#18 Louisiana!

Vietnamese Buddhism in Baton Rouge!   Today I am at the Zen Tam Bao temple with leader Thay Dao Quang, who came to the US some years ago, and now has his PHD in psychology.   The temple houses nuns and monks, and has both English-speaking and Vietnamese-speaking groups.   The history of Buddhism in Vietnam includes both Theravadan and Zen, as well as Pure Land schools, much of them brought in at the beginning of the millenium along trade routes from India to China and back.   

Like so many faiths worldwide, Buddhism in Vietnam was consistently persecuted and co opted by the government.  Thich Quang Duc, who in 1963 set himself afire, was protesting the Roman Catholic government oppression of Buddhism, not the war.  

Thay's talk was "Action of Compassion."   He began by relating that he was a simple monk who would rather be poor in clothes and rich in wisdom.  He has a great sense of humor, noting that he might have gone to California and become famous, but he chose Baton Rouge because it had greater need.   

The Buddha, Thay noted,  left his palace out of compassion, to help us liberate from the circle of birth and death, to liberate us from our hallucination.   In our daily life, he suggested, we should as 'why do I want to do this,' with any of our actions, thus adding wisdom to our actions.  "I have compassion for myself, because I do not destroy my compassion," Thay suggested.  He offered a story. 

Thay was present at a discussion with a Tibetan monk who has been imprisoned by the Chinese for 30 years.   Each day he was asked by his captors 'Is Tibet a part of China?'.   Not answering, he was given an electrical shock to his mouth, the effect of which is that today, he cannot taste anything.   An audience member asked "What did you fear most, in captivity?," and the monk replied, "that I may damage my compassion for my captors."

The group offered some questions for Thay.  "Why do we have more compassion for strangers?" asked one person.  Both Thay and a nun responded.  We only see strangers one time, but we see our family a lot, and that brings up expectation which are 'premeditated resentments.'   With family, it is easier to feel than it is to be wise; we have so many more attachments to work with.  

I do not know of Thay's background, but I would suspect that he lost relatives in the long and pointless war in Vietnam.   I think about my great fortune to be spared from the horrors of war and oppression, and yet, how close the effects are that I see in the stories of so many I meet.   Fortunately,  greed, hatred and delusion are as close at hand as their antidote.