Latest / The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen / 466 - How Did Buddhism Affect The War? Viet History Makers - Thich Tri Quang

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466 - How Did Buddhism Affect The War? Viet History Makers - Thich Tri Quang · The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen

0:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome back to the Vietnamese podcast with Kevin and Viet History Makers.
0:06
[SPEAKER_03]: It's been such a long time.
0:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome back.
0:10
[SPEAKER_03]: It's been a very long time.
0:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Good to be back.
0:12
[SPEAKER_03]: I looked for you to this.
0:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing good.
0:14
[SPEAKER_00]: How are you?
0:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm good.
0:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm good.
0:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Today we are just need to get my water.
0:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so sorry.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Can we start off?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
0:26
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
0:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
0:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry.
0:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome back to the Vietnamese podcast.
0:32
[SPEAKER_03]: We have Kevin with Viet History Makers.
0:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome back.
0:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Good to be back.
0:38
[SPEAKER_03]: It's been a long time.
0:39
[SPEAKER_03]: What have you been up to?
0:40
[SPEAKER_00]: It has been a really long time.
0:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this is the first time where I'm recording in my new place in Amsterdam.
0:49
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, it's a beautiful backdrop.
0:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
0:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
0:54
[SPEAKER_03]: How are you doing?
0:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Good.
0:56
[SPEAKER_03]: It's been a busy year.
0:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, but I look forward to this.
0:59
[SPEAKER_03]: And I miss vid history makers and I'm glad we're we're back at it.
1:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And today we have somebody who's uh, who's really, um, I don't know if they're controversial to other people, but I think he's controversial maybe to the Vietnamese Catholics that, uh, that our families are from.
1:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, definitely, you and I both came from Catholic families or we come from Catholic families.
1:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And so today, we're gonna talk about Buddhism.
1:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think we've done that before on this podcast.
1:33
[SPEAKER_03]: No, I don't think so.
1:34
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm looking forward to this because I've practicing some form of meditation one way or another in the last few years.
1:44
[SPEAKER_03]: And I have a lot of sympathy and compassion for Buddhism now, but my mom and dad were not compassionate and empathetic towards Buddhists, and I was raised in that, and it was like not really hate, but it was borderline, they had feelings about Buddhism, and as I got
2:14
[SPEAKER_03]: that's really just my ball.
2:16
[SPEAKER_03]: I find Buddhist people to be very wonderful people, like, you know, it's makes no sense to me.
2:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you mind if I ask, I mean, what would they say?
2:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Ooh, that's really interesting.
2:31
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not what they said, but it's how they reacted to my, I brought Buddhist ideas, or I would say Buddhist sayings.
2:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, my friend today said this from his side of the family who's Buddhist, and it was just like that it was a silent reaction.
2:51
[SPEAKER_03]: It was never like, you know, oh, if I brought, you know, Jesus Christ to the dinner table,
2:58
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we have beautiful discussion, but it just quiet, you know, silent reactions and, um, oh, that's them, that's, you know, we don't really subscribe to that stuff.
3:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
3:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it doesn't sound too surprising given the historical context and our families and everything.
3:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I mean, let's jump into it.
3:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So today we're gonna be talking about a really famous Buddhist monk named Tik Jikguang.
3:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And let me just start by saying that the listener is probably well aware that
3:35
[SPEAKER_00]: In the 60s, there were Buddhist protests in Vietnam.
3:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is one of the iconic, one of the most iconic images of the Vietnam War is, of course, the self-immolation of Tikguand.
3:50
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a Buddhist monk who died by self-immolation, he set himself on fire at a busy Saigon road.
3:59
[SPEAKER_00]: intersection in June of 1963.
4:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So he and many other Buddhists were protesting what they felt was the persecution of Buddhists by Nodinziam's South Vietnamese government.
4:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So of course Nodinziam was a Catholic and this photo, obviously you know what I'm talking about, okay?
4:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, I do.
4:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you remember when you saw that photo by the way?
4:28
[SPEAKER_03]: As soon as, you know, it's one of those iconic photos where, you know, you see the Naepom girl.
4:34
[SPEAKER_03]: This was one of them.
4:35
[SPEAKER_03]: You see the general shooting, the accused communists of, yeah, there's three of them that are huge, the Buddhist monk Naepom girl and the general shooting the communist person.
4:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so Jonathan Kennedy said that photograph no news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one and that picture was so significant because it was one of the many other things that were circulating in the American mind that essentially convinced Americans that
5:14
[SPEAKER_00]: they were doing a wrong thing and Vietnam by supporting NoDinZM.
5:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So it really helped turn the tide against NoDinZM.
5:24
[SPEAKER_00]: So...
5:26
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of scholarship on the Buddhist movement.
5:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And we know that around 1963 groups of Buddhist monks in Vietnam were becoming politically active.
5:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And they were led by a group a faction of monks from Hawaii that were upset over the Ziem and ministration.
5:47
[SPEAKER_00]: We talked about this in other episodes about how Ziem
5:55
[SPEAKER_00]: restricted them from displaying their flags.
5:58
[SPEAKER_00]: You remember that in our discussion of Xiams.
6:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And now in the mid-60s, Buddhists were becoming even more engaged and they were calling to an end to a military Xiams military dictatorship.
6:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And some even called for the U.S. to withdraw and the war.
6:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not a surprise that your parents and other Xiams supporters are
6:23
[SPEAKER_00]: But while that's pretty well understood, not much is actually understood about what actually motivated the Buddhists.
6:32
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, not many people have actually thought to themselves, well, what did the Buddhists say and what were they thinking and how did they see the world?
6:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think the most famous Buddhist Vietnamese Buddhist month in the world is not Tik-Tri-Kwang but it's Tik-Nyup-Hung.
6:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you must know.
6:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you know, um, I had to research why all monks or most monks have the name Tick.
7:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Because, you know, this is every monk that you hear from the Vietnamese monk world has a surname with THICH.
7:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Tick.
7:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, yes, I've heard of Tick Netan in all my life and I'm a huge fan.
7:19
[SPEAKER_03]: So can you say more like why what does that I looked it up and it's a spiritual surname used by almost all ordained monks and nuns of in Vietnam.
7:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Tick is the Vietnamese transliteration of it's short for Tickka, Tickka and the Vietnamese Sino Vietnamese name for Shakyya Munibuta, Siddhartha Katama.
7:41
[SPEAKER_03]: So when a monk or nun takes the name Tick, it usually means a disciple of the Buddha.
7:46
[SPEAKER_03]: it symbolizes renunciation of their birth surname.
7:52
[SPEAKER_03]: But much similar to the Catholics, when the Catholics ordained nuns, priest brothers, they drop their secular names and then they take on a saint name, you know, father, victor, father,
8:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Father Santos, you know, they just all changed their names because you leave behind this secular lifestyle.
8:15
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think the same is with the Buddhist, but the Buddhists along name themselves take.
8:22
[SPEAKER_03]: It's very interesting.
8:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't.
8:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
8:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
8:25
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
8:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, thanks for that.
8:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So Tignette Han is really, I say the most famous because he's written so many books, popular books about mindfulness and meditation.
8:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've read a few of them.
8:38
[SPEAKER_00]: He explains Buddhism in a very clear, accessible way.
8:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember listening to him on long drives when I would commute when I lived in the US.
8:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to do a quick shout out to a friend of mine, Adrian Minjo, and she writes about Tignethan.
8:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And she argues that he was advocating what she calls a socially engaged Buddhism as a form of non-violent patriotism in nation building.
9:08
[SPEAKER_00]: So, basically, in Saigon, he founded a school for Buddhist education and social work and he wanted to empower the next generation.
9:16
[SPEAKER_00]: He wanted them to be socially active, not just me and her new Buddhism private life, but he wanted them to build the country through service, the social service, nonviolent reconciliation.
9:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I bring up Adrian's work,
9:32
[SPEAKER_00]: on ticket hunt because she and I and a few other scholars published not too long ago, I forget what year it was like maybe two or three years ago, we published a collection of essays in the Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia.
9:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to put a link to it, but the
9:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Symposium was called the intellectual history of Buddhism in the Republic of Vietnam, 1955 to 1975.
10:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And for this symposium, she wrote an article and I wrote an article and some other people wrote articles.
10:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And my article was on a Buddhist monk named Tikjit Guam who we're going to talk about today.
10:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's jump right into it first off.
10:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you heard of Tikjit Guam?
10:18
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I've never
10:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
10:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, if you were living in the 60s in the US, you probably would have heard of them.
10:26
[SPEAKER_00]: If you were reading the newspapers.
10:29
[SPEAKER_00]: So, Tiktree Quang was born in 1923.
10:31
[SPEAKER_00]: He died in 2019.
10:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was best known for his role in really leading.
10:39
[SPEAKER_00]: the South Vietnamese Buddhist population during the so-called Buddhist crisis in 1963 and until the Buddhist uprising was crushed by 66.
10:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's talk about him and let's talk about
10:58
[SPEAKER_00]: what his ideas were.
11:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I want to talk about today, since I'm a political theorist, is I want to talk about Buddhism and political theory, because I'm going to argue that because
11:16
[SPEAKER_00]: using a Buddhist political theory like there's a way of thinking about politics if you're a Buddhist and I think that will help us make sense of it.
11:26
[SPEAKER_03]: You know Kevin, thank you so much because I always wondered why is there beef?
11:33
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't understand Catholics, Catholics are like a warm-hearted, I'm sorry for all the Catholics out there, you're Kevin and I come in for it, by now I just, I just went there.
11:41
[SPEAKER_03]: when i think in the context of my mom and dad and when i think about oongjin or like ready to go to war christians have that tradition we do we just have that we it's it's it's kicked into
11:57
[SPEAKER_03]: hundreds of years, I mean, in the inquisition, and if you think about, you know, one of these, there's all kinds of wars that come from the Middle East, with the three major religions in the Arab, the Muslims, the Christians, and we're ready to go.
12:18
[SPEAKER_03]: But when I think about Buddhism,
12:23
[SPEAKER_03]: And I've always, all right, and yeah, I can see if you could see Kevin's face, there's a big disagreement here.
12:31
[SPEAKER_03]: So this is what I had always thought.
12:33
[SPEAKER_03]: This is my ignorant self growing up all these years thinking, what?
12:39
[SPEAKER_03]: What did the Buddhist ever do to the Catholics to get into this situation of fighting with the Buddhist?
12:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so I'm rambling on here.
12:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
12:53
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think I generally agree with you, I think.
12:56
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm also going to say that religions are like political ideologies.
13:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think they can be used by violent and peaceful people for their own purposes.
13:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I was, I was where where Jesus gave his sermon on the Mount.
13:15
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, blessed be the peacemakers.
13:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I know many Christians who are very peace loving and they work for peace and love.
13:24
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, in history, we know violin Christians, same with Islam, same with communism, there are people who have
13:32
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, justified violence by evoking Communism, but also justified peace and love with those things.
13:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think actually the same might go for Buddhism.
13:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually don't know empirically if Buddhists are more peaceful people.
13:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I think somebody should try to find that out.
13:49
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, go online, what does this say?
13:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Historically, are Buddhists less engaged in violence?
13:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Do they use less violence?
13:58
[SPEAKER_03]: That sounds like it.
13:59
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
14:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't know.
14:03
[SPEAKER_00]: But, okay, this is actually a good place to talk a little bit about Buddhism.
14:08
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I'm first off, I am not a Buddhist expert.
14:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not at all, but I do think I know the basics, okay?
14:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So, let's cover that.
14:19
[SPEAKER_03]: You're political theory.
14:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Your political theory is that's about to get into the reality of getting into conflicts with Catholics in a Vietnam.
14:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, by the way, maybe this is a nice place to do another shout-out, a friend of mine, Sarah Swanson.
14:36
[SPEAKER_00]: She just had a book come out with Oxford University press on Buddhism in Vietnam.
14:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called Near Light, We Shine, so shout-out to Sarah.
14:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so Buddhism is, I believe, the fourth largest religion in the world.
14:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Any guesses what the first three are?
14:56
[SPEAKER_03]: I think is muslims are probably up there.
15:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
15:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Christians are definitely up there.
15:05
[SPEAKER_03]: So those are those two are towers.
15:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Huge.
15:09
[SPEAKER_03]: What would be the third, the third?
15:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Hinduism, Hinduists of course.
15:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
15:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And Buddhism developed from the teachings of the Buddha.
15:22
[SPEAKER_00]: from India around the century BC, six or fifth century BC, and it's spread to China, Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia, and then it's spread to the West in the 20th century, especially during the 60s when you have all the hippies.
15:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And in Vietnam, in 2019, there was a census, and they asked people, you know, what religion are you?
15:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Any guesses, can?
15:54
[SPEAKER_03]: What percentage?
15:56
[SPEAKER_03]: I've always been 70% Buddhist, 30% Catholics.
16:03
[SPEAKER_03]: That's always been the ratio in my mind.
16:06
[SPEAKER_03]: like 73, am I off?
16:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
16:09
[SPEAKER_00]: So in 2019, the Vietnamese government had a national population and housing census and they found that about 4.8% identified as Buddhists.
16:25
[SPEAKER_03]: What?
16:27
[SPEAKER_03]: In 2019,
16:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you said like 70%, they say it's 4.8%.
16:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, okay, well, let's take it back to the 60s and 50s though.
16:40
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the hold on, hold on, hold on.
16:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And any guesses, Roman Catholics?
16:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, with those low numbers, I don't know.
16:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe 15, 10, 15% of the country's six percent.
16:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Six percent.
16:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the vast majority, like 83%, said that they had no religion or they practiced folk religion.
17:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Got it.
17:05
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's wiped off the map, I think, since the 60s and communism came out.
17:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
17:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, man, you know, I don't know because because we don't know the numbers, but it's also possible that people were had Buddhist influence, but maybe they just didn't stay that or if there's so many people that I mean, whether it's in Vietnam or in America that.
17:30
[SPEAKER_03]: that will claim some religious affiliation, and it's always Buddhist or, I mean, most of time is Buddhist or Catholics.
17:38
[SPEAKER_03]: And I find that it's all, it Buddhists have, there's more Buddhists than there are Catholics.
17:44
[SPEAKER_03]: But now you're telling me the numbers are reversed in Vietnam in 2009.
17:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
17:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, this is what people respond to, you know, with the census.
17:54
[SPEAKER_00]: So Buddhism probably came to Vietnam around the third century BC from India or in China, trickling in from those places.
18:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And okay, what is Buddhism about?
18:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably one of the most fundamental things about Buddhism are the four noble truths.
18:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I learned this in college taking classes on religion.
18:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So essentially, the four noble truths
18:21
[SPEAKER_00]: these are teachings, Buddhist teachings, and they are number one, suffering exists, suffering, there's life is suffering.
18:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Number two, by the way, do you think that's true?
18:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I do think it's true.
18:39
[SPEAKER_03]: I definitely think that's true.
18:40
[SPEAKER_03]: I think if you if you deny that Kevin, you're
18:48
[SPEAKER_03]: denial and not really loving.
18:51
[SPEAKER_03]: There is a possible that you can say life is not suffering.
18:55
[SPEAKER_03]: It's mostly suffering.
18:56
[SPEAKER_03]: And then your job is to, you know, pardon the, you know, it's to unscrew it, you know, it's to make it to resolve.
19:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know man, I'm enjoying life.
19:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I think of a lucky mud if you are a very good person.
19:14
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very privileged.
19:15
[SPEAKER_00]: OK, so suffering exists, that's truth number one.
19:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Truth number two is that suffering is caused by craving or desire.
19:24
[SPEAKER_00]: the cause of suffering is desire.
19:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And that makes a lot of sense, right?
19:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Because when you want something, because you're not happy.
19:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
19:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
19:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you when you punch that desire, then you want another thing, right?
19:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's number two.
19:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Number three is suffering can cease.
19:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Suffering can stop.
19:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And the fourth truth is that there's a path to ending suffering.
19:55
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a way to end suffering or as you say to unscrew your life.
20:00
[SPEAKER_03]: I meant to say another word, but yeah, the best word I can find.
20:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
20:04
[SPEAKER_00]: So the path then is what's called the Noble Eightfold Path and that consists of right understanding, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right meditation.
20:23
[SPEAKER_00]: So boom, I think that that's a, I would say the core of Buddhism.
20:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
20:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Now another interesting thing is the question of its Buddhism of religion.
20:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you say it's religion?
20:37
[SPEAKER_03]: It depends on how you define religion.
20:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Is there a God in the quote unquote, the structure of the religion you're talking about?
20:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Because if you define religion as a worship of a God, then Buddhism is not a religion.
20:53
[SPEAKER_03]: But if you're taking this idea of Buddhism being a spiritual
20:57
[SPEAKER_03]: as a religion, then perhaps.
21:00
[SPEAKER_03]: But I would generally argue that Buddhism is actually a way of life.
21:04
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a philosophy, but not necessarily a religion.
21:08
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a connection to your spiritual existence, but you're not really worshiping any God.
21:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
21:16
[SPEAKER_00]: By the way, it's also a tricky thing to try to define a religion.
21:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what is the
21:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, you're getting, now these are fighting words, Kevin.
21:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I know, no, no, no, but it's just a question.
21:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Can you tell me what my guess is in the word, in the idea of freedom, I think quotes.
21:42
[SPEAKER_03]: have restricted the idea of localized freedom, and I don't mean like geographic localizing.
21:49
[SPEAKER_03]: I think in your space, in your kind of your own living space, it really restricts it.
21:56
[SPEAKER_03]: I think cults really restrict.
21:58
[SPEAKER_03]: So if you're a Catholic and you really have that restriction or your mom and dad has really gathered a few people, 20, 30 people in a village, and they really restrict your freedoms.
22:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it becomes a cult and they base, so it could be a Catholic, it could be a Scientology, it could be any form of worshiping, using deity to control the mind in a localized way.
22:22
[SPEAKER_03]: But now I think when you're like, you know, when you're a Catholic and you're living in New York and you're like, you know, you live, however you want, you go to church whenever you want, you identify as a Catholic.
22:32
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think that that's, uh, I think you're beyond the realm of of a cult.
22:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Cult is just very localized, uh, control.
22:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
22:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
22:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Interesting.
22:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if I'm convinced, but I hear you.
22:51
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think Buddhism in many ways looks like a religion.
22:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So there was a leader.
22:57
[SPEAKER_00]: There are scriptures.
22:58
[SPEAKER_00]: There are teachings.
22:59
[SPEAKER_00]: There are some day-a-tees, right?
23:01
[SPEAKER_00]: God's.
23:02
[SPEAKER_00]: You might call them.
23:03
[SPEAKER_00]: But they're not gods in the sense of you need to worship them.
23:07
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not like the Christian, you know, the Abrahamic God.
23:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So, in Buddhism, there's no belief in a creator, you know, like a God as a creator.
23:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And you don't need to believe anything or worship anything.
23:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, and I think this is important, which a big difference is that in Buddhism, it actually doesn't tell you what you must do.
23:31
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it simply says,
23:33
[SPEAKER_03]: What, you know what?
23:34
[SPEAKER_03]: It's God doesn't tamper in Buddhism.
23:36
[SPEAKER_03]: There's no tampering of your life.
23:39
[SPEAKER_03]: There's no proactivity, it's a passive, yeah.
23:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So Buddhism essentially says, look, if you want to achieve enlightenment, do this.
23:52
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to do something else, you're free to do so, even if you're a bit foolish and dumb to do that, you know?
23:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not judgmental, it's not a normative theory, it doesn't tell you what you should do.
24:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just saying, look, this is how it works.
24:08
[SPEAKER_03]: So how did they go to war with the Catholics?
24:12
[SPEAKER_03]: I need to get to this.
24:13
[SPEAKER_03]: I need to get to this.
24:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, all of us.
24:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, again, so we did this on our episode on NoDensium, but if we can think back to that episode, NoDensium was trying to consolidate control in the south, right?
24:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he's very Catholic, family's Catholic.
24:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he is going to be accused of discriminating against Buddhists cracking down on Buddhists, seeing them as a political threat to his power.
24:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And so,
24:46
[SPEAKER_00]: the tension kind of escalates there.
24:49
[SPEAKER_00]: But let's turn to this famous Buddhist monk, Tikji Guam.
24:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's really important, and I'm going to say a little bit more why later.
25:00
[SPEAKER_00]: But let me just give a really quick bio, just like, you know, where it was born and all that.
25:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So Tiktok Gwang was born as Fat Gwang in December of 1923 in the village of Zim Dien to the west of the, yeah, river in Gwang bin province in Central Vietnam.
25:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So he enters religious life when he's 13 years old.
25:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Fast forward in 1937 he joins the Buddhist studies institute in Hawaii and finishes in 1945 and then he's ordained as a Buddhist monk.
25:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And he also went to Sri Lanka, say long to study Buddhism.
25:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And when he returns, he participates in anti-colonial anti-french activities.
25:50
[SPEAKER_00]: He's arrested by the French in 1946, released in 1947, and he continues that.
25:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he becomes very famous during the Vietnam War.
26:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Most of what I'm now going to say comes from the essay that I wrote, that I think the listener should check out.
26:10
[SPEAKER_00]: So the essay is titled, Making Sense of Tickchiquan, the Machiavellianism of Buddhist political theory.
26:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So first off, I think everybody or most people have heard of the term Machiavellianism is just going to say that triggers me when you pair it up with Buddhism.
26:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, Machiavellian means to me, it triggers this sense of, it's like a trickster or somebody who's trying to, um, you know, pull the wool over your head and, and you know, try to.
26:48
[SPEAKER_03]: get in there and manipulate, right?
26:51
[SPEAKER_03]: This is synonymous from manipulation.
26:52
[SPEAKER_03]: And when I think of Buddhism and monks, I think that that is like, that's like an accusation if you, those are fighting words to me, right?
27:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Like when you put those terms all in that title, like that.
27:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that's one way of thinking of Machiavelli or Machiavelli anism, but there are other ways.
27:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And I hope to explore this term and maybe have listeners see Machiavelli in a different light by the end of this episode.
27:23
[SPEAKER_00]: So, okay, let's start.
27:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the thing I wanna talk about mostly though is what I would call Buddhist political theory.
27:32
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is a new field of interest
27:36
[SPEAKER_00]: who are working in English in North American universities.
27:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that if we understand Buddhist political theory and what that's about, I think we can better understand Tick Jekwam.
27:48
[SPEAKER_00]: So Tick Jekwam was just so famous during the Vietnam War.
27:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Many American media outlets talked about them.
27:57
[SPEAKER_00]: If you go to the New York Times website and look at the digital archives, and you just type in his name,
28:03
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to see hundreds of articles since the early 60s.
28:08
[SPEAKER_00]: So in 1966, he appears on the cover of Time Magazine, like just his faces on Time Magazine, and there's a feature essay about him.
28:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And Americans would say all sorts of things about him.
28:21
[SPEAKER_00]: They would call him quote, the mastermind of the Buddhist protest movement.
28:26
[SPEAKER_00]: or they called him a charismatic Buddhist monk who helped bring down United States back governments in South Vietnam during the war-torn 60s.
28:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And they would say that he pushed for a democratic nation with freedom of religion.
28:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And people in the U.S. were very confused.
28:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, who is he, what were his ideas?
28:47
[SPEAKER_00]: He seems to be mysterious.
28:49
[SPEAKER_00]: He seems to be elusive.
28:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Some in the West called him a communist, because he was trying to take down Z.M., some called him an anti-caramines, some called him a peace lover, and some called him a warhawk.
29:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And time magazine said that he, quote, had a burning desire for power, and they called him a Vietnamese Machiavelli.
29:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I was very curious about this, like why do they call him a Vietnamese Machiavelli?
29:19
[SPEAKER_00]: There's one scholar who argues that Ticture Quang was not a peaceful religious leader devoted to democracy and ending the war.
29:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Nor as he a communist agent.
29:36
[SPEAKER_00]: a fan of American military power.
29:38
[SPEAKER_00]: He was very receptive to the use of American military power against North Vietnam.
29:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And the New York Times called him an ego test.
29:50
[SPEAKER_00]: They called him impressive, but puzzling.
29:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So the point I want to make is that Americans are like, what's going on?
29:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Who is he really?
29:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, fascinating.
30:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Did he contradict himself a bit throughout the years?
30:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is what I want to talk about today.
30:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, what I want to argue is that the Western media has overlooked the most obvious thing about him, which is that he's a Buddhist monk.
30:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And as a Buddhist monk, he has what I argue, a Buddhist political theory.
30:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And once we understand that, then we can understand why he seemed to be contradictory
30:35
[SPEAKER_00]: So he tried to unite different Buddhist ideologies in Vietnam, Buddhism is also a diverse religion.
30:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was a leading figure of the Vien Phua now, which is a political section of the unified Buddhist church.
30:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So this Buddhist church tried to unify different factions of Buddhism in Vietnam.
31:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so Buddhism is very diverse, as I mentioned, just like Christianity is very diverse, but still we can say that these traditions have given birth to a general politics like Christianity.
31:25
[SPEAKER_00]: There are some scholars who say that generally Christianity has given birth to liberalism.
31:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Liberalism is a political ideology that values individual freedom, personal freedom.
31:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do you, and that that arguably comes from Christianity?
31:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, does that make sense?
31:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, the idea of free will.
31:45
[SPEAKER_03]: I think is constantly debated coming from Christianity.
31:51
[SPEAKER_03]: I think in the 1900s, debated quite a bit about free will.
31:58
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think with free will comes this idea of our,
32:05
[SPEAKER_03]: individuality is so it's paramount in the conversation because of dignity, human dignity.
32:14
[SPEAKER_00]: That is what
32:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Larry Sidentop, a philosopher, has said, that is Christianity's gift to the world, this idea that each individual is born with equal dignity.
32:25
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a new idea when Christianity came, the idea that we're all children of God, that we are all equals.
32:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Not all traditions, religious traditions in the world, see it that way, but in Christianity, there's this idea of equality of individual dignity.
32:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So that gives birth to political liberalism.
32:47
[SPEAKER_00]: But in Buddhism, there is one really interesting book called Buddhism and political theory.
32:53
[SPEAKER_00]: It's by Matthew Moore.
32:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And Matthew Moore is an academic and he argues that Buddhism is actually anti-political.
33:03
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a poet, it's anti-political, but it's not anarchists.
33:06
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't embrace anarchism.
33:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And he argues that Buddhist tend to view politics as a bad thing, because politics is temptation to allow the ego to go crazy.
33:20
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, when you're engaged in politics, you're looking for power.
33:23
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all about ego.
33:25
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not what Buddhists like.
33:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Politics is also a waste of time.
33:29
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a waste of effort.
33:31
[SPEAKER_00]: It's ultimately unimportant.
33:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And also often, politics conflicts with the path to enlightenment.
33:39
[SPEAKER_00]: So that is one general thing we could say about Buddhism.
33:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, Buddhism also is quite hostile to the idea of a self.
33:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, there is no self in Buddhism.
33:54
[SPEAKER_00]: In the West, there are certainly in some religious traditions in the West, the idea of a soul, right?
34:01
[SPEAKER_00]: You have a soul, but in Buddhism, there's no such thing as a self.
34:05
[SPEAKER_00]: or, you know, your individualism.
34:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, I would even argue further that the whole goal is to destroy that sense of, that ego.
34:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's that saying, it's hostile to the self.
34:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
34:21
[SPEAKER_00]: So in the West, philosophical traditions in the West, typically,
34:27
[SPEAKER_00]: see politics as a good thing.
34:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Like politics is part of the good life, like in for the ancient Greeks participating in politics is what allowed you to live a flourishing life.
34:39
[SPEAKER_00]: But in Buddhism it's very different.
34:42
[SPEAKER_00]: It's temptation for the ego.
34:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to quote now a student from Tiktok J. Guam, so this student
34:49
[SPEAKER_00]: His name is Gao Huituan.
34:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, temples do not do politics.
34:54
[SPEAKER_00]: This Buddhist attitude is as certain as nails driven into a wall.
34:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Politics is the domain of dirty hands that we Buddhists love.
35:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So they don't like politics.
35:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, however, there's a big, however,
35:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Although Buddhists don't think that politics is important for a good life, Buddhists still understand that politics is inevitable.
35:20
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't avoid politics, right?
35:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes politics is even necessary.
35:25
[SPEAKER_00]: It's necessary, it's inevitable.
35:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes Buddhism,
35:31
[SPEAKER_00]: would say that you should engage in politics only if doing so would produce the conditions, the social and political conditions that would enable individuals to pursue enlightenment.
35:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So again, if you're a Buddhist who believes who wants to attain enlightenment and who wants to help others attain enlightenment, then you would try to create social conditions to do that.
35:59
[SPEAKER_00]: If that's the case, then you would use politics as a means to do that.
36:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you beginning to see the Machiavellian here?
36:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
36:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Because Machiavelli was concerned with two things in his book The Prince, how do you get power and how do you keep power?
36:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And the means justify the ends, that's what this famous about Machiavelli, right?
36:25
[SPEAKER_00]: What's important is not the principle, but you just gotta do what you gotta do to get what you want.
36:32
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's Machiavelli andism in a nutshell.
36:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, our Machiavelli in that sense,
36:40
[SPEAKER_00]: creating conditions for enlightenment, then they're gonna do what they can to achieve that goal.
36:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So some Buddhist, for example, argue that there are some forms of government that illicit lower levels of social conflict than others.
36:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Like there are some forms of government that allow for individual spirituality better than others.
37:07
[SPEAKER_03]: So what forms of government does that?
37:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is a debate here among Buddhists.
37:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know what some Buddhists have said here, but I do think that there are some more socialists Buddhists.
37:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if we think of capitalism, for example, liberalism and capitalism, it promotes competition.
37:33
[SPEAKER_00]: It rewards competition.
37:35
[SPEAKER_00]: That if you cooperate with others, you're not going to be rewarded.
37:39
[SPEAKER_00]: But in social societies, at least theoretically, you're incentivized to cooperate.
37:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So I mean, that's one example.
37:48
[SPEAKER_00]: But of course, there's a debate there, too.
37:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, there are many different booths.
37:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure there are capitalist booths, as well.
37:54
[SPEAKER_00]: So, but again, so in the Western liberal tradition, you want to respect autonomy for a rational self.
38:06
[SPEAKER_00]: but in Buddhism, you want to create conditions that allow for spiritual progress.
38:11
[SPEAKER_00]: But the point I want to make is that politics should be a means to the ends of spiritual progress for all.
38:18
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's one thing.
38:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think this is helpful because it helps us make sense of
38:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Tikchikguang's anti-Communism.
38:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Now he will say things that seem to be anti-Communism.
38:34
[SPEAKER_00]: He resists communism because he thinks that individuals would be prevented from cultivating spirituality under a communist government, under that particular Stalinist style of communist government of Ho Chi Minh.
38:49
[SPEAKER_00]: So he says in 1963, quote, I like all educated Buddhists do not like communism because it is atheistic.
39:00
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's what he's going to say.
39:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I think it's possible that he could have preferred other forms of socialism.
39:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, communism is very diverse.
39:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's remind ourselves that the Stalinists killed off the Trotskyus by 1945.
39:16
[SPEAKER_00]: even though didn't see him was inspired by personalism, which is arguably a form of Marxist humanism.
39:24
[SPEAKER_00]: But, okay, so Machiavelli is also famous for thinking of politics in a pragmatic, unprincipled means to an end-terms.
39:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And so for Machiavelli, his goal is stability and security.
39:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the main goal of politics, like, what do you do?
39:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And the same thing for Tick-Tree Ground.
39:53
[SPEAKER_00]: For him, politics is a means to the end of a government that permits spiritual flourishing.
40:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So he doesn't want power for itself.
40:06
[SPEAKER_00]: He thinks that power is necessary in some cases if it will produce order for spirituality.
40:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I think now we're gonna get to a more interesting part, which is that I don't know if you've read Machiavelli, but Machiavelli said that if you're gonna use violence and cruelty, you should do it quickly.
40:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And why?
40:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, why?
40:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, why should you use violence quickly and not do it for a long time?
40:41
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you get to the, you get to your goal quicker now.
40:47
[SPEAKER_00]: What?
40:49
[SPEAKER_00]: If you use violence, imagine you're a ruler and you're ruling over a city and there are some citizens who don't like you and they're talking trash about you and they're threatening your power.
41:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Machiavelli might say, look, get rid of them at night.
41:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Use violence, you know, execute them at night.
41:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Why at night?
41:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Because another people won't see.
41:16
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you start executing and using violence and Russian against more and more people, you're gonna lose your power because people are gonna hate you and they're gonna turn on you and they're gonna organize against you.
41:29
[SPEAKER_00]: You still are, you're trying to maintain power so you should get used violence quickly, preferably once and not more than once, do it at night and then be very kind to the people that we've got.
41:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Because then they're gonna forget about your cruelty
41:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So, this is really interesting.
41:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Tictry Guam argued, and I'm gonna quote him, he said that, the bombing campaign, the American bombing campaign against North Vietnam should be concentrated within a short period of time.
42:02
[SPEAKER_00]: With rapidly increasing intensity to force the north to some reaction as soon as possible and to prevent giving the communists enough time to prepare themselves psychologically and militarily.
42:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at that.
42:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Here we have a Buddhist monk saying, bomb the hell out of those communists quickly, fascinating.
42:29
[SPEAKER_00]: This was a Buddhist leader advocating violence.
42:33
[SPEAKER_00]: So he's advocating strong military measures because he felt that quote, if the war dragged on,
42:40
[SPEAKER_00]: at its current level, and I'm quoting him, if the war dragged on, more lives would be lost.
42:48
[SPEAKER_00]: So here he's thinking in a very means and ends way in a very utilitarian way.
42:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So arguably, he's not a warhawk.
42:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So he's actually saying, like, look, we need to be strategic to end the violence as soon as possible.
43:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So if that requires a lot of violence in the short term, let's do it.
43:14
[SPEAKER_03]: What a heartbreaking scenario for the people of Vietnam at that time, you know, yeah, you have leaders who have these thoughts and I think when you
43:26
[SPEAKER_03]: pull back and go higher in the 30,000 foot view.
43:30
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not what we think it is, right?
43:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Were they really there to, were they Americans really there to do what they want or was it like a tenure thing to pour money into arms and to do all this other destruction that had nothing to do with really winning quote unquote.
43:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And when you have this Buddhist monk on the ground saying,
43:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Just so yeah, and if you read through his speech, it's like he will say things that make it I think pretty clear that he thinks that violence is permissible if it's needed if it's needed.
44:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So for example, he says quote, in my contacts with leaders of other faiths,
44:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I stated a religious war, if needed, should only be fought for the interests of the parties involved, but such conflict of interest does not exist at all.
44:25
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, so we see that he's not against violence in principle.
44:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, another interesting thing that about Tictory Guyan that makes him very Machiavellian is that Machiavelly was famous for inventing political science.
44:43
[SPEAKER_00]: That might be controversial.
44:45
[SPEAKER_00]: But when we teach political theory, we often say that he's a first political scientist.
44:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Because Machiavelly was one of the first to use a method of political knowledge.
44:55
[SPEAKER_00]: that we say is inductive.
44:57
[SPEAKER_00]: So what Machi Valley did was he looked at examples in the real world.
45:00
[SPEAKER_00]: He started with the real world, and he saw what was happening in the real world, and then he came up with general rules about how politics works.
45:09
[SPEAKER_00]: This is different from the deductive approach, like Plato.
45:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Plato is going to
45:15
[SPEAKER_00]: use general assumptions about the nature of the cosmos and of human nature, and then he's going to look at the world and try to make the world fit into that.
45:24
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, but Machiavelli's going to do the opposite.
45:26
[SPEAKER_00]: He's going to say, what are people doing in the real world to get power?
45:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, now I'm going to write a book if you want to get power, do this because here are all these other historical examples of princes who started with nothing and then they did this and this and that and they got power,
45:45
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to get power, if you want to conquer a people, become friends with the people that they oppress, and then you have allies to fight, you know, to conquer them, that kind of thing.
45:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So, tick-chiquan is often going to use this method of experience-based,
46:08
[SPEAKER_00]: approach to political knowledge.
46:10
[SPEAKER_00]: So he's going to say things like experience has shown that prime ministers or presidents elected by universal suffrage do not truly represent the aspirations of the people.
46:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's why he's going to prefer the assembly rather than than voting for a prime minister or something like that.
46:32
[SPEAKER_00]: So he's also
46:35
[SPEAKER_00]: not opposed to the US.
46:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think a lot of Americans believe that he was anti-American because he was criticizing the Americans.
46:45
[SPEAKER_00]: But he's going to do this interesting thing where he criticizes Americans for failing to distinguish, quote, between anti-Americanism and opposition against them.
46:57
[SPEAKER_00]: So anti-Americanism is an attitude that we hate America because unprincipled.
47:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And he thinks that's just silly.
47:07
[SPEAKER_00]: He thinks that's nonsense.
47:09
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you oppose America for practical reasons, that is necessary.
47:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So he says quote anti-Americanism is a natural hatred of the Americans regardless of how good they are.
47:23
[SPEAKER_00]: But opposition to Americans is an attitude of constructive protests.
47:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Suppose two people are writing in a car.
47:31
[SPEAKER_00]: If one sees the other person is driving unsafely, unsafely, one has to take over the wheel to prevent the car from rolling into a ditch.
47:40
[SPEAKER_00]: opposition to Americans for blocking the national assembly, opposition to American support of corrupt lackey governments, opposition to American help in the suppression in that down.
47:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Like those are those are good things, those are practical things.
47:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Makes sense, right?
47:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
48:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
48:01
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is all going on during such a
48:10
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I'll get resolved eventually in terms of his standing in the eyes of the Vietnamese people of the time.
48:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so politically he's going to be fighting for essentially a more inclusive government.
48:29
[SPEAKER_00]: So his goal was to get an inclusive national assembly in South Vietnam because he thinks that that is a good government that will enable the spiritual flourishing of all.
48:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So he says the Vietnamese need quote an elected government to create a face for the nation that truly reflects the nation.
48:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And he thought that Nodin Ziem was supposed to this, you know, Ziem didn't want, and from our episode, you know, he didn't want an inclusive government with, he was quite repressive to those he thought were his enemies.
49:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
49:03
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, so Ziem is going to favor Catholics and repressive Buddhists, but I mean, we all know what happens in the end, right?
49:10
[SPEAKER_00]: So Ziem is assassinated and ultimately the communists win.
49:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I actually don't know what communists think of Ticchi Guam.
49:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I will investigate, but I mean, I would love for those in the comments to investigate.
49:30
[SPEAKER_03]: But I can't imagine the communists at the time being a fan of this monk because he's like telling the Americans going and doing the bomb the hell out of them and doing it quickly.
49:42
[SPEAKER_03]: So we, so we can do what, so we can get the agenda of the South out there, you know, what, why is he on the side of the Americans, you know, getting this over quickly?
49:54
[SPEAKER_03]: And it eradicated.
49:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, I'm, yeah, I'm pretty sure they're not a fan of it.
50:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he wasn't on their side.
50:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, clearly, he said he was not a fan of communism because it's atheistic.
50:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I think I think a good quote that I want to read is by one of his students.
50:18
[SPEAKER_00]: names Gauhi Tuan, I think I quoted him earlier, but he said, of Tikji Guam, my teacher speaks many languages.
50:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Some say that he's pro-communist.
50:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Some say that he's pro-America.
50:32
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a time when he could wear both hats at once.
50:35
[SPEAKER_00]: silently he said to his loved ones, the more hats one puts on, the more it seems, one does not have any hats at all.
50:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Conversely, the more hats the better.
50:47
[SPEAKER_00]: You elevate in highlight the special position of Buddhism.
50:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Thus Buddhism should not avoid, but embrace such paradoxical approaches.
50:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I think what's so interesting about TikTriquang to me is that he helps us thinking about what it might mean to occupy a middle space between this conflict in Vietnam.
51:11
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, on the one side, you have the communists, on the other side, you have Golden Zium.
51:16
[SPEAKER_00]: But tick-to-quang is concerned with human flourishing, spiritual flourishing for all, and I think he understands that South Vietnam needs to have a positive national identity, not simply be anti-communists.
51:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is something we've talked a lot about, right?
51:35
[SPEAKER_00]: On this podcast, on this podcast, that South Vietnam was very much anti-communist anti-vist anti-vist anti-vast, but what was their positive vision?
51:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, I think, one thing that's useful from Tickchie Quan's Buddhist political theory is that he reminds us that politics is sometimes better understood not as a competitive team sport where, you know, you're supposed to pick aside, but it's actually unimportant and that you should be striving for human flourishing.
52:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
52:13
[SPEAKER_03]: And unfortunately, I don't think that that is the key goal of any politician, I think once you get into office, I think it just becomes corrupting.
52:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that that, you know, what?
52:28
[SPEAKER_00]: One belief of anarchists.
52:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've been talking with my students a lot about anarchists
52:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you will be corrupted.
52:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's such a fundamental thought.
52:48
[SPEAKER_03]: You can't get away from it.
52:49
[SPEAKER_03]: I just think it's impossible to get away from once you are in power and everybody wants to be your friend.
52:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Everybody needs some association.
52:59
[SPEAKER_03]: You become corrupt.
53:01
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just the way it goes.
53:04
[SPEAKER_03]: You have all of this,
53:06
[SPEAKER_03]: all of this resources that are just clocked down in front of you at everybody's at their knees in front of you and you have the keys to everything and you know you now you have to make a decisions on how to expend this power or this these resources and i think that becomes a corrupting situation
53:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and the alternative is what anarchists would say a faith in the community.
53:35
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't need to have political authority to tell you what to do or to punish people.
53:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Like how would crime get resolved in a community?
53:45
[SPEAKER_00]: If you steal something, then the people will not like you.
53:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
53:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's enough to prevent you from doing it.
53:55
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the theory at least.
53:58
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that's the beauty of being alive is the balance of all of these things.
54:04
[SPEAKER_03]: You need a little bit of everything to find a structural equilibrium.
54:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Because you can't, I don't think anarchic can entirely exist.
54:16
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think this whole political world that we live in in the modern age, it's counterproductive too in some ways,
54:28
[SPEAKER_00]: like anarchists assume that we will be interacting with the same people in a small community over time and it probably will work in a small community and they also argue that well you could have many small communities that are trading with each other and stuff but the problem becomes well if somebody in your community becomes a criminal he can just run off to another community
54:54
[SPEAKER_00]: So it would be good to have some police to chase them down, you know.
55:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Catholics and Buddhists of that time of our parents' generation, you don't marry each other.
55:07
[SPEAKER_03]: It is very difficult to get the agreement.
55:13
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's like that in every society that has these very strong religious sex or religious communities.
55:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Once you go down this,
55:24
[SPEAKER_03]: way of living and you are, you know, team Catholic and team booters.
55:29
[SPEAKER_03]: It's hard to have a really normal life, especially in a society like 1950s Vietnam.
55:36
[SPEAKER_03]: It's hard to keep the two things going on simultaneously and existing in two different types of family styles.
55:48
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, but at the same time,
55:51
[SPEAKER_00]: that Vietnamese Buddhism, I think is interesting about Vietnamese Buddhism, about just Vietnamese thought in general, is that it's so syncretic.
56:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And this has been a theme in my book, a theme in many of our episodes, like the Gaudai religion or the Huahau religions.
56:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I mean, these religions take a little bit from everywhere, you know?
56:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think, I mean, my family is raised, I mean, I was raised Catholic,
56:20
[SPEAKER_00]: You can be Catholic and a Confucian at the same time, which is what Nodin's EM was, right?
56:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you can be Buddhist and Confucian at the same time, you know?
56:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
56:31
[SPEAKER_03]: That's what Vietnamese people always do.
56:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And I also think today, you can, if you're mindful, you can be Catholic and you can be Buddhist.
56:38
[SPEAKER_03]: I think there are a lot of things that Buddhists, principles and teachings coincide with Catholicism.
56:47
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I think they don't clash.
56:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Now when you start getting into the afterlife of, you know, you get into the afterlife of heaven and hell, the idea these practicalities don't exist in Buddhism.
57:02
[SPEAKER_00]: because it's really a friend who's Muslim and he does a lot of interfaith work and he's also visibly disabled like his hand like his arm is disabled and he was writing about his experience at an interfaith
57:22
[SPEAKER_00]: retreat with Buddhist, with Jews, with Christians, and so on.
57:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And he, he was writing about how he noticed that there are these two Buddhist monks like giving him dirty looks.
57:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Like they wore robes.
57:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was like, what's going on?
57:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And finally, he approaches them.
57:40
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, hi, like, is there something wrong?
57:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And they essentially, they said, we pity you.
57:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And they kind of like, look, disgusted at him.
57:50
[SPEAKER_00]: They walked off.
57:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he, he doesn't research, and he finds out that because some Buddhist believe in karma, that your disability is caused by you doing bad things in previous life, your former life, since saying.
58:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And I looked this up and I was like, yeah, some Buddhist, I'm not gonna say that all Buddhist believe this by the way.
58:16
[SPEAKER_03]: But it is a huge, it's a huge tenet of Buddhism and reincarnation and why you should live a good life right now because in the next life you're gonna come back as a handicapped person.
58:31
[SPEAKER_00]: But it also, I think, has some serious implications for how we think about justice, you know, because if you're a Buddhist, you might think that, well, that's justice.
58:41
[SPEAKER_00]: They deserve it or something, you know?
58:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And all of this is caked into the Vietnamese history, you know, during the war years.
58:50
[SPEAKER_03]: It's all there, but we're, you know, it's in plain sight, it's in plain view, but we don't, we don't recognize it's systemic influence in the world of politics and whatnot.
59:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I can though I do want to reiterate that Buddhism is very diverse and there are many Buddhists who would say that you need to show compassion, of course, to a person who's disabled.
59:14
[SPEAKER_03]: And so on, but I'm just saying that there's one line blowing to to hear that it's happening a modern day, right?
59:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and add an interface to retrieve none of the less.
59:26
[SPEAKER_03]: That's crazy.
59:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I look forward to more Buddhists coming on the vid history maker series here.
59:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Because I think it's important to talk about all these people and I also would love to hear about the Archbishop brother of Lord in Yemen, Lord in you.
59:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, I think he probably plays some sort of a critical role in the political scene at the time, too.
59:55
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't imagine him not playing playing role.
59:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
1:00:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
1:00:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Good idea.
1:00:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Kevin, thank you so much.
1:00:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Do we have any last, uh, ideas and thoughts about, uh,
1:00:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he also opens up at least in political theory new avenues for research, not much in political theory has been done about Buddhism.
1:00:26
[SPEAKER_00]: We agree, study Islamic political theory, Christian political theory, but very little has been done about how Buddhist think of philosophy and politics.
1:00:34
[SPEAKER_00]: So if any young aspiring academics are out there, I think this is a very exciting new field.
1:00:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's what I'll say.
1:00:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Wonderful.
1:00:43
[SPEAKER_03]: And please leave your comments and your thoughts in the comment section.
1:00:47
[SPEAKER_03]: We always read it and love to hear more about your thoughts.
1:00:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And if there's anybody pursuing the path of abutism and in Vietnamese politics, please raise your hand.
1:00:58
[SPEAKER_03]: The professor will be here taking office hours.
1:01:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you, Kevin.
1:01:03
[SPEAKER_03]: I appreciate you so much.
1:01:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
1:01:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for listening to the Vietnamese with Kenneth Wynne.
1:01:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Special thanks to Brittany Tran, to Jane Wynne, Catherine Wynne, Tina Fam, Sydney Jamie, and Crystal Tran.
1:01:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Please find us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at the Vietnamese podcast.