Mother Belief Of Viet People In The Red River Delta-some Aspects In Human Life

Because of unique features in geography, population, history and culture, etc,Vietnam, therefore, is known to be a nation of many kinds of belief and religion. Besidethe modern religious forms immigrated from outside such as: Buddhism, Catholicism,Islam, Protestantism, etc, or religions formed in Vietnam like: Cao Dai, Hoa Hao ism,there nowadays still exist primitive beliefs of some ethnic groups in Vietnam or folkbeliefs of Kinh people like: the cult of ancestors, Thanh Hoang worshipping and Motherworshipping, among which Mother worshipping is the most symbolic.Mother worshipping belief, which respects, Mother, women, considers Mother thecreator patronizing the existence and the development of people and the whole country.Mother belief expresses the “when drinking water, remember its source” and “wheneating fruits, remember the one planting the tree” morality, which strengthens theawareness of community solidarity as well as appreciates the women’s role both in thepast (history) and at the present. However, the kind of belief itself contains the potentialfactors that can cause to superstition and out–dated customs which can do damage to theprosperity, the health and the life of people, influence the healthy development of thesocial relations and prohibit the process of building and developing an advance culturefalling of national identity which is aimed at by our party and our people.Therefore, it is necessary to understand thoroughly about belief, Mother belief,especially about the “human life” aspect of Mother belief in such the present condition ofour society.Mother belief originated from geo-cultural, geo-economic and political features ofVietnamese society, of which the foundation is the water paddy agricultural Indus. Thus,Mother belief has the endogenous origin. However, during the developing process, Motherbelief received a large amount of exogenous cultural values and belief such as: Taoism,Buddism, Confucianism, etc, to create unique characteristics of Mother belief, as a result,causing to the “Mother Goddesses” or “Mother religion”, because it contains the formingfactor of modern religion, but the “belief” factor is still an outstanding one. In comparison with the criteria for identifying a religion, Mother worshipping is notconsidered a religion but a belief. Though Mother worshipping is just belie, Mother beliefreally expressed Viet people’s life philosophy. That is the ambition of reaching to thehigher relations with nature, the absorption of patriotic morality, the dreams ofovercoming the difficulties, the prejudices, which are so out of date in the society, to reachto the higher and better values.In short, let alone all the superstitions, the out-dated customs,“commercializingworshipping” happening in some worshipping places of Mother belief, we can admit that“Mother belief is a lofty and beautiful spiritual and cultural value of Viet people. It is thequintessence distilled during a long-lasted period of history, the symbol of communitypower and the creation and endless development of Vietnamese nation among thesecultural traditions of our nation, Mother has become a symbol of the will to build andprotect the country, and a symbol of patriotism of Vietnamese people2”.