9 - The 2005 Pilgrimage and Return to Vietnam of Exiled Zen Master Thích Nhẩt Hạnh

Summary

Introduction

This chapter discusses the Spring 2005 pilgrimage and return to Vietnam of 79-year-old exiled Zen Master Thích Nhẩt Hạnh. It examines the background, intentions, main highlights and outcomes of this trip and then analyses its significance as regards spirituality in contemporary Vietnam.

Thích Nhẩt Hạnh had been exiled from Vietnam since mid-1966 because of his peace activities at that time, which were perceived by successive Vietnamese governments either as traitorous or at least as a threatening form of political dissidence. The invitation he received in 2004 from the Vietnamese Government for him to return to Vietnam on a three-month teaching tour was therefore a very significant development in that country's contemporary spirituality. It indicated a change in the Vietnamese Government's attitude towards religion that heralded increased freedom of religious belief.

In accepting the government's invitation, Thích Nhẩt Hạnh requested that he be allowed to teach to large audiences, that several of his books be published to be used as textbooks, that he be accompanied by a representative group of monastics and lay members from his international sangha, and that he could meet the leaders of the banned Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam. A basic reason for his undertaking the tour was his long-stated desire to return to his roots, but he also wanted to see at first hand the religious situation in Vietnam, to change perceptions, dispel fears and effect reconciliations. Besides this, another of his long-standing aims has been to renew Vietnamese Buddhism, particularly by encouraging people to adopt Zen meditational practices in order to gain insight and to solve everyday personal problems, especially as regards communications within the family. In this way he hoped to attract to Buddhism a wider cross-section of the population, particularly more educated younger people, male as well as female.

The Vietnamese Government's main reason for inviting Thích Nhẩt Hạnh was probably to display to the international community the existence of freedom of religious belief in Vietnam, hoping thereby to facilitate its integration into the world economic system, and thus increase economic growth and strengthen its legitimacy.