The General Buddhist Association of Vietnam 1951–1964 (Tổng Hội Phật Giáo Việt Nam): A Forgotten Step Towards the 1964 Buddhist Church

This paper provides an overview of the Buddhist community in the 50s and 60s, addressing the creation of the first national Buddhist association: the General Buddhist Association of Vietnam (Tổng Hội Phật Gio Việt Nam, GBA). Most academic works sum up the GBA to the date of its foundation by three regional delegations of Buddhists believers in May 1951, and its participation in the political crisis of 1963, the so-called Buddhist Crisis. Its genesis, the internal structures of this first national association, the philosophy and new national narrative of its leaders, their conflictual and distant relationship with secular power and other Buddhists group, remains largely unknown. Providing a new set of contextual elements, this analysis of the GBAs history will contribute to our understanding of Vietnamese Buddhism history in the 20th century, in its continuities and inconsistencies. Essentially a failed first attempt to build a Buddhist church the history of the GBA is highly revealing of the long-standing aspirations of its creators and should be understood as a transitional step between early reform movement and the 1964 UBC. Emphasizing on cultural, social, and political matters, this paper is mainly based on barely used primary sources available in Vietnam.

Peculiarity of the Concept of Liberation in Vietnamese Buddhism

One of the most important concepts of Buddhism is the idea of liberation, on the basis of which Buddhist ethical thought was built. Vietnamese monks defined the concept of liberation in their works and strove to put it into practice during a long historical time. Along with taking the "Noble Eightfold Path" of Mahayana Buddhism as the basis, the unique feature of the idea of liberation of Vietnamese Buddhism is that it is simultaneously influenced by both Chinese Buddhism and the ideas of Confucianism and Taoism. The authors analyze the concept of liberation in Vietnamese Buddhism by three main ideas: liberation as a revelation of the Buddha in self-awareness; liberation as self-reflection; release, requiring a positive incarnation in life. Peculiarity of the liberation concept in Vietnamese Buddhism is the spirit of "unconcern" (absence of the fear before samsara), unconditional (independence from writings, dogmas, words), embodiments (harmony with life, making people free from sufferings caused by war and acts of nature), "turn inside" (looking into the heart in searches of liberation) and "a direction outside" (liberation of the people, the country). The Vietnamese Zen-Buddhism asserts, that the way of liberation is an experience of acceptance by each person of absolute truth in the consciousness. The purpose of liberation is the nirvana surpassing all dualistic contradictions. Liberation is the returning to Buddha in the heart. Paying attention to a social origin of suffering, heart of the monk really released only then when people and the country do not suffer any more, do not live in misery. The unique features of the Vietnamese Buddhism in many respects define by synthesizing of three religions values: an idea on renunciation - from Taoism, spiritual practice - from Mahayana Buddhism and spirit of an embodiment through sociopolitical activity - from Confucianism. Whereupon Mahayana Zen-Buddhism keeps the forming role.

Esoteric Buddhism in Southeast Asia

“Esoteric Buddhism” and “Buddhist Tantra” are contested categories to begin with in Buddhist studies; within the specific context of the study of Buddhism in Southeast Asia, they are doubly contested. That is, on top of the usual contestations applying to these categories within the contexts in which they are usually studied—medieval north India, Tibet, and Zhenyan/Shingon in East Asia—there arises the issue of whether and to what extent these categories are applicable to Southeast Asian Buddhism. There are two discrete ways in which the category “esoteric Buddhism” can be used as a lens through which to study aspects of Southeast Asian Buddhism. The first is historical and pertains to the usual referent of “esoteric Buddhism,” namely, Tantra as an aspect or subdivision of Mahāyāna Buddhism (mantranaya). Although Mahāyāna Buddhism is no longer a major force within Southeast Asian Buddhism (aside from Vietnamese Buddhism, which shares more affinities with East Asian Buddhism), Mahāyāna Buddhism did play a significant role in several “classical” Southeast Asian states in the past, and there is some evidence of mantranaya ideas and practices within certain historical Southeast Asian Mahāyāna contexts. The second way in which “esoteric Buddhism” can be applied to Southeast Asian Buddhism is as a (putative) aspect of Theravāda or Pali Buddhism, which continues to be practiced over much of mainland Southeast Asia to the present day. Certain aspects of contemporary (and recent historical) Theravāda/Pali Buddhism have been labeled variously “Tantric Theravāda” or “esoteric Southern Buddhism” out of perceived similarities to the more familiar system of Mahāyāna Buddhist Tantra.

The Process of Handling Materials before Digitizing the Heritage of Woodblocks of Vinh Nghiem Pagoda

This article is based on the survey results of woodblocks of Vinh Nghiem Pagoda, in Tri Dung commune, Yen Dung district, Bac Giang province, Vietnam. From the survey results, the author group wishes to release the value of woodblocks of Vinh Nghiem Pagoda in history and at present on with regards to two aspects, archives and transmission of Vietnamese Buddhism tradition in general and Truc Lam Buddhism in particular. Especially, on the basis of assessing the process of handing the heritage of materials, the author group has learnt strengths and weaknesses of Vietnam in the process of handling woodblocks, an important phase in the digitization process.

A Reappraisal of Vietnamese Buddhism’s Status as “Ethnic”

In writings of Buddhism in the West, Vietnamese Buddhists have often been pigeonholed as bringing their Buddhism with them like baggage and replicating the practices of their native land. This paper problematizes this characterization by looking more closely at the way that Vietnamese Buddhism has been reconstructed in the diasporic context. I argue that many of the leading figures of this process were, in fact, heavily influenced by intra-Asian and Transpacific reformist trends and engaged in activist movements in southern Vietnam, rather than coming from “traditional’ Buddhist backgrounds. Furthermore, the orientations that they brought were the product of dialogues with other reform movements in Asia that started earlier in the nineteenth century and were, in turn, a result of the colonial encounter. Therefore, rather than a single transference from East to West, what actually took place was a multi-nodal and multidimensional conversation between Asian reformers from different countries and traditions, Western scholars, and Western converts to Buddhism. Consequently, what has been established in the West by Vietnamese is not simply an adaptation of Vietnamese traditional Buddhism to a Western context, but the creation of a new, invented tradition that we can call Vietnamese Transnational Buddhism.

Contemporary Vietnamese Buddhism

The Vietnamese have had a particularly traumatic experience throughout the twentieth century. Colonial domination, decades of some of the most brutal warfare the world has ever seen, and the dispersal of Vietnamese refugees throughout the globe have made a strong impact on the way that Vietnamese Buddhism is practiced and perceived. Vietnamese Buddhism, while still mainly devotional in nature, is increasingly being influenced by the notion that Zen Buddhism is a central part of the tradition. This chapter will examine the history that has led to these changes, while describing some elements of the way that Buddhism is practiced today in Vietnam and by the overseas Vietnamese communities.

Towards an environmental history of the eastern Red River Delta, Vietnam, c.900–1400

This article focuses on the eastern region of the Red River Delta, Vietnam, between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. This area was an important centre of economic and population growth in Đại Việt in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and nurtured Đại Việt's sophisticated and renowned ceramics industry, hosted leading schools of Vietnamese Buddhism and bred a rising class of scholars and bureaucrats. The region's rapid rise as an economic and political centre was, however, also the key to its undoing. The sudden spike in population density, and the intensive logging carried out for ceramic production, and temple and ship building, overtaxed the area's natural resources. The burden on the local ecology was exacerbated by the Trần dynasty's dyke building project, which shifted the river's course. The ensuing environmental deterioration might have been one major reason for the Vietnamese forsaking the large-scale ceramic production in Chu Đậu, deserting their main port, Vân Đồn, and for the Chinese abandoning a historical maritime invasion route.