VIETNAMESE
BUDDHISM BETWEEN- THE
CATHOLIC AND COMMUNIST IDEOLOGIES
Vài
lời giới thiệu: Bản dịch này do một cựu Huynh trưởng Gia đình Phật
tử ẩn danh dịch từ bài “Phật giáo Việt Nam giữa hai ý thức hệ Công
giáo và Cộng sản” của giáo sư Trần Chung Ngọc, tặng cho Giao Điểm với
ý nguyện được phổ biến cho giới độc giả thuộc thế hệ trẻ trong và
ngoài nước. Bản dịch này cũng sẽ được đăng lại trong tuyển tập “The Evidence of the
Truth” do ông Lê Hữu Dản chủ biên vào đầu năm 2003. Thay mặt trang nhà
GĐ, chúng tôi ghi nhớ công đức của tác giả. Giao Điểm.
By
Trần Chung Ngọc
In essence, during the several centuries of its
beginning, the teaching of Christianity was not in conflict with Buddhism. The communist
ideology of Marx-Engels, a form of humanism, on the religious aspect was not in conflict
with Buddhism either. However, in the contemporary history of Vietnam, Buddhism has been
put in a squeeze between the pincers of Catholicism and Communism. Why was it so? Because
ever since the middle of the fourth century when the emperor Constantine converted to
Christianity and established it as the official religion, he had merged religious and
secular powers into a single foundation for later Christian development, Christianity had
deteriorated and degraded into the Roman Catholic Church serving the personal ambitions of
the clergy in the names of saints and misappropriated heaven’s authority. On the other
hand, the ideology of Marx-Engels was so much ‘advanced’, more Marxist than Marx, when
put into application in the Orient. Both ideologies were spread and introduced to the
Orient through brute force. Where Catholicism served as the advance column for or in the
footsteps of colonialism, Communism put in practice class conflict and religious
repression in total disregard of the history, culture and moral heritages of regional
countries.
The study of Catholicism
and Communism revealed surprising similarities in the nature and characteristics of both
ideologies. As Catholicism had been seen as the spiritual power of Europe for almost 2,000
years and Marxist ideology was thought to have been originated from the European
industrial age, both were seen by many as consanguineous brothers. Having taken
birth in different historical settings and times, the brothers became ideological enemies:
extreme monotheism vs. extreme atheism. Being stemmed from a same cultural root, both
shared an affinity for utopian supremacy, either “Red” or “Black”. They will
tolerate no other color in this multifaceted world. The similarities between the two
ideologies are cited in the following examples:
Paul Blanshard, author of
“American Freedom and Catholic Power’ (The Beacon Press, Boston, 1950), in the
subsequent book “Communism, Democracy, and Catholic Power’ (The Beacon Press, Boston,
1952) pointed out in details the strange similarities between Catholicism and Communism,
particularly between the Kremlin and the Vatican, the following chapters: The Structure of
Power; The Devices of Deification; Thought Control; Versus the Public School; Discipline
and Devotion; The Management of Truth; The Strategy of Penetration.
The Rev. Leonardo Boff, a
famed Liberation theologian of Brazil, also offered the comparison between the Kremlin and
the Vatican in the book “Church Charisma and Power” (Crossroad, New York, 1986). He
criticized the authoritarian structure of the Vatican and in Chapter 4, cited “the
Violation of Human Rights in the Church.” He wrote a long points-by-points comparison of
governing styles of the Kremlin and the Vatican, of the Pope and the Secretary General of
the Communist Party, the central Roman administrative structure and the Politburo of the
Soviet Union, etc. Let’s read the following excerpt (pp. 40-41) to see that the power
structure of the Roman Catholic Church does not differ from that of the Communists:
“The power structure in
the Church today is indebted to centuries-old patterns, and two patterns are worth noting
in particular: the experience with Roman power and the feudal structure… The Roman and
feudal style of power in the Church today, however, constitutes one of the principal
sources of conflict with the rising consciousness of human rights.
“The Roman and feudal
style of authority is characterized, first, by a hierarchy with distinct “orders”;
second, this hierarchy is personal in nature. The one in power is such for life; his will
is law within his own “order” but always linked by obedience to the superior “order”.
Third, it is a sacred and cosmic hierarchy. In other words, its legitimacy comes not from
below but from above, from the will of God. The higher someone is in this hierarchy the
closer one is to God and so has greater share in God’s divine power. To obey one’s
superior is to obey God, making obedience a religious act. Fourth, this style of authority
is untouchable and not subject to any internal criticism. Criticism from within any of the
orders is only possible from a higher authority. A questioning from below would be equal
to a revolution in the universe. Thus, any thought of transformation is the same as an
attack on God who is the author of both the order and the structure of sacred power.”
Evidently, with such
truth-based accusations, the Vatican could only try to silence the Rev. Boff (See “The
Silencing of Leonardo Boff” by Harvey Cox).
In the book “Ho Chi Minh,
Ngo Dinh Diem and the National Liberation Ftront” (Van Nghe Publications, Calif. 1992),
the author Ho Si Khue presented similar observations and more thorough explanations
regarding the Communist imitation of the Catholic structural pattern:
“Lenin, being a member of the aristocracy, knew the
religious value of divine power of the Russian Orthodox Church. He secularized the
Judeo-Christian belief (?) and reorganized Marx’s politico-economic theory along
religious lines into a Marxist-Leninist ideology. To turn a socio-economic theory into a
governing ideology, to infuse religious power into an all-powerful entity like the
Catholic Empire when political power is seized.
“The secularized
Judeo-Christian principles are applied in politics, most importantly as follows:
“Political power having the
characteristics of heavenly authority becomes a kind of secular faith. The pessimistic
Judeo-Christian outlook of man from a metaphysical root is secularized into a social
concept: Man is a wolf to man, people are equally sinful and must repent their sins
(self-critic). The “original sin” becomes the “sin of exploitation”. “Salvation”
to the kingdom of God is secularized into “Re-education” to Socialism. “Devotion to
God” becomes “Loyalty to the Party”. “Live a saintly life” to honor God is
secularized into “Uphold one’s standpoint” to build up Socialism.
“Deification of the Party.
Sanctification of the government, the central structure functions like a Church, the Party
and Government rule in the name of Supreme authority like the Pope and his cardinals.
Party policies are dogma Party powers much like church powers are unquestionable and
beyond criticism. The power hierarchy is untouchable and irresistible. The leader is “deified”.
- “As there is but one God,
there is but one Party.
- “The baptism of new converts
is secularized into “admission” of new party members.
- “Just
as non-believers cannot receive God’s salvation, those who are not party members do not
belong to the proletariat, thus having rights to be part of the ruling class.
- “Just as believers are
distinctly separate from non-believers, cadres and party members are separate from the
common people.”
In page 70 of “The Final
Superstition” (Prometheus Book, New York, 1994), Joseph L. Daleiden presented the
following comparison:
“The root of the Church’s
antipathy toward Communism is its realization that Communism is, in effect, a rival
religion. It is ironic that the two organizations, Catholicism and Communism, are so much
alike:
- both are totalitarian;
- both have doctrine and canonical
texts (the four Communist evan-
- gelists are Marx, Engels, Lenin,
and Mao);
- the Holy Office plays the same
role as the Communist party in
- seeking to reinforce the dogmas
of faith;
- both excommunicate dissenters;
and,
- when in power, both enforce
their rule under pain of death (The
- Church still threatens spiritual
death.)
“In Poland, concern is
rising that with the fall of Communism and the Church’s efforts to reestablish its
traditional authority, Poles are in danger of exchanging the rule of the “Reds” with the rule of the “Blacks” (referring to the priests).
Despite amazing
similarities between the two ideologies, in reality in many aspects the “younger
brother” Communism by far cannot measure up to the “older brother” Catholicism,
especially in turning the believers into fanatics ready to betray their own nations for a
religious belief that is fantastic, unreal, unproven and unscientific. The
nationalistic mindset (as evidenced by the Chinese-Russian border dispute, the break-away
of Tito’s Yugoslavia, and the Chinese-Vietnamese border clash in 1979) and the refusal
to submit to a monolithic leadership had caused the crumbling of the Communist bloc in
less than 100 years of existence. In Vietnam, the regime had to go through a fundamental
overhaul in order to adapt itself to the modern age. Meanwhile, for 2,000 years
Catholicism continues to retain its totalitarian character and its pseudo-divine
authority. The Communists’ failure can be attributed to the fact they put much more
emphasis on solving materialistic problems than attending to spiritual matters. Taking
advantage of the superstition of people of limited knowledge and/or of weak spirituality,
of those who cannot stand up on their own two feet, most Western religions present
themselves as buoys of a fictive spiritual power. Out of respect for its seniority, I will
first give a brief summary of this “older brother” Catholicism before going onto the
“younger brother” Communism. For obvious reasons, in a short article like this I can
present only principal aspects and not the details.
The history of Christianity
reveals that in the early centuries, there was a sect called Gnostic Christianity that
promoted salvation through deep knowledge of reality and personal realization or
experience. The name came from Gnosis, a work of
Greek origin meaning knowledge. “The Christian sect known as the Gnostics chided those
“who called themselves Bishops and also deacons,
as if they had received their authority from God… and called those who made such
audacious claims “waterless canals.” (Joseph
L. Daleiden, ibid., p. 52). But the Orthodox Christian Church (or the Roman Christian
Church until the 16th century) branded the sect heretic. When this church
seized the secular power, it ordered all books and materials containing humanistic
thoughts of the sect. The tyranny flourished in the 4th century when Emperor
Constantine converted to Christianity, and decreed it the official religion and gave it
the supreme power. “But as we review the history of Christianity, bear in mind that
prior to the Reformation, Christianity as an institution was synonymous with the Catholic
Church, and the pope, who was in charge of that church, inherited all the evils of
Christianity from its inception to the papacy. (Joseph L. Daleiden, ibid., p. 52). Ever
since that day, Christianity had reached the ‘apogee of human intelligence’, leading
Europe into the 1,000 years of Dark Ages from the 5th to the 15th
centuries, “the ages of barbarism and intellectual darkness” (Grolier Electronic
Publishing, 1995) with bloodiest crusades, Inquisition courts using the most barbarous
instruments of torture in human history, 600 years of massacres of millions of people in
Europe that went on until the middle of 19th century. To have a good grasp of
the nature and expansion of Christianity, let’s read some excerpts from “Deceptions
and Myths of the Bible” by Lloyd M. Graham (Bell Publishing Co., New York, 1979):
“According to the
Christian theologians, the great menace, in fact of Gnosticism, was its refusal to remain
outside of Christianity. It fastened itself as a parasite upon the Christianity faith,
drawing substance from it and at the same time robbing it of its individual character and
vitality. This is a sample of the later inversion and perversion of facts: Christianity
was the parasite drawing its substance from Gnosticism, not vice versa. And instead of
refusing to remain in it, after its perversion.)
“And St. Augustine on his
religion: “The enemies thereof, I hate vehemently: O that thou wouldest slay them with
thy two-edged sword.” And were these “enemies” atheists, infidels, destroyers of the
truth? No indeed, they were the keepers of the truth, those abhorrent Gnostics. Here we
should recall the words of Frances Swiney: “It may be truly said that the blackest and
bloodiest records that history can show us are the attacks of the Orthodox Church upon the
Gnostic mystics.” Oh yes, it takes more than ignorance to found a religion
(Christianity); it takes dishonesty, cruelty and war as well.”
“With such a beginning,
the Crusades, St. Bartholemew, and the Inquisition become more understandable.”
There are two facts that
pertain to the origination and development of Christianity in the world: The Roman
Catholic Church venerated St. Peter as the founder of the church according to the Gospels. And the church reached
supremacy in Europe ever since Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in the 4th
century. A question must be asked: why the Catholic Church that claims itself to be a
noble religion of love could have committed so many crimes and atrocities in human
history? Today historians have found these answers:
First of all, the Catholic
Church was founded based on the morals of St. Peter, the person who (in truth) on three
occasions denied Christ and to whom Christ turned and said to: “Get behind Me, Satan!
You are an offense to me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of
man.” Lloyd M. Graham commented: “Thus if the Catholic Church is founded on Peter, it
is founded on Satan – a fact we have long suspected.” (ibid., p. 438) (And only Satan
could have caused the atrocities the Catholic Church had committed for nearly 2,000 years.
– TCN).
Secondly, what kind of man
was Emperor Constantine, the supporter of the Catholic Church?
“For nearly two thousand
years, Christianity has been trying to save us instead of civilizing us and it has ended
in a century of savagery, an era in which two hundred and fifty million Christians died in
Christian wars (see p. 463)...
“Such is Christianity, a
religion based on a fraud founded by “fools” and confirmed by an assassin –
Constantine the Great. If we can believe history, he killed with his own hands two of his
brothers-in-law, had his wife, his son Crispus and two nephews murdered, bled to death his
political rivals, threw the unbelieving into a well, and caused uncounted thousands to die
on the field of battle.”
“…And now (The Dark
Ages. TCN) that Christianity is firmly established, what do we find? “The kingdom of
heaven on earth”? On the contrary, a moral and intellectual degradation unparalleled in
human history (Lloyd M. Graham, ibid., p. 454).
With a history like that,
we should not be surprised if on the international diplomacy the Catholic Church had shown
duplicity, at times cajoling the Communists, at other times allying itself with the
capitalists’ fighting the Communists. It had signed treaties with Hitler and Mussolini,
then turned around to denounce the Nazis and Fascists when they were defeated. In Vietnam,
it first supported Ngo Dinh Diem’ ascension to power then later consorted with Ho Chi
Minh in exchange of Communist tolerance for the church. Also we should not be surprised if
the Church has produced such ruthless tyrants as Franco (Spain), Palevich (Yugoslavia),
Ngo Dinh Diem (South Vietnam), or such traitors as Petain (France), Tran Luc (who led
5,000 Catholics to assist the French in attacking Dinh Cong Trang’s resistance zone of
Ba Dinh), Nguyen Ba Tong (who in a speech express his and the Vietnamese subjects’
gratitude and loyalty to the French government) and Hoang Quynh (with the slogan “We
rather lose our country than lose God).
With regard to Franco of
Spain, Adrian Pigott wrote in “Freedom’s Foe: The Vatican” (The Pioneer Press,
London, 1962) as follows:
“That unhappy country has
been literally under the domination ever since 1939 when the usurper, Franco, deposed the
elected liberal government. Today the unlucky Spaniards have been reduced to the lowest
living standards in Western Europe, and suffer such inequities as:
- No freedom of Press or Speech.
- No democratic
elections.
- Government
employment denied to non-Romanists.
- No public religion
allowed – except the Romanists.
- Extensive privileges
for the clergy.
- Education largely in
church hands – and very poor.”
People living in South
Vietnam under Ngo Dinh Diem’s First Republic would have remembered that Diem’s regime
shared the same characteristics. The Vietnamese Catholic Church may not have had total
control of education in South Vietnam but Catholic priests had spread its influence to the
secondary and university levels with the help of unscrupulous Catholic intellectuals.
School curricula were modified to distort history, to disparage the national resistance
against the French. To defame Buddhism, these Catholic intellectuals composed and spread
derogatory and satirical verses (as mentioned in the article “A Question of Culture”
by Viet Thang in pp. 29-32 of the Giao Diem Publication No.23, June of 1996). They banned
the teaching of Nguyen Hien Le’s “World History” in schools because in the book
there were mentions of the Evolution theory and certain truths about some popes of the
Middle Ages. For anybody who is still doubtful of what was said above, please read the
appendix to the book “Vietnam, Fire and Blood in My Homeland” by Do Mau. This appendix
contains comments from various personalities, politicians, scholars, and generals on Diem
and his regime that was but a localized version of the Roman Catholic Church attempt at
global hegemony. It can be said, therefore, that attacks against Vietnamese Buddhism are
not individual deviations from god’s teachings. They have been and continue to be part
of the Roman Catholic Church’s conspiratory strategy that is rooted in the
delusional faith in the Catholic dogma and it reflects the imperialistic ambition, the
intolerance and cruelty of Catholicism as mentioned earlier in the history of its
origination and expansion.
Now I’d like to discuss
about the “younger brother” Communism. As the Ngo Dinh Diem’s repression of Buddhism
stemmed from the teaching of Catholicism, the brutal repression of Buddhism by Communists
is rooted in the application of Marx-Engels ideology in the excessive manner of being “more
royalist than the king.” Although Marx had written, “Religion is the opiate of the
people,” he did not mean Buddhism or Eastern religions. He meant Western religions that
worship a God-Creator like the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, or the
Protestant Church. Marx opposed these Churches because throughout the history of Europe he
had found them in cahoots with the ruling powers and capitalists to amass riches and to
fleece the proletarian classes. Taking advantage of the masses’ superstition and lack of
education, they lulled them into accepting their fates as God’s wills and promised them
eternal life in God’s kingdom. Indeed, let’s read this excerpt from the “Cry of the
People”, Penny Lernoux, Penguin Books, New York, 1992, in order to understand on what
basis Marx did view religion as an opiate:
“From the very beginning,
Latin-American society was constructed like a pyramid, with a few European settlers
enjoying all the privileges of empire and a mass of Indians, blacks, and half-casters
having no rights at all. The pyramid survived because the mass at the bottom was
repeatedly told that it was stupid, lazy, and inferior. Foreign missionaries helped drum
these ideas into the natives’ head by claiming that it was God’s will that they should
be poor and ignorant. As the Archbishop of Lima told his Indians, “Poverty is the most
certain road to felicity.”
In the meantime, how did
the Catholic leadership live? One only needs to see the Church’s accumulation of wealth
of thousands of billion dollars while the flocks in Latin-America, Africa and Asia live in
dire poverty. Witnessing how their subservient and fearful flocks have attended prelates
and priests, one can surmise the degree of hypocrisy and cruel dupery the Church has
exerted upon them.
Numerous Catholic
theologians have studied Marx’ anti-religion attitude and the following analysis was
made by the Reverend John Courtney Murray, a famed Jesuit theologian, from pp. 108-113 of
the book “The Problem of God,” Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 1964:
First, Marx’ atheism was
originated not from thoughts or concepts but from facts, societal facts of man’s
poverty. That was the atheist anger against man’s situation during the industrial age.
At the depth of the atheist attitude lies a concept of absolute morality whose roots are
good and evil. According to this concept, neither can evil exist or can it be tolerable.
This is an absolute principle whose decisiveness cannot be approved by God as omnipotent
ruler of the world. God can judge evil but cannot see it as intolerable. According to
Marx, God in the true sense cannot tolerate evil. Insofar as God of the Bible is tolerant
of evil, He cannot be God. In God’s name, Marx rejected God. This is the most pure and
ardent aspect of atheism when man rejects God in the name of God’s very moral character.
Second, Marx’s
discontentment with man’s poverty turns into a longing for freedom. To Marx, real
freedom is the capability to change nature, to change the individual and the society, to
build a new world, and to create a new history. This capability will come to man when he
recognizes the necessary conditions in the historical dialectic materialism. Then, he will become master of history, that is
the real freedom of man. It is also the freedom of the God-Creator, the real power in the
history-making process. From this real freedom, the Revolutionary man will make history
meaningful, i.e. to open a new pathway towards a world free of poverty.
Third, Marx saw God as the
supreme enemy of freedom. God in the sense of the Bible is the main cause of man’s own
alienation. Man’s belief in an omniscient and omnipotent God is his self-imprisonment in
delusion. According to Marx, God is an illusion, man’s own creation or just a craving of
the oppressed. For his own comfort, man creates a paradise an with illusory power capable
of lifting people out of poverty, and of leading history to a paradise that is beyond
history. However, this is just an illusory conjecture and it is dangerous to put too much
faith into this illusion. And that is the very reason of man’s own alienation. By
believing in a God, man is alienated from his true nature, becoming impotent in his
historical mission that is to change materialism and to rearrange the burdens that have
made him a slave of circumstances of poverty typical of a capitalist society or a feudal
society.
For that reason, the root
of faith in a God must be removed from the revolutionary man. Furthermore, God’s role in
the private and public life must be eradicated completely. Marx and his followers cannot
be fooled by an empty argument that religion is purely a private matter. They have
astutely perceived that religion, even in a privately sense of faith, is the most public
of public matters. Therefore, in Marx’s ideal society, no one can say or even think in
his mind that “God exists and is active in the present time.” To the socialist
proletarian revolutionary party, religion cannot be a private matter, it is an ideological
matter that involves the party, and as such it is a public matter. Thus, anti-religion is
the central focus in the ideological conflict between religion and Communism.
Fourth, the myth of “God
is dead” is the focal point in the revolutionary ideal. Actually, it is not a myth.
Underneath the mythical language lies a scientific fact that the revolutionary man has a
good scientific grasp of history. He has discovered that man’s nature is made by
history, and not by God. This discovery leads to the phrase “God is dead.” When man
realizes that he is a creation of history and not of God’s, God is dead and expunged
from history and only man remains as master of history.
Fifth, the revolutionary
man has but a task to solve the problem of evil. He knows that no solution is acceptable
unless it can actually free man from evil. In the Bible, God tolerates evil and uses it as
justification for God’s justice. Likewise, the revolutionary man tolerates the use of
evil means to achieve good results. The only difference is these good results can be
achieved on this earth. Thus, it can be said that the revolutionary man is doing God’s
work.
Through the Rev. Murray’s
analysis of Marx’s anti-religion position, we can see that Marx opposed the kind of
monotheism prevalent in capitalist and feudal societies, the religion that allies itself
with secular and capitalist powers in fleecing the proletarian mass through lies,
duperies, misleading and utopian promises. (He opposed) the kind of religion granting the
clergy all material privileges and absolute authority over the poor and obedient believers
that is so different from the Eastern religions such as Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism of
which Marx did not have any knowledge or experience. Indeed, Marx proposed to eliminate
the Bible’s God from man’s mind. This God never exists in the Buddhists’ minds. It
is fair to say that the Communist brutal repression of the Vietnamese Buddhism is wrong. On the one hand it deviates from true Marxism and
on the other it undermines a large segment of the population that has contributed so much
to the development and preservation of the nation’s cultural heritage. Would the
Communists think of a “Buddhist God” to be eliminated from Buddhists’ minds? In
Buddhism, instead of a God-Creator, there is only Śūnyatā
or “absolute Emptiness” and it is impossible to attack against the Void or
Emptiness. Each individual, including Communists, possesses an intrinsic
Buddha-nature. As soon as the Communists tear down the curtains of class-hatred and
religious intolerance, and drop instruments of killing, wisdom will illuminate their
minds. Communists need to re-read Marx so as to change their policy vis-à-vis Buddhism.
Marx did see only the bad side of religion, and a Western one at that. Marx did not see
the “redemptive” inspiration of religion on Christian followers nor did he
differentiate the religion from the followers. Communist theoreticians started to see this
point only in the decade 1950-60 and they participated in the Communist-Christian
dialogue. Christian theologians had to review their religion through the Marxist
perspective without much success because both Communists and Christians, especially the
Catholics, stubbornly clung to their own prejudices. The alliance between the Vatican
and American capitalists under the Reagan administration to topple the Communist regime in
Poland was a concrete proof. (See the article “Lien Minh Thanh (The Sacred Alliance)” by Tran
Van Kha in the “Dong Duong Thoi Bao (Indochina
Times)” No. 43 of 6/15/1996, Houston, TX).
In recent years, there have
been encouraging signs from Vietnam showing that the authorities have realized their
erroneous policies vis-à-vis Buddhism and corrective measures have been silently
initiated toward building up a socialism with a Vietnamese character. That would be a
blessing for the people because the Vietnamese character reflects the Buddhist ideals of
loving-compassion, magnanimity, religious tolerance, national concord, forgiveness,
betterment of the Vietnamese society, promotion of patriotism, protection of territorial
integrity and independence from foreign cultural, economic and political encroachment, and
elevation of national education standards. The people are waiting for government concrete
measures to correct past errors. In the past, the government had admitted the errors in
the land reform program by correcting mistakes and compensating victims. Now the
government should do likewise with Buddhism by stopping its policy, releasing Buddhist
leaders such as Huyen Quang, Quang Do, and Tri Sieu, etc., by rebuilding temples, and
encouraging the revival of Buddhism. By doing so, in addition to the political credit, the
government can prove itself to be in full control of the situation, to have confidence,
and is honestly open in its promotion of a Vietnamese socialism. In the ultimate analysis,
the Buddhist leaders are not provocateurs; they are spurred on by their compassion of the
people’s hardship. They may not be cognizant of the political reality or of the vagaries
of history; they may be under the influence of some overseas foolish “elitists”. They
cannot be under the penalty of imprisonment for crimes against the nation.
What position should
Buddhism take, being caught in the middle of Communist and Catholic opposing political
pressures? I’d like to offer my personal views that, in no way, may be construed as
Buddhist or otherwise.
First of, Buddhism has no
enemies because it sees no one as enemy. Buddhism looks upon all beings with
loving-kindness. It has compassion for those who harm others because of their own
ignorance. Buddhism opposes ignorance but not the people afflicted with it. Buddhism commits itself to save sentient beings
and to change them through loving-kindness and wisdom, not to destroy them. Buddhism views
ignorance and evil as man’s afflictions and the Buddhist approaches, i.e. compassionate
and peaceful actions, and developing wisdom and insight, are to relieve the afflictions
and not to kill the afflicted persons. On rare occasions when Buddhism has had to
rely on exceptional sine qua non measures,
disadvantages are most often than not befallen onto Buddhism itself. In the final letter
before his self-immolation, the martyr Bodhisattva Thich Quang Duc made the last appeal to
the awakening of Ngo Dinh Diem’s conscience. It was not a call to have Diem murdered or
to have his government overthrown. The Buddhist student Nhat Chi Mai committed
self-immolation before the pictures of Avalokiteśvara (Quan The Am Bo Tat in Vietnamese) to call for
religious concord and not to urge Buddhists to attack Catholics. These seemingly extremist
actions, at great personal sacrifice, share the common purpose of awakening
consciousness and not advocating killing. The Communists, therefore, should realize
that hidden intents, plots and other covert or overt anti-Communist actions must have come
from other quarters than Buddhist.
Moreover, history has
proved that Buddhists do not seek and have not sought political power or privileges. The
high monk Quang Tri, elder brother of Queen Chuong Phung, gave up a high position
in the royal court for the life of a recluse; King Tran Nhan Tong relinquished the throne
without regrets to become the Austere Monk of the Bamboo Grove (Truc Lam Dau da in Vietnamese); Zen Master Van
Hanh served as a royal counselor and not as a court official; The Superior Disciple Tue
Trung, elder brother of a queen (of the Tran dynasty), was a general during the war
against the Chinese invasion who returned to the monk’s life in peace time. Buddhism is
well aware of Lord Acton’s adage: “All powers tend to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts
absolutely.” If a few among Buddhist followers crave for power, they would not have
enough prestige or authority to lead the entire Buddhist community away from the Buddhist
teachings. Not only the exemplary monks, even in the majority of lay Buddhists there are
people who do not care about worldly power and privileges.
Last but not least,
Buddhism refutes clinging to personal views as absolute truth and does not condone
immoral, coercive practices to proselytize or recruit converts. Perfect view, perfect
resolve and perfect effort are not empty promises to mislead but are among the noble
eightfold path to insight and wisdom for the progressive man to develop reasonable
solutions to social problems. With an open mind, Buddhism welcomes dialogue with other
ideologies. Buddhism understands what the theologian Hans Kung had said: “There is no peace in the world if there is no peace
between religions, and there is no peace between religions if there is no dialogue between
religions.” And the Buddhists wish for the kind of dialogue that is built upon
mutual respect, scientific and logical bases. The kind of dialogue as described by Gioi Tu
“The priests have freedom to talk and the
Buddhists have but the freedom to listen” or the dialogue under the barrel of a
rifle is called monologue.
In contemporary times, I
believe that Buddhism has been squeezed by two ideologies that are foreign to the majority
of the Vietnamese people. It has been subject to uncounted cases of injustice and
mistreatment but it will come out unsullied by hatred because that is an affliction that
Buddhists must overcome. Buddhism’s only wish is to exist peacefully in justice,
loving-kindness, and in religious and national concord that, incidentally, remain largely
in the hands of Catholics and Communists as well. Buddhism, in and by itself, has
intrinsically been an epitome of peace and concord. The Communists should not extrapolate
isolated protests of human rights violations by individual Buddhists or so-called
Buddhists, or clamorous anti-Communist activities that failed to respect individual
liberties as representative of the Buddhist policy. As a matter of fact, these individuals
do not understand human rights, freedom and democracy. They are seeking fame by “taking
down a scarecrow of their own set-up.” Their notion of human rights, freedom &
democracy is that no one but them have the right to exist in this free country. Neither
the Communists (the scarecrow that they set up) or anyone else who do not follow their
extremist and narrow path will have the right to exist in this land that harbors them in
the name of freedom and human rights.
I call upon the extremist
Catholics to discontinue either overt or covert activities, defamation, and distortion of
history in their attack of Buddhism. In the spirit of straightforward dialogue, Buddhists
like us welcome the opportunity to discuss our errors or wrongs, if any. We are also
willing to discuss about the scriptures, teachings and history of Buddhism as a major
world religion, the principal religion of the majority of the Vietnamese people. We are
ready to receive constructive recommendations toward a better religious mutual
understanding. You should give up the false hope of “destroying the devilish Buddhism”
in order to build up the kingdom of God as you had pledged at your admission into the
Catholic Can Lao party. The teaching of Buddhism has permeated into the psyche of the
Vietnamese people like water into the soil (as mentioned by Prof. Tran Duc Vuong). The
only way to destroy the water-soaked soil is to dig up and sell out soil and water.
Obviously this is a utopian premise. The Vietnamese nation is like an ocean where
different ideologies and cultural sources flow into. That is the logic of natural law. Is
it possible for a small river like the Catholic ideology to change the nature of sea
water, to force the purity of the sea to conform to the small river that history has
proved not to be pure (according to Doan Quoc Sy)? I’d encourage Catholics to
proselytize according to God’s love in “Gloria
in Excelsis Deo” (glory to God on high). Other actions that go against God’s love,
for whatever purpose, only demean God’s glory. I remember having read the book “The Little World of Don Camillo” by an Italian
writer whose name I’d forgotten. In the book, there are two antagonists: Peppone, the
Communist mayor of the town, and Don Camillo, the parish priest. They oppose one another
in everything, but Don Camillo always wins because he talks to Jesus every day and has
Jesus’ help. There is a section in the book that sticks to my mind: Peppone asks Don
Camillo to baptize the infant son in the name of Lenin. Don Camillo refuses and that
evening he explains to Jesus that he is “trying to
protect the reputation of Heaven.” “The
reputation of Heaven is my business, none of yours,” shouted Christ angrily. This
story demonstrates that even the refusal to baptize a Communist’s son violates God’s
love. How can other serious transgressions such as murders, conversion by bribery or
force, plotting against other religions or faiths, and other abuses of power serve to “glorify
God on high”?
Catholics and Communists
need to retrospectively examine what benefits or harms have they actually brought upon the
people. And in what way should they change their policies to help the nation, and to put
God’s kingdom or Marx’s paradise behind Vietnam. Only then could the Vietnamese people
achieve actual national concord, according to the Buddhist teaching of non-clinging, to
rebuild and protect the fatherland. No internecine opposition or conflict is necessary in
the name of Catholic, Communist and/or any other ideologies that are alien to the
Vietnamese cultural and traditional makeup.
In Buddhism, there is an
adage: “By dropping a butcher’s knife one can become a Buddha; by turning back the
head, one can see the shore.”
These evidences will remain
unchanged until the world’s end, when the whole universe is reduced to a singularity,
extremely hot, until it becomes a Big Crunch to start a new cycle of universe with a Big
Bang.
(This article has been
translated by the concealed translator. Giao Điểm)
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