story:






I saw Jesus, Guan Yin and various other gods lining up all under the Eye. Or the Holy See.


from outside.





inside the temple you can see one huge ball with an eye adorned in the front placed in the front part of the temple, where hundreds of followers will come to pray to everyday.




Like Christianity, they have ranks such as pope, bishops, and priests. And they normally wear very colorful robes.


Cao Dai priests


We were there to witness one of their daily morning praying session. It was rather grand for such a small scale religion in such a remote part of the world.










Tourists were allowed to walk around the second floor to stay and observe throughout the session, a way to raise awareness of the religion to foreigners.













During a grand occasion, the temple would be packed with thousands of followers and prayers, however this was just an everyday prayer of smaller crowd.













As estimate of the Cao Dai adherents was said to be 2-3 millions globally.