Reflections on Engaged Buddhism and Civil Society in Vietnam

Andrew Wells-Dang
PhD Candidate,
Department of Political Science and International Studies,
University of Birmingham (UK)

The past decades have witnessed a resurgence in the theories and practices of civil society around the world. More recently, this has also been the case in Vietnam, where the previously unfamiliar term xa hoi dan su “civil(ian) society” has become accepted and used by government officials and social organizations alike. While definitions of civil society remain contested by sociologists and political theorists, I understand the concept in a Vietnamese context in certain specific ways. First, instead of a strict separation or opposition between civil society and the state, Vietnamese practitioners have emphasized collaboration and partnership. Second, there has been less of a focus on who civil society organizations are, in terms of their structure and autonomy, and more on what civil society does. Rather than engage in semantic debates over what is and is not part of civil society, a broad view accepts that a diversity of social forces, including parts of the state and private sector, have the potential to act as part of civil society networks and movements at various times. I suggest that it makes sense to think of civil society less as a “field” or “arena” but more as a process by which organizations and individuals join together to act for a vision of the common good. As I will show, these characteristics also apply to and resonate with the forms of collective action known as “engaged Buddhism”.

Not all outside observers, however, share my essentially optimistic outlook. When I met one well-known international expert on Vietnamese politics at a reception several months ago and told him the topic of my research, he reacted bluntly: “What civil society?!” Armed with narrow definitions of civil society that assume an idealized form of democratic liberalism, some academics look at Vietnam or other developing countries and conclude that since reality doesn’t fit their definitions, civil society doesn’t exist there. Michael Gray (1999) compares emerging Vietnamese non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to “Western donor discourse” and dismissively concludes that Vietnam does not “fit into any definition of civil society which stresses independence from the state and opposition to state ideology.” Similarly, two China specialists argue, without supporting evidence, that “Vietnam’s new sphere of ‘NGOs’ displays… characteristics of sponsorship by and dependence on the state” (Howell and Pearce 2001: 146n). Vietnamese society has changed substantially since the late 1990s, but these lines of argument impose a theoretical straitjacket on a nuanced, shifting context. In addition, by considering only certain NGOs in the sample, these theorists miss important elements of civil society that are not opposed to (or dependent on) the state but may have greater salience for social development.

One aspect that has often been missing from discussions of civil society, in Vietnam as elsewhere, is the role and contributions of religious organizations and movements to collective action. For instance, faith-based organizations are admitted to be “not significantly dealt with” in the largest and most complete inventory of Vietnamese civil society to date, on the dubious grounds that insufficient information was available (Norlund 2006: 32-3). Other surveys of civil society or “civic organizations” in Vietnam do not consider religious groups at all (Bach Tan Sinh 2001, Wischermann 2003). Part of the reason for this may be that Vietnamese law also considers religious groups separately from other social organizations, via the Ordinance on Religion and Belief (2004) and the Government Committee on Religious Affairs. Because of this, the draft Law on Associations currently under consideration by the National Assembly also specifically does not apply to religious organizations. This particular legal structure is not at all unusual compared with other countries; it does not mean that religious groups should not be included in discussions of civil society, only that the structures for their participation are slightly different.

I want to claim more than this. Not only is there no purpose in excluding religious organizations from a discussion of civil society, but we will miss important elements if we do, and the resulting picture of civil society that we obtain will be incomplete and even distorted in fundamental ways. I will make this argument from a religious and then also from a sociological view. To begin with, all major religions are in their essence concerned with defining and embodying the common good. Now of course there are many different definitions of the common good, which is why no two societies, or two religions, are entirely alike. But the search for the common good, and some of its components, are universal features. There is a vision of the desired society—the kingdom of God in Christianity, the Pure Land in Buddhism, and so forth—which can be understood as both future and present. There is also, at the same time, a practical critique of existing society and instructions for living an alternative. When the historical Buddha left his family and privileged status to seek enlightenment, a radical move in any society, he eventually began a movement that transformed the society of his day.

There is, however, an important caveat to this argument. Not all religious groups at all times are concerned with the common good of their respective societies. Some are primarily interested in the good only of their own members or adherents. As US sociologist Richard Madsen has argued (1998), this kind of narrow sectarian focus can lead to a defensive, suspicious posture towards the wider society that is basically “uncivil” and leaves religious groups ill-equipped to contribute to wider civil society action. In order to achieve a version of the common good, religious groups—like other civil society actors—need an outward focus, not only internal cohesion. And, as Madsen notes, the quality of action and a group’s moral character may matter more than its structure or numbers, an aspect that is often absent from quantitative analyses of civil society.

The sociological argument for including religion in a discussion of civil society is that many organized social movements throughout the world have had a religious basis. In Europe and North America, these have included the anti-slavery, civil rights and women’s suffrage movements. In Asia, Gandhi’s struggle against British colonialism was inseparable from its Hindu roots. Different forms of Islam have been a force for tolerance and modernism, as in present-day Indonesia, as well as sectarian violence and resistance.

This does not, of course, mean that all forms of civil society action are religious in nature. It is also worth pointing out that religious individuals participate in non-faith-based social movements and vice versa. However, religious ties constitute an important form of social capital that has often been overlooked or undervalued by social theorists (Fukuyama 2001). In developing countries in particular, religious organizations have constituted prototypical forms of civil society in conditions where other forms of social organization were weak (Fernando and Huston 1997). At their best, religious organizations build social capital, defined as values of “solidarity, trust and tolerance” and “horizontal relations of reciprocity and cooperation” over “vertical relations of authority and dependence” (Putnam 1993).

I now want to return to the case of Vietnam and the particular role of Buddhism in civil society, past and present. Buddhism has formed a key component of Vietnamese society since at least the Ly and Tran dynasties (11th-14th centuries). Buddhist monks engaged the state, serving as key royal advisors. In turn, many kings and mandarins practiced Buddhism, most notably King Trần Nhân Tông, who left the throne in 1293 to found the Trúc Lâm school of Thien (Zen) on Yên Tu Mountain. The Trúc Lâm (“Bamboo Forest”) school unified the three main branches of Vietnamese Zen at the time (Huu Ngoc 2002). This Buddhism was not “autonomous” from the state—in fact, it was quite closely connected to it—but it maintained its core identity and values as a force for social progress, and “left a lasting imprint on the Vietnamese soul” (Nguyen Khac Vien 2002: 47). In honor of this proud history, the Truc Lam school has recently been re-established by the Vietnamese Buddhist leader, Thich Thanh Tu (Soucy 2007).

In later dynasties, Buddhism did not exert as direct an influence on society, but continued (sometimes combined with the other two legs of the tam giao or “Three Religions”, Confucianism and Daoism) to serve as a wellspring for social engagement. A significant Buddhist revival took place in southern Vietnam in the 17th and 18th centuries (Huu Ngoc 2002). Using an am-duong (yin/yang) metaphor to describe alternate currents of Vietnamese society, Neil Jamieson (1995) identifies Buddhism with the yin or “female” tradition of horizontal village community, contrasted with the yang of the Confucian mandarin hierarchy. Buddhism in this analysis is connected with indigenous Vietnamese traditions, rather than Chinese influence. While this argument is oversimplified and too dualistic for my taste-Vietnamese Buddhism has also been greatly influenced by Chinese tradition over its history—there remains a kernel of truth to the metaphor. Indeed, Buddhism and other local religious traditions formed part of lineage and village-based associations that comprised the main forms of civil society for most rural Vietnamese (Luong Van Hy 2005). Certain of these organizations, such as Buddhist women’s associations, have persisted to the present day, while others have revived in the post-doi moi (“Renewal”) atmosphere of religious vibrancy (Taylor 2007).

The position of Buddhism in civil society changed dramatically during the Second Indochina War from 1945-75. Faced with repression and discrimination from the Saigon-based government of South Vietnam, Buddhists demonstrated in great numbers, of whom the most prominent example is the monk Thich Quang Duc, who immolated himself on a Saigon street corner in 1963. Other monks left their monasteries and began living in villages with lay people. Thus was born the concept of “engaged Buddhism”:

When I was in Vietnam, so many of our villages were being bombed. Along with my monastic brothers and sisters, I had to decide what to do. Should we continue to practice in our monasteries, or should we leave the meditation halls in order to hep the people who were suffering under the bombs? After careful reflection, we decided to do both—to go out and help people and to do so in mindfulness. We called it engaged Buddhism (Thich Nhat Hanh 1991: 91).

In 1965, in the midst of the war, Thich Nhat Hanh and his colleagues proposed that the Vietnamese Buddhist leadership should form a center for training social workers who could foster nonviolent social change (Chapman 2007). As Nhat Hanh explained afterwards, this initiative did not win immediate support from his superiors, and the School of Youth for Social Service started as a bare-bones operation with borrowed rooms and volunteer staff. Despite this, the school curriculum “combined the best elements of education we knew of in our country and elsewhere” (Nhat Hanh and Berrigan 1975). The SYSS became the first social work school housed in a Vietnamese university, and although its students and members were repeated targets of violent repression, it had more than 10,000 participants by 1975 (Chapman 2007). The school formed a model of good social work practice and progressive development theory that was truly ahead of its time.

As a distinct social movement, engaged Buddhism developed its own distinctive “repertoire of collective action,” in the terms used by historian Charles Tilly (1985). Buddhist action was community-centered yet outward-focused, collaborative, and, above all, non-violent. While some Buddhists moved into direct politics, the majority of the engaged Buddhist movement opposed this step, and opposed the South Vietnamese regime more generally (Nhat Hanh and Berrigan 1975). As a result of this witness, the engaged Buddhist repertoire spread by diffusion to other Buddhist societies in Asia and beyond. Several well-known examples include the Dhammayietra walks against violence led by Maha Ghosananda in Cambodia, the social and environmental critiques of Sulak Sivaraksa in Thailand, and indeed the efforts of the Dalai Lama to find a peaceful resolution to the crisis in Tibet. Each of these strands of Buddhism has to varying extents attracted a sympathetic international following as well.

By the time the Vietnam War ended in 1975, Thich Nhat Hanh was already living in France, where he was joined by other Buddhists who survived the war and its aftermath. In 1982, this group founded Plum Village (Lang Mai) as a Buddhist community in southern France. By the time that Nhat Hanh made his first return trip to Vietnam in 2005, Vietnam was in a very different place, and so was global Buddhism (Chapman 2007). Vietnamese were amazed to see European and North American monks, nuns and lay practitioners as part of the large Plum Village delegation that traveled throughout Vietnam (Wells-Dang 2007). The repertoire of engaged Buddhism was coming back to its original soil; a Vietnamese form of civil society that had been filtered through international experience joined once again to its roots.

Engaged Buddhism, thus, grows out of a centuries-old tradition, and took shape during some of the darkest moments of war and suffering in the 20th century. It is both Vietnamese and international in its expression and outlook, encompassing multiple languages, nationalities and cultures. It is outward-looking, optimistic, collaborative and community-oriented. In short, it meets all of the characteristics of “civility” and “social capital” described above. As Sulak (2002) describes the movement in Thailand, “[Our] focus is on compiling educational resources for empowerment of activists, grassroots leaders, NGO workers, poor people, students, monks and nuns….progressive activists all over Asia have been looking for a holistic and sustainable strategy for building a better society.” We may safely predict that as Vietnam continues to develop a civil society that encourages the contributions of all social groups, the tradition of engaged Buddhism will have a significant role to play.

Vietnamese Buddhists are already involved in many aspects of social action, some of which have continued uninterrupted in the postwar period, while in other cases activities have revived along with the process of Renewal. To cite just a few examples, Buddhist monks and nuns operate pagoda schools for street children (Pham Ngoc Luan 2003), provide health care for poor patients, and host a shelter for poor elderly women who have nowhere else to go (Nguyen Quang Vinh 2006). Numerous stories of such charitable efforts can be found in the state-administered Vietnamese press as well as in Buddhist publications such as Giac Ngo (“Enlightenment”) and Van Hoa Phat Giao (“Buddhist Culture”). These local initiatives are laudable, effective and necessary, and they express Buddhist values to the broader society. Their impact is somewhat limited, nevertheless, by their generally spontaneous, piecemeal and charity-based nature.

What is unique about the engaged-Buddhist tradition is its multiculturalism, international ties and ability to network with a variety of groups. I would like to present one example of such collaboration with which I am closely familiar, through the lens of one local non-governmental organization (NGO) and its linkages with local and international Buddhist networks that inform its work. It is a small example that began only recently, so I cannot make any claims or broad conclusions about its significance. But I think these encounters and interactions show a potential to integrate Buddhist repertoires of action with social development and civil society.

The NGO involved in this collaboration was founded in 2006 and registered with the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations (VUSTA), a government-affiliated umbrella group. With this established legal status, the organization is free to raise its own funds and operate independent activities. The NGO aims to develop local and international partnerships to improve the environment and quality of life in Hanoi and other Vietnamese cities via a combination of traditional development programming (such as community organizing and vocational training) and creative uses of the arts and media (photography, film-making and theatre). The staff members of the organization have worked in the past for both international and local organizations and been exposed to a variety of religious traditions; several have studied overseas. Through its programming initiatives and by personal connections, the organization came into contact with members of two informal Buddhist networks with both Vietnamese and international participants.

The first of these Buddhist groups originated as a study group for non-Vietnamese who wished to learn more about Vietnamese Buddhism; they organized lectures, trips to Buddhist temples and other historical sites (Wells-Dang 2007: 439-40). In 2003, owing to personal contacts of one member, the group took part in a day-long meditation retreat at a temple on the outskirts of Hanoi. The meditation was led by a young nun who had recently returned from Plum Village. The event was well attended by members of the study group as well as Buddhists from villages near the temple. Meditation days soon began to be held on a monthly basis in two temples. Initially, most teaching was in Vietnamese only; later, English translations began to be provided.

When Thich Nhat Hanh visited Vietnam in early 2005, members of the study group served as informal local hosts, organizing public lectures in several locations around Hanoi. These events proved highly popular, with Vietnamese and international audiences spilling out of the hotel ballrooms where they were held while others watched a closed-circuit video with simultaneous translations provided. These and other events during Nhat Hanh’s visit were probably the largest and highest-profile public events by an overseas Buddhist leader ever in Vietnam (Wells-Dang 2007: 430-1).

The second Buddhist group in this case study emerged after Thich Nhat Hanh’s first return visit and has a greater emphasis on religious practice. It consists of a mixed group of Vietnamese and expatriates who wish to sit, meditate, and live together according to the precepts of engaged Buddhism. At first, the group rented a small house in an alley in central Hanoi; later, as the community grew and this space was no longer sufficient, it moved to a larger house in a residential area. The group now holds nearly daily events focusing on prayer, meditation and study. Most events are led by foreign lay monastics who are part of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Order of Interbeing (Tiep Hien). The primary language of communication is English, although some chants are done in Vietnamese. There are perhaps 50 regular participants in community activities, and sometimes joint events with other Vietnamese Buddhist groups and visitors from around the country.

Following a discussion during a retreat in mid-2007, members of the environmental NGO and the Buddhist groups decided to work together to organize weekly Mindfulness Lunches. The purpose of these gatherings, according to the initiators, is to create an island of calm in the crowded, noisy city and in the midst of a busy work week. The NGO’s office is located in an attractive courtyard next to a historic museum in downtown Hanoi, so it is both a central and a peaceful location. Vegetarian food is served and the time is divided between silent meditation and group discussion, often facilitated by one of the lay monastic leaders of the Buddhist community.

The practice and discussions at the weekly lunches have led both the NGO and the Buddhist groups in new directions. For the first month or so, the food was ordered from one of several vegetarian restaurants in Hanoi (which are themselves Buddhist-managed). Then a Vietnamese member of the Buddhist community began to prepare the food. This soon evolved into an informal vegetarian catering and food delivery service based at the home of one of the community leaders, with the potential of developing into a full-scale restaurant in the future. Another possibility under discussion is to open a soup kitchen for homeless and hungry people in Hanoi, including both local residents and migrants.

Group discussions have also focused on the issue of food safety, an ever-present concern in Vietnam. Due to the high use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in most agriculture, a large market and potential exist for “clean” and “safe” vegetables and fruits, yet most consumers have little trust in sellers’ claims of the origin of produce. The NGO is planning to launch an organic agriculture project in a rural district outside Hanoi, which will link local producers to the market for clean vegetables in the city. Among the distribution channels for organic produce will be Buddhist networks and the Mindfulness Lunch participants themselves. The farmers who grow the vegetables will also receive training in marketing and socially responsible business practices, improving their own capacity, income and quality of life. In addition to reducing poverty, the farmers will benefit along with city dwellers from increased trust and connections between rural and urban areas.

For the staff of the NGO that is organizing these activities, Buddhism is pertinent both as an overarching set of values that gives meaning to their work, and equally importantly, as a set of tools that transforms their practice of urban development. Two key values of engaged Buddhism, reflected in the Plum Village community’s “Five Meditations” and Mindfulness Precepts, are environmentalism and holism. In a Buddhist view, all living things have value in themselves and are worth preserving in their environments. This awareness includes trees, plants, and parks, and extends even to inanimate objects and the spatial and built environment. Second, nothing exists in isolation from anything else. All elements are connected; even garbage and flowers “inter-are” (Nhat Hanh, 1991). The separation of society and thought into different “sectors” or academic disciplines of science, economics, sociology and so on is ultimately an illusion. Staff and participants in the urban development NGO’s activities see a clear linkage between these Buddhist values with basic principles of sustainable development. By working with religious groups, they seek to translate these values into actions: eating healthy food, acting in a peaceful way, and serving the needy.

Particularly in a fast-growing city like Hanoi, the spatial geography around us and the human relationships of how people treat each other are changing rapidly within a short period of time. Being mindful and reflective in such an atmosphere is a major challenge. In this way, Buddhist practices of looking deeply and sharing are also necessary tools for working effectively in changing communities. For instance, the NGO in this case study is beginning to work on a project to assist migrant workers in one village in an outer Hanoi district where the population has tripled in the past six years. In spatial-environmental terms, many traditional spaces for gardens and other public places have all turned into housing to accommodate new residents. Relationally, migrants face difficulties to integrate into the pre-existing local life. The NGO helps residents and migrants to reflect together and engage in dialogue on what is happening in their community. Staff contrast this with normal development project procedures as often practiced: before the project starts, professionals conduct a one-time needs assessment, identify the problems to be addressed, then design a strategy to solve them. By contrast, in a Buddhist approach, the whole community takes part in a process of thinking and listening together at every step—something that cannot happen in a single meeting. Deep listening, reflection and participatory approaches are not unique to Buddhism, but together they form a set of tools that resonate with people’s lived experience and provide a method of how to live sanely in this city and even work to improve it.

As a result of their exposure to Buddhism, the staff of the organization in this case study realize, in their words, that they do not only strive to reach development goals, but also to live out their values. Of course, in any community, city or society there are many people with different interests—or in civil society terms, different conceptions of the common good. In this NGO’s approach, they participate in advocacy by reaching out to the local government and other groups in the community, trying to include as many actors as possible. Advocacy in this sense is never about drawing a line between “us” and “them”, where then “we” try to change “them”. Rather, it is an ongoing, non-confrontational process of listening to people and working side by side. Such an approach links clearly to the engaged Buddhist tradition in a way that is sensitive to the local cultural and political context in which the NGO works.

The emerging collaboration between this development organization and the engaged Buddhist community has brought initial positive results both in terms of religious practice and social capital. In the process, Buddhist values that are indigenous to Vietnam are being reformulated and transplanted back into their original soil. This is not to overstate the importance of what is still a small-scale initiative. Vietnamese society today faces numerous challenges at both the national and local levels, and many more such efforts will be needed, together with supportive government policies. But I wish to offer this case study as one example of what is now possible. Cooperation among religious groups and NGOs can form one facet of civil society action to work towards a shared understanding of the common good. To the extent that these networks develop organically, they offer significant prospects for sustainability and locally-led growth, perhaps more so than other forms of civil society brought to Vietnam by international donors.

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