The world is under outfitting for a journey into the 21st century, closing two millennia replete with impressions and upheavals caused by human itself in the long history of its evolution.
It is the two millennia in which the landmark of time was mostly marked with conquests and invasions. Nation invaded and dominated nations. Race conquered and enslaved races. Civilization vandalized civilizations. Religion persecuted religions.

It is the two millennia in which human’s ambition, spurred on by ignorance and egoism had, in the name of the revealed truth, created the theocratic values the criteria of life, instituted at the same time the slavery and inquisition, pushing far worse the class division among societies, rationalized the tyrannical oppression and injustice of man against men. Blood, blended with bitter suffering, of those whose human dignity and rights had been deprived of, embellished a glorious civilization shone with gigantic monuments, colossal constructions, with what has been named historical achievements, has been admired and extolled as the realistic expressions of human creation.
By these two millennia, beyond all being oppressed and oppressing, mankind was by and by immanently developing, discovering father the truths, and the latest one took the place of the former. Those fresh new discoveries approached more and more the principles of Buddhism that had been declared five hundred years earlier .

In the field of cosmology, men’s view has much been changed. Nature, being previously seen as the composition of monadic  atoms , came out to be the nomination of indefinite bags of quantum, subsisting as the swift current of seeds which is continuously rushing forward as yet never flows, for they appear and disappear hic ad nun at every instant of mind. The Earth ceases to be the sole body in universe created ex nihilo as to glorify the supernatural power of its Creator, but it is merely a mass instantly infused and diffused in the endless cycles of the forming-standing-destroying-vacancy progress in conformity with the law of interdependent origination. The revealed truth, that had been protected by violent force and tyrannical power, now showed to be the mere conventional.

 In the philosophy of life, along with the expansion of colonial powers and  imperialist domination, the sight into the world and humanity of a great part of intelligentsia who had once upon a time exhausted their capacity of knowledge to justify the theocratical privileged stratum since now was opened wider due to having got contact with the variety of civilizations. Humanist values, altogether with their particularity and universality has been by and by ascertained. It is not  the providence or God’s will, but it is human itself, one per one personally, in conformity with its deeds, saying, and thinking, in the mutual relations between  itself and persons surrounding, between oneself and others, between oneself and Nature, it is these mutual relations that changes the formation of nature and society, brings about values out of the human temporary or eternal expectation.

Then, the revolutions shook a part of the West. The miserable class stood up  to claim for the right to live, right to be human. The whole world was quaked with the upheavals of the oppressed nations. The nineteenth century, next to the last of the second millenium, witnessed chains of agitations, and radical changes of social institutions and the state of consciousness both in the East and the West, forecast the end of nearly two thousand years of alienation and slavery of humanity. Now that man came to recognize that it is the human that had created a world for the sake of its own. It is man who is the heir of what he has done in the past, therefore he has to be responsible for his deeds. A new era is ushered in; the era of self-consciousness.

The torch of hope, for all of that, was suddenly extinguished. Greed, hatred, fanatic, puissance of the self, remains to be, as it used to be, the nutriment for human being subsisting in the awareness that I am existing and will be existing; is the energy for human activity in competition, in progress of appropriation and domination. The happy Heaven just on the Earth that had been projected in the intention of taking the place of the religious one urged not in the least lots of nations to rise. After for two third of century having been constructed in the sea of blood and tear, the silhouette of such a Heaven all of a sudden evaporated like morning dew under the sun, turned out to be a freak of history. The self-consciousness of humanity, once more, is a mere shadow, mere metamorphosis of the lasting past.
In the meantime, by the last years of the century, everyday, on the many parts of the world, men keep killing men, ruthlessly persecuting one another, for the sake of material benefit, or due to the difference of faith, or for political dissidence, or on account of the racial discrimination. The knowledge of human  being and Universe has nevertheless been accumulated, providing men with means of  living and enjoyment. Human love is much more being mentioned. Mutual assistances of material among human communities are much more being regular than before. Aids on the global level for individuals and communities, those who are under oppression and exploitation rise to claim their right to live, the human rights, more and more become the concern of the great part of mankind.

Viewed from the past, these conditions of living are clearly drawing the image of a Heaven on the Earth. But man, per capita, who is living on earth, remains unhappy, feeling unsafe. The boundaries of the universe are reduced narrower, but the bound relations between men and men are kept too loosing. Conflict, divorce, suicide; statistical figures of which are the exact descriptions of the nowadays world. Men become much far separated from each other. Each  individual makes himself an oasis. Gap of the rich and the poor among members of society, between ethnic communities, between nations, shape the new forms of injustice and oppression. Plunder, terrorism, are daily spreading fear about citizens living in the most developed cities on the world.

The world is on the way of polarization into two sharp opposites, bringing forth  the contradictions that mankind as a whole is bound to settle on the global  level, if humanity is destined to everlasting  and hand down its scion a brighter society. The bipolar world consists of communities of the rich nations and the poor ones. Degree and speed of this polarization is intensified ever more by the leading political forces of these communities are much obstinate about accepting the principle of interdependent origination of life in general and the existence of mankind in particular. The outcome is the merciless devastation by men over the environment of living consisting of air, soil, water, plants and animals, in purpose of fulfilling the need to accumulate wealth driven by greed. The risk of polarization can be handled with resolution only when leading political forces of nations are aware of the interdependence upon one another with regard to the rise and fall of each. The poor nations on the other hand should exert itself to cope with the conditions of the rich in the global tendency toward the development.

Hunan kind has achieved lots of exploits during the last two millennia. But the goal individual intends to reach, that is living in happiness, has not been in reach of men on the social level yet. To the Buddhist view, our Earth could be referred to as the melting pot of the five destinies. It is the abode of men, of animals. Paradise is here; yet hell is here as well. So many often it is also the world of hungry ghosts. Here too all the same is the domain for Bodhisattvas to carry out their vow of enlightenment, as well as the place where Buddhas penetrate into Nirvana. Two thousand years of history, therefore, is but a short span in an appearing-disappearing cycle of the world, and of the Universe. Here a world is disappearing, there another world is shaping. It is beyond the grasp the beginning and the end. There is only the extreme limit of intelligence but not of life.
So, in the long history of the world, human civilization is not only two thousand years old. It’s impossible to deny the present civilization as the legacy and uninterrupted development of many tens of thousand year of history. But the states of consciousness during these two millennia have gone much change compared to the ancient. Some changed in a fit; others by and by.

Closing two thousand years of history is marking a period in the endless stream of life, in order to know during this time what man had completed with his wisdom, and what calamity he had waged to others out of greed, selfishness, hatred, fanatic and ignorance.

During those two thousand years, the history of Buddhism in Vietnam has been blended into that of the nation. Its  introduction into the country was by no means following at the heels of invaders, nor on purpose to glorify Sakya Muni to be the Supreme Lord pressing submit his subjects in obedience. The teaching of Buddha has been transmitted in here with  intent to set up what was to be set up if it has been let down, to support what has been set up but remained unstable, to develop what has been set stable yet undeveloped.

The development of Vietnamese Buddhism was resounding with the growth of the national consciousness. The two tendencies of history, springing from two different origins, under different conditions of living sphere and in different circumstances of history, have been co-existing, completing each other and together developing into a whole. The consciousness of the particularity, in interrelation and harmony, was developing up to the universal formation. The relation of individual and collective, or the relation of the particular and the universal, is a dialectic relation, or the relativism of interdependent origination, that means to say, one is in all and all is in one. In this pattern of relation, the particular is not sacrificed for the existence of the universal, yet in it nothing is fragmented into insulated oases. In the universality, every individual is of the same value, and all nations are equal. On this ontological ground, the consciousness of nation is shaped in relation to other nations. It is not simply the international relation of the ruling clique in need of mutual assistance to protect the class interesting. It means as well the signification of each individual which exists as a particular in a community of mankind.

Down to the fourth century BE, i.g., by the first century AC, Buddhism had been stuff for such a pattern of universality on the whole Asia. Buddha’s teaching, based on the relativity of the interdependent origination,  ascertains the equality among sentient beings. The difference of social classes is not owing to the providential destiny but to the process of social division of labor. King is not a person set on throne by God’s will. 

Buddhist Scripture attributes the term Mahasammato to the first pattern of government. Mahasammato, that elected by the great many, and the king is the one who pleases others by means of the true law, not who rules at will despotically. Such Buddha had taught, but for throughout twenty five centuries of its development, the signification had never been properly reflected and elaborated to the extent as expected. None of Buddhist monarches had it in his mind to establish a social system on the structure of Mahasammato Government. That is the limit of history. Necessarily the significance of Mahasammato could not be recognized thoroughly and carried out largely until social life had been developed to some relevant standard.

In this respect, throughout the history of struggle for surviving and developing of Vietnamese people, Buddhism has assisted the formation of the consciousness of nation and independence by the two decisive turns of history. The first is the resistance against the occupation and assimilation from the North. The second, the modern time, is resisting to being cast in the mould of Western institutions, i.e., of bourgeois democracy and proletarian dictatorship.

In both stages, the consciousness of the struggle for the national liberation and independence was not the mere economic motive, but urged by the will of progress of the people who wants to determine the cultural values of its nation. That has been proved through ten centuries of laying the material foundations for developing. Many dynasties were succeeding one after another to reign over the country, but none of them left behind its fall magnificent palaces as evidences of extravagance and debauchment of feudal lords. Not that under these dynasties there begot no fatuous king nor cruel despot. But that the absence of the constructions that might have been reveals a typical relation of the noble class to the common people, between the so-called oppressing class and the oppressed. Monarches of the dynasties of Vietnam did not enjoy over the scale their subjects were capable to contribute, while few of gigantic earlier monuments all over the world lasting up today has not been built of tears and sweat, even of blood, of the miserable class of labor.

For thousand years of arduous struggle, a nation, endowed with  a material civilization relatively developed, in a plain form of social consciousness, had eventually determined the characteristic values of a nation in the universal generality to the compass of humanity. They are the humanist values with the expressions of loving-kindness and tolerance.

Wars were regular, and apt to say protracted, events in Vietnam. But savage slaughters were very exceptional. To say it exceptional means not in the least nothing of the kind did happen. As yet the history of Vietnam was adorned with loving-kindness and tolerance as the Kings of the Tran Dynasty showed to the subjects who had run after the invaders.
During two thousand years of expansion, Vietnamese Buddhism has never been the cause direct or indirect for any religious conflicts whatsoever. Ever since the first days of its  introduction, Vietnamese Buddhism had showed their tolerance to religion and thought. Even in the times when it was of the most influence, Buddhism never made use of its superiority to occupy the privileged position.

At the times when the most part of the West was submerging in the darkness of the Middle Age, haunted by the inhuman Inquisitions, overwhelmed with feudal lords ‘ power over the subjects, at that time, Vietnam had already got into the stage of independence, not in the meaning of a separatist regime detached from the North Empire, but that of a people which had succeeded in determining the characteristics of its nation, reaching the universal values of humanity. It is made known by the history that societies referred to as civilization modeling for many nations to imitate are by no means well-made societies. A society, whose members has got neither the state of consciousness of the equal values  among nations, and races; nor the attitude of living together in harmony and tolerance toward religion and thought, can not be termed as having reached the higher level of human society. It is merely a level of community in which the relationship among members is not tied up with mutual understanding and respect for other’s dignity. There is only the material interesting tied up together to form inhuman ranks of cast.

Not that, however, in the past, Vietnam was the land of happiness. Although the people could have enjoyed happiness to some extent under the conditions of material production. For it is not that there were no fatuous tyrants , ferocious lords, greedy landlords and rich peasants who grew rich by means of deception and exploitation. At times these reached the fierce level, leading to severe conflicts, peasant insurrections against the royal court. But the it is not as fierce as described by dialectic materialist historians taking after the model of Western feudal society in conformity with the theory of class struggle, i.e, the collusion of the aristocrat and clergy. On this country there was not found a certain feudal society of the Western style, overwhelmed with the absolute authority of the lord over the serf. In Vietnam, the picture of a king as seeing his princess daughter comfortable in the lap of luxury he could not help thinking of prisoners writhed under the drudgery of prison and blamed his own reigning for the common people’s transgression, that of the highest minister of the Court living indiscriminatingly together with the peasants toiling away in hamlets, was likely unimaginable to the West of the Middle Age.

The history of mankind, however,  did not simply and mechanically advance  in accordance with the linear law. The Buddha has taught, the original sin was committed in the human society only since men had started conceiving the idea of accumulation. The course of accumulation generated by greed leads to social conflict; the order of social life of the original community was broken; men graduated into the society of the division of labour which eventually  split up into classes. 

Conflicts were more and more intensified as to fulfill the greed. Greed for wealth; greed for power; and greed for knowing. To be greedy in order to be happy. As yet by way of reflection and meditation men came to discover the pernicious outcome of greed and conflict, some of them consequently went out to look for another safer way leading to happiness. That’s the way of peace, tolerance, loving-kindness, knowing how to love and respect the other’s dignity.

Just as a clear and refreshing stream while flowing through woods and forests, passing through plains and fields, then pouring into the sea, is by no means the same from beginning to end. It is carrying along with more and more refuse. The same is the history of mankind.

In Vietnam, just in its early days, in struggle for liberation and determining its national independence, Vietnamese Buddhists were apt to declare all nations are equal, included Vietnamese and Chinese. In the struggle by the 2nd century, Mau Tu, a Buddhist thinker, did not hesitate to affirm that all beings of red blood are endowed with the quality of Buddha; and the land of the Han is by no means the center of Heaven and Earth. When the country regained its independence, Buddhist monks remained to be the leading force of society consolidating the conception of equality among nations. Zen Masters were at times counsellors on politic and social affairs to the kings who came on throne from a variety of social ranks. When the socio-political institutions on the foundation of the conception of equality among nations had been firmly established, they tore themselves away, having nothing to do with social position or stipend from the Court. They lived among the people and in the heart of the people, secluded in mountain hermitage yet without forgetting their cause of promoting morality, forming the underground fountains to feed the consciousness of independence, self-sovereign, loving-kindness and tolerance.

Had Buddhism not existed as an underground fountain in the course of the national history, the name “Vietnamese” nowadays would have existed nowhere except in the chronology of the Chinese, and the period named as that of national independence would have been  noted in the Chinese history as the times of rebels’ segregation that  on account of the love toward life had not been slaughtered by the Heavenly Court but  remoulded by and by with  the enslavement through culture.

From the very first days when the French colonial sovereign was set up on Vietnam, there erupted the movements of fierce struggle, lasting and persevering throughout over a century. On one part, it was the struggle for independence because of being deprived of material interesting. On the other hand, it was a fight to protect the cultural legacy and the underground fountain of life of the nation.

In those days, when the Court surrendered, the people spontaneously rose in revolt. The secluded monks, having been so far segregated from the Court, now actively took part in the organizations of resistance.

When the national power ceased to be issued from the Court, Buddhism  turned out to be the support of the resistance forces. At the same time, the monks who so far had been living in seclusion in the mountain hermitage eventually started the movement of reforming and promoting Buddhism. Buddhism had to be reorganized in such a way it might be the vanguard on the front of covering the national culture. Nobody could deny this historical fact. Although some political forces stunned by the might of the West had accused the Buddhist reformation as a dose of drug lulling the people’s fighting spirit. It was because of this fanatic that a great part of legacy of Vietnamese culture had been carelessly vandalized. In addition to this, the attempt of sabotage against religion and the encroachment of material basis on the culture has wreaked lots of damage  for Vietnamese people.

In the two last wars, that of decolonization, and ideology, Buddhism had been more and more conscious of its role. In the war against colonialism and cultural enslavement, Buddhism was a stronghold protecting the legacy of national culture. In the ideological war, Buddhism was taking charge of relieving the animosity, bringing about the national peace, to put an end to the fratricidal war. A war that in its conclusion has brought but a sheer illusion of victory to the Vietnamese people which could have not  assisted them in overwhelming the poverty and backwardness.

   As the war came to an end, the country seemed to have entered a new era of reconstruction.  The fact, however, is that more jails went on to be brought up everywhere; Vietnamese people’s  blood kept on shedding out of brothers of unshared ideology. Even with the fervent assistance from Western countries which had once been the enemies of class and ideology, the outcome, however, was incompatible with the sacrifice of some millions people through many generations fighting  for the sovereignty of the nation. A country that after more than twenty years since the war has been over, the wound remains uncured, class vengeance keeps segregating the nation. In addition to this is a political system that fosters corruption and bribery, exploiting the people, oppressing the mass – the evil that million persons had to shed blood to get rid of becomes day and day the social  chronological disease. Such a country nurses less hope of raising higher its head to look around for its friends, the countries that shared at a time the common destiny of the weak under the yoke of colonialism and imperialism. Those countries have got no victory stunning the world, they have got all the same the leaders who know how to make their people passing over the threshold of poverty.

 Now, as the whole world is on the way of closing a past of two thousand years in which men lived less in happiness and glory than in pain and  crime, it is expected the millennium to come will be the era of peace, tolerance, along with humanist values to be defined on both aspects, particularity as well as universality.

 Vietnamese Buddhism recognizes once more its historical mission toward the nation and human kind in the millennium to come. Its historical mission is to relieve the conflicts among social communities, politic attitudes, different religions, among the nations that  on account of the environment of history  have harbored feudal hatred toward each other. That mission might have been sent off with the compassion and tolerance, respect for and  .extol the dignity of human, for man is the pivot in the transformation of family, society, bringing about happiness, freedom and liberation for  the people.
A society in which the basic and sacred rights of freedom are respected is the one whose members live in happiness. The self-consciousness is the foundation of the concept of freedom. Knowing the significance and the essence of nature, society, individuals, in the relationship of interdependent origination, is knowing the humanist values, knowing his or her own dignity, knowing and respecting other’s dignity.

 A democratic civilization is the production of wisdom and not  the mere social institution founded on the principle of the division of power.  That wisdom does not consists of the mere knowledge of science, sociology and others, but the mutual understanding, mutual respectful and communication between man and man in building a world of peace and prosperity.
In such a spirit of self-determination and devotion to the popularity, no country whatsoever could fixe by itself the particularity of its own traditional values in opposition to the universal values of humanity.  By the last years of this century, the world is witnessing lots of encouraging  indication. War, plague, natural calamity, are not the interior problems of any individual state or nation. Should in any part of the earth an individual be maltreated, a community be oppressed, the rest of the world would interfere and force to change. Human dignity and the fundamental rights have been defined on the global standard. No any government on earth is entitled to rule at will over its people in conformity with agreement to certain system of thought concocted by itself or by its clique in contradiction with the people’s  will.

The civilized world is a general reinforcement to the oppressed people. The self-conscious masses are the main force to every social change. The Buddhist is convinced that all every sentient beings are charged with taking a sole destiny, that of reaching Buddhahood. Each is a Buddha to be.

 In jubilation at the Buddha’s Birthday, Vietnamese Buddhists are too joyfully welcoming the twenty first century in the spirit of tolerance, compassion Lord Buddha had ever taught and carried out. Let’s pray for all the religions on earth, all the different systems of thought, to flourish as expected and get the full development of their  potentiality of education so that  mankind would  ascend into the world of goodness. 
 

Translated by Ven. Thich Nguyen Chung.
Feb 2000, Quang Huong Monastery.