Buddhism & Zen in Vietnam: In Relation to the Development of Buddhism in Asia

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Buddhism and Zen in Vietnam

Books by the Same Author

IN VIETNAMESE

Phật-Pháp [Buddhism: Textbook for Vietnamese Buddhist Youths], (co-authored)

Triết-hoc Thiến [Zen Buddhism]

Ảnh-hu'ỏng Phật-giáo trong Văn-chu'o'ng Truyên Kiêu [Influence of Buddhism in Vietnamese Literature]

Tu'-tu'ỏ'ng Nhât-Bản [History of Japanese Thought]

Giáo-due Nhât-Bản [Education in Modern Japan]

IN JAPANESE

Betonamu ni okeru kyoiku seido [Education in Vietnam]

IN ENGLISH

Buddhism in Vietnam: Past and Present

Zen Buddhism and Nationalism in Vietnam (ed. Carol Smith)

The Zen-Pure Land Union and Modern Vietnamese Buddhism (ed. Carol Smith)

Zen Buddhism: Awareness in Action (ed. Dr. Bodhi)

BUDDHISM AND ZEN

IN VIETNAM

in Relation to the Development

of Buddhism in Asia

by Thich Thien-An

edited, annotated, and developed by Carol Smith

COLLEGE OF ORIENTAL STUDIES,

GRADUATE SCHOOL / Los Angeles, California

CHARLES E. TUTTLE COMPANY

Rutland, Vermont / Tokyo, Japan

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Published by the Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc.

of Rutland, Vermont & Tokyo, Japan

with editorial offices at

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Copyright in Japan, 1975

by Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc.

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 74-83391

ISBN: 978-1-4629-1151-6 (ebook)

First printing, 1975

PRINTED IN JAPAN

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

SINCE THE nineteenth century the destiny of Vietnam has been closely tied to that of the West by reason of its geographical location, its natural resources, and its place in the military alignment of the world. Because of its position as a dominated nation, Vietnam has had little opportunity to introduce its traditional culture to the rest of the world as a free member of the international community. World War II, the Independence War, the division of the country, and the present war with its terrible destruction of human life and resources have covered the picture of Vietnam with darkness and death. To be sure, the Western nations, including France and the United States, have sent many educated men to Vietnam, but they have been primarily involved in the spheres of administration, business, economics, politics, and the military, while others with a religious and cultural background have been more concerned with spreading Western religions in Vietnam than with objectively studying the indigenous religions of the country. As a result, the traditional culture and religious life of Vietnam have tended to elude the grasp of Western understanding; this has been especially true with regard to Vietnamese Buddhism.

Beginning with the work of various Western scholars in the nineteenth century, Buddhism as a religion and a philosophy was introduced to the Western world through Translations of Buddhist texts and original works on Buddhism. In the area of Zen Buddhism, the writings and Translations of the late D. T. Suzuki have made available a rich and thorough introduction to Japanese Zen Buddhism and a perceptive study of its origins in China and India. The recent Translations of Lu K'uan Yü have furnished especially valuable material from Chinese Ch'an tradition. Very little, though, has been written concerning Vietnamese Buddhism —in particular, Vietnamese Zen Buddhism.

Since 1963, however, the struggle for religious equality led by the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam has aroused the attention of the Western world and made the task of understanding Vietnamese Buddhism more imperative. With the exception of a few scholars, the majority of Western people still hold a number of misconceptions about Vietnamese Buddhism. It is commonly believed, for example, that Buddhism in Vietnam belongs to the Hinayāna tradition shared by neighboring Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand. But most seriously of all, Vietnamese Buddhism is wrongly thought to be entirely political in emphasis with all its activities directed only towards gaining political power. The present work aims at correcting these misconceptions and at providing a much needed introduction to the West concerning the traditional Buddhism of Vietnam—its history, practices, concepts, and role in the life of the people, the nation, and their culture.

The mainstream of Chinese Ch'an provided the background tradition for Buddhism in Vietnam, particularly Vietnamese Zen Buddhism. An Indian monk and student of the third patriarch of Chinese Ch'an, Sêng-ts'an, a Chinese monk and disciple of the prominent master Pai-chang, and a second Chinese monk and follower of the famous Hsüeh-t'ou founded the first three schools of Zen Buddhism in Vietnam. Other schools of Buddhist philosophy and practice were also introduced to the country, and various indigenous sects grew up around celebrated Vietnamese masters. In the later development of Vietnamese Zen, the Lâm-Tế (C. Lin-chi, J. Rinzai) branch of practice came to the country and found firm basis for its growth through the innovations of a talented Vietnamese master, so that today most Buddhist monks, nuns, and laymen in Vietnam belong to the Lâm-Tế Zen tradition.

The different chapters in the pages that follow briefly present the history, traditions, and methods of practice of the various Zen Buddhist schools established in Vietnam, and whenever possible relate these traditions or philosophies to aspects of Buddhism in India, China, Japan, Korea, and Tibet, as well as to customs shaping the culture and life of the Vietnamese people. It is the hope of the author that such a work on the Buddhism of Vietnam will augment and enrich the available materials concerning Zen in China and Japan.

This present work, originally based on a booklet the author wrote while Professor at the University of Saigon (1962 -1966), Visiting Professor at the University of California at Los Angeles (1966-1968), and Director of the International Buddhist Meditation Center in Los Angeles (from 1970), has been edited and developed considerably with notes and additions to the text by Miss Carol Smith, a student of Zen since 1960 and now Zen instructor at the International Buddhist Meditation Center, who handles the complex field of Buddhist thought in an easy and competent manner. Such students and scholars in the Western world, disciplined in the practice of meditation and seriously pursuing their studies out of true adherence to the Buddhist way, demonstrate that the basic truth of Buddhism, the Buddha-nature inherent in all beings who need only wake to its realization to attain its fruits, is a living reality today, and indicate that the future of Buddhist practice in America may be looked upon with all optimism.

Chapter 5 of this work has appeared in less complete form as a booklet, Zen Buddhism and Nationalism in Vietnam, published by the International Buddhist Meditation Center at Los Angeles in honor of their opening ceremonies in July 1970. Chapter 4 of this work has appeared in its present form as a booklet, The Zen-Pure Land Union and Modern Vietnamese Buddhism, published by the International Buddhist Meditation Center to commemorate the opening of its permanent facilities in April 1971.

In concluding this preface, I would like to take the opportunity to express my gratitude to the Institute of Buddhist Studies at Báo-Quôc temple in Hue, where I studied as a monk during the years of my youth, for granting me the privilege of continuing my higher education in Japan. I would also like to express my sincere thanks to Toyo University, from which I earned a B. A. degree in Buddhist Studies in 1957, and especially to the Japanese government for offering me a five-year scholarship to complete advanced studies at Waseda University, a leading university in Tokyo, where I earned my M. A. degree in Oriental Philosophy in 1959 and Doctor of Literature degree in the same field in 1964; this was the first time such a degree was conferred by the university after World War II. I am very grateful for the guidance I received during this period by two most eminent professors in Japan, Dr. Shoson Miyamoto, Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo and President of the Buddhist Studies Association in Japan, and Dr. Kojun Fukui, Chairman of the Oriental Philosophy Department at Waseda University and Archbishop of the Tendai sect of Japanese Buddhism. With their help I obtained valuable careers, both academically and spiritually. Furthermore, I wish to express my appreciation to the distinguished Professor Ensho Ashikaga, former Chairman of the Department of Oriental Languages at the University of California at Los Angeles, who invited me to U. C. L. A. as Visiting Professor during the 1966-1968 academic years. By this invitation I have been able to complete this work with the invaluable assistance of Miss Carol Smith.

We sincerely hope that this humble work may make some contribution towards enabling the people of the West to better understand Vietnamese culture and religion, especially Zen Buddhism in Vietnam. We would like to forward all spiritual benefits of this work to all people and beings who have suffered from the war in Vietnam and to mankind in general with the hope that by the guidance of the wisdom and compassion of Buddhism, men in the near future will be able to build for themselves a prosperous and peaceful world in which man will love man, man will respect man, and man will help man in attaining self-realization and enlightened life-Nirvāna.

Editor's Preface

THE METHOD of citation of sources used in the text is intended to dispense with notes recording only source material while providing the essentials of this material in the text itself. The bibliography includes only those works from which quotations are cited in the text; author, title, and page number precede the quotation to which they belong, except in certain instances of frequently quoted Translations of Buddhist works, where only the page number or page number and name of Translator may precede the quotation. This method of citation is fully explained in the bibliography.

In Transliterations of foreign terminology, because of their abundance and variety, the following formula designates the language to which a word belongs: V., Vietnamese; C., Chinese; J., Japanese; S., Sanskrit; P., Pāli. Words frequently appearing in books in English dealing with Buddhism and Zen, such as kōan, gāthā, prajñā, upāyā, śūnyatā, samsāra, and Nirvāna, have been italicized only when in parenthesis; e. g., "Through wisdom (S. prajñā) and means (S. upāya) the function of prajñā is. . . ." This rule is followed except in certain instances when for clarity's sake it appears advisable to italicize. Words in very common usage such as kōan and dhyāna appear without diacritical markings. When foreign words in italics are followed immediately by their English Translation, the device used in linguistic material, of enclosing the Translated word in single quotation marks with no intervening comma, is adhered to; e. g., caitya 'to heap up' and dagoba ‘relic shrine. 'Translation of Sanskrit terms is often more indicative than literal, their meanings sometimes being rendered from their Chinese counterparts or based on their established usage in certain systems of Buddhist philosophy or within certain sūtras such as the Lankavatāra whose terminology is frequently grounded in Yogācāra doctrines.

Acknowledgments

We have relied greatly on Holmes Welch's The Practice of Chinese Buddhism: 1900-1950 for information regarding the present-day practice of Chinese Buddhists in relation to Vietnamese Buddhism; also for explicit and detailed scholarship in researching the history of early Buddhist practice in Vietnam we have referred frequently to Professor Howard Sosis's Introductory Notes on the Meditation Sects of Buddhism in Ancient Vietnam. Much basic background material for our study has been made available through Ven. Thίch Mật-Thẩ's Việt-Nam Phaậ-Giáo Sử-Lu'ộc [Vietnamese Buddhist History], an essential text dealing with the development of Buddhism in Vietnam. D. T. Suzuki's Translations of the Lankāvātara Sūtra have been used exclusively, as, for the most part, have Lu K'uan Yü's excellent Translation of the Śūrangama Sūtra and F. Max Müller's and H. Kern's time-honored Translations of the Sukhāvatίvyūha and Saddharmapundarīka Sūtras respectively.

Specifically, we are grateful to the following publishing companies who have allowed us to quote, often at length, from works retaining all copyrights, or who have allowed us to include in this work complete poems published under their copyright:

Random House, Final Awakening, Spring View Climbing on Mount Bảo Dai, Chrysanthemums, To Students and Relatives, Now in Government Service, and On the Way Home from A Thousand Tears of Vietnamese Poetry; Barron's Educational Series, Buddhism: The Light of Asia; E. J. Brill, The Buddhist Conquest of China and Encounter or Syncretism; Goward-McCann, The New Face of Buddha; Hutchinson & Co" Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism; Hokuseido Press, Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics; East-West Center Press, Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples; The First Zen Institute of America, Cat's Yawn, The Development of Chinese Zen, and Introductory Notes on the Meditation Sects of Buddhism in Ancient Vietnam; Grove Press, Manual of Zen Buddhism and The Zen Teaching of Huang Po; Harper & Brothers, The Practice of Zen; Harvard University Press, The Practice of Chinese Buddhism; Hill and Wang, Vietnam, Lotus in a Sea of Fire; Pantheon Books, A History of Zen Buddhism; Rider and Co., Essays in Zen Buddhism, Second Series, and Essays in Zen Buddhism, Third Series.

Spring goes leaving a hundred fallen flowers;

Spring arrives with a hundred new blooms.

Things pass away before our eyes;

Old age shows upon our heads.

    Don't think spring ends and all flowers fall;

    Last night in the garden, a branch of plum blossomed.

—Ven. Mãn-Giác (d. 1090)

CHAPTER ONE

The Introduction of Buddhism and Zen into Vietnam

BUDDHISIMS IS the religion founded by Śākyamuni Buddha more than 2, 500 years ago in India. From India the Buddhist doctrine gradually spread out over the Asian world; Ceylon, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, and Indonesia accepted the Theravāda, or Hīnayāna, wisdom of the Pali Canon; Nepal, Tibet, China, Mongolia, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam followed the teachings of Mahāyāna Sanskrit texts. Generally speaking, this division of Buddhism into the schools of Hīnayāna 小乘 (C. Hsiao-ch'êng, J. Shōjō), the Small Vehicle, and Mahāyāna 大乘 (C. Ta-ch'êng, J. Daijō), the Great Vehicle, exists at the present time. The Hīnayāna school conserves the traditions, strictly obeys the disciplines, and aims at the attainment of the Arhat level of realization, while the Mahāyāna school, being modernized and progressive, strives to serve mankind through active participation in the concerns of the world and realization of the Bodhisattva ideal.

Though Vietnam is a Mahāyāna Buddhist country, due to geographical location and historical connections, Hīnayā-na Buddhism deeply influences the disciplines and religious activities of the Vietnamese, for as Kenneth Ch'en notes in his Buddhism: The Light of Asia (p. 132): As early as the first century A.D., Buddhism was introduced into Vietnam via the sea route. By the end of the second century there was already a flourishing Buddhist community, whose presence is attested by a Chinese convert living in the area. He wrote that the Buddhist monks shaved their heads, wore the saffron-colored robes, ate once a day, and guarded their senses, indicators characteristic of the Hīnayāna community in search of self-enlightenment culminating in the Arhat stage of attainment, in contradistinction to the Mahāyāna outlook which seeks to benefit all beings and awake in them the thought of enlightenment 發菩提心 (S. bodhicittotpāda) and the aspiration to travel the Bodhisattva path. Thus in Mahāyāna's engagement in the world the Buddhist Dhar-ma takes different forms in accordance with circumstances and amalgamation with indigenous beliefs, an attribute which has allowed the Buddhism of the Great Vehicle to penetrate the hearts of so many culturally varied ethnic peoples. Even within one civilization the potentialities available in Mahāyāna for Transforming the wisdom of Buddhahood (S. prajñā) into the means (S. upāya) for its realization result in a great variety of sects and doctrines such as those, for instance, which grew up in China and subsequently influenced Vietnamese Buddhism: Chên-yen 眞言 (J. Shingon), T'ien-t'ai 天台 (J. Tendai) or Fa-hua 法華, Hua-yen 華嚴 (J. Kegon), Fa-hsiang 法相 (J. Hossō) or Yui-shih 華識 (J. Yuishiki), Ching-t'u 淨土（J. Jōdo) or Lien-tsung 蓮宗, and Ch’an 禪（J. Zen).¹

This partition of the essential teachings of Buddhism depending upon different interpretations based on various Sūtras or the insights of enlightened patriarchs is considered giving medicine in accordance with the illness to be cured 發病與藥 (J. ōbyō yoyaku), a method treated in such Mahāyāna texts as the Lankāvātara Sūtra (pp.44, 175-176) where we find:

According to the nature of a disease the healer gives its medicine; even so the Buddhas teach beings in accordance with their mentalities. . . . The physician varies his treatment according to diseases though there is no difference in the principle [of healing]; the difference comes from the varieties of diseases. In like manner, [in order to save] generations of beings from their disease of passions with which they are ill, I teach people with my doctrines, knowing the power of their senses. My doctrine does not vary, but the passions and powers are differentiated; there is just one vehicle; auspicious is the eightfold path.²

Of all the Buddhist sects, Zen, or the meditation sect, is the one which makes most liberal use of applying medicine to the malady, as we have opportunity to observe in subsequent chapters. But here let us note that of the various Mahāyāna sects introduced to Vietnam, Zen most thoroughly permeated the practice of Vietnamese Buddhists, and its doctrines and methods of teaching, though somewhat nominal today, have continued to exert a creative influence molding Vietnamese Buddhist character. This does not mean that other sects are not followed in Vietnam, for, generally speaking, Vietnamese Buddhists have no sect discrimination. According to them, the Sūtras and disciplines of all sects in Buddhism were taught by the Buddha or developed by the patriarchs and are therefore worthy of study and practice. If we understand this attitude we will not be surprised to find that most Buddhist monks and laymen in Vietnam traditionally obey the disciplines of Hīnayāna,³ recite mantra, learn mudrā, practice meditation, and chant the Buddha's name (V. Niệm-Phật, C. Nien-fo, J. Nembutsu) without any conflict between the practices. We may say, in short, that Buddhism in Vietnam is synthetic and unified rather than divided and sectarian.⁴ At present the most popular method of practice is meditation during recitation and recitation during meditation—meditation and recitation being one and the same for Vietnamese Buddhists. This is the doctrine of Thiền- Tinh Nhất-trί 禪淨—致, the union of Zen and Pure-Land recitation. Thiền 禪 (C. Ch'an, J. Zen) meditation; Tinh 淨 is Niệm-Phậts 念佛, Buddha's-name-recitation, a practice which in Vietnam means inner realization of Buddha's name or consciousness of Buddha-mind through visualizing the appearance of Amitābha while concentrating on his unlimited marks of perfection.

Zen was traditionally introduced to China from India by Bodhidharma (ca. 520 A.D.) during the reign of Emperor Wu-ti of the Liang dynasty 梁武帝 (502-549) and to Vietnam from China by Tỳ-Ni-Đa-Lu'u-Chi (S. Vinītaruci) in the latter part of the sixth century. As the Zen sect became established in China, a legend grew up concerning its Indian origin and the basis of its direct Transmission of teaching from mind to mind, according to which Buddha one day held up a flower before the disciples gathered around him on Vulture Peak, but none understood save Mahākāśyapa, who recognized in the Buddha's gesture the essence of Dharma and smiled lightly. In acknowledgement the Buddha said, Listen well, Mahākāśyapa. This treasure of the right Dharma-eye, Nirvāna's wonderful mind of formless reality, I now entrust to you.

This legend, known as Niêm-hoa vi-tiếu 拈華微笑 in Vietnamese—niêm-hoa meaning flower raising, vi-tiêu meaning acknowledging smile—is considered by most Zen disciples in Vietnam, China, Korea, and Japan as the origin of their doctrine. As Holmes Welch notes in his Practice of Chinese Buddhism (pp. 156-157): "This incident, perhaps invented by the Chinese, became the model for a special relationship between master and disciple, in which an understanding of the dharma was wordlessly Transmitted from one