Help Bat Nha Monastery

LETTER TO THE OFFICIALS OF THE GOVERNMENT OF VIETNAM

Plum Village, June 26, 2009
by Sister True Emptiness

To the respected Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,
To all of you who love and support the 400 monastics of Prajna Monastery,

(These young monks and nuns are between the ages of sixteen to thirty-five years old, who have been born, raised, and nourished by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. They have been living in Prajna Monastery, Hamlet 13, Dambri Village, Bao Loc District, Lam Dong Province since 2005 when our teacher returned home for the first time.)

Please allow me to present a little background information on the Prajna Monastery story:

Our teacher Thich Nhat Hanh – fondly known to his students as Su Ong, meaning “Grandfather Teacher” in Vietnamese – is now 83 years old. His deepest wish for the present dilemma is for the Vietnamese government to support and not harass the sons and daughters of their mother country, Vietnam. The young monastics’ only aspiration is to practice peace and lead a simple life of service to humanity and the people of Vietnam. The present struggle at the Prajna Monastery should concern all of us and challenges the human rights of every Vietnamese citizen. Our teacher trust that if the central government is made clear of this fact, they would help end this situation in a rightful manner.

Our teacher has no plans to return Vietnam again, nor is he requesting anything of the Vietnamese government. He is not asking for land to set up practice centers, and has abandoned the idea and demand for the return of land which belonged to the School of Youth for Social Service. (This land officially belonged to the SYSS until 1975 and since then has been occupied by the government.) We have all seen signs in recent years that the country of Vietnam has opened up to changes. With the three visits to his homeland, our 83-year-old teacher, in the spirit to building a beautiful future, has shared with the central government his deep look into the needs of the country. He has shared all that is in his heart and does not have anything further to add.

The events that are shared here is a description of the criminal acts by corrupt people abusing their power with the silent cooperation of the government immigration service and the national religious affairs bureau. Before the monastery was offered to our teacher in 2005 by the monk Duc Nghi in sworn and recorded statements in front of thousands, the temple grounds where Prajna Monastery is now located had only a few buildings – one small Buddha Hall, one small guest house, a couple of rooms for monks, a single-floor kitchen with an asbestos roof, and one single-floor building intended for elderly people. Other than these buildings, the rest of the 30 hectares of the land was empty.

During our Teacher’s and the Plum Village Delegation’s first trip back to Vietnam, from January 12 until April 11, 2005, there were many people who were inspired to become monastics and to practice meditation according to the Plum Village tradition. The trip left over 80 aspirants wishing to become monastics, so the monk Duc Nghi offered his temple to our teacher and for these young aspirants. He performed the ordination ceremony and shaved their heads on behalf of our teacher with his very own hands. This outpouring of young people dedicating their life to service inspired many of us and brought positive and wholesome energy to the country and to Buddhist practitioners all around the world.

All the friends who appreciated Plum Village teachings from around the globe were inspired by this development and was moved to support the efforts of the monk Duc Nghi to support these young practitioners. They began to organize their community and gather funds and donations that were all sent back to Prajna temple to help provide for these young monastics and to develop and build more buildings to house them.

The foreign friends that follow the Plum Village tradition have invested large sums money to the efforts to build Prajna Monastery. We paid US$90,000 to renovate and add to the building previously intended for elderly people but was inhabitable, with the agreement that another building for the elderly people would be built at another nearby temple. We transformed this building into a three-story building that contains a meditation hall, a dining hall, a kitchen, and dormitories for 100 nuns. It was named the Jacaranda Building. The demand for more living quarters increased with number of aspirants and practitioners coming from all over the country and walks of life. We could not refuse their noble aspirations and their pure hearts. At the nuns area, we even had to squeeze 16 people into every room using three-level bunk beds.

We then had to build a second building for 100 monks, named Fragrant Palm Leaf Forest Building. But the number of young people increased so quickly that we had to build a second nuns’ residence for another 100 nuns, named the Green Willow Building. On the monks’ area, we raised yet another building to house male aspirants, named the Beginners’ Mind Building.

By the years end, the number of people increased so dramatically, beyond all of our expectations. With the monk Duc Nghi acting on our behalf, we bought some adjacent land and built another large building for the nuns and for the lay Order of Interbeing members. We also renovated the kitchen area and turned it into a two story building with a full new kitchen at the ground level, a large storage room and a dinning area on the upper level. In addition, we also built a large meditation hall that could hold thousands of people for sitting meditation and for hearing the Dharma. These are but the major investments that our foreign and domestic friends have invested to this monastery not to mentioning the smaller contributions that support the daily sustenance and running of the monastery.

As for the sudden influx of young people to this monastery, the many of these young monastics have just completed high school. A substantial number of them have a university degree and some have had even successful careers in their fields. But they have abandoned these career goals for a higher purpose, answering to a call in their hearts to live a simple life and to serve others with their understanding and love. Because he has ordained them all on behalf of our Teacher, all of them refer to the monk Duc Nghi as “Si Fu”, meaning “Father Teacher” in Chinese. These 400 young people have been born into the spiritual life and have been practicing there in Prajna Monastery for their whole monastic life – in the holly grounds where the monk Duc Nghi vowed to support them and their practice under the Plum Village tradition. He acted on ours and their behalf to buy land and to construct buildings with others’ funds for them to live in.

As a consequence of their wholehearted practice, even only after a few months or a few years, we have seen so many wonderful fruits blossom in their families. Many stories were shared – of fathers stop beating their mothers, of divorces having been avoided, of reconciliations between divided family members. As these stories were spreading throughout the country and around the world, many more young became inspired to monastic life and many others came to aid and donated to support the monastery. We have records of receipts from all these donations by the Vietnamese people and by foreigner supporters from around the world. The intentions from the very start was made very clear and recognized by everyone, including the sworn and recorded statement of the monk Duc Nghi, that the development of the properties of Prajna Monastery was for these young monastic live and practice in.

In 2007 during our teacher’s second visit to Vietnam to offer three requiem masses to the general public by out teacher and Plum Village delegation, he was invited by the President of Vietnam to visit. Our teacher shared that he would visit only if the government is ready to hear the voice of the people. The President agreed and the meeting between the two took place. During the visit and casual dialogue, our teacher made some suggestions that he thought would help improve the relations of the country domestically and diplomatically. He prepared a ten-point proposal that included suggestions such as to allow Europeans or Americans of Vietnamese origin to come back to Vietnam for 90 days without a visa, as they can entering other countries. He also suggested to allow these overseas Vietnamese to have double citizenship and to build a monument in memory of the monk Thich Quang Duc who died advocating for an end to religious discrimination under the Diem regime. It seems that the government has carried out nearly all our teacher’s suggestions, making them more popular to the people foreign and domestic, except for the last suggestion, which was to dissolve the religious police and the religious affairs bureau over a five or six years’ period.

It seems that the difficulties with Prajna can be traced back to this point, to this last suggestion by our teacher; of course there are many other conditions and forces unforeseen and indirect causing the turn of events and intentions, especially from the monk Duc Nghi. Before our teacher and the Plum Village delegation returned to Vietnam for the third time, to attend the UNESCO Vesak conference in 2008, the monk Duc Nghi shared many times that the immigration office had asked him to let them expel the Plum Village foreign monks and nuns from the monastery and out of Vietnam, who had all obtained a valid visa. We have recorded twice these declarations of Duc Nghi to our teacher and other Dharma teachers of Plum Village.

The tragedy started to intensify on August 8, 2008 when the police sent us a letter stating that the owner of the temple where the 379 monastics were living (i.e. the monk Duc Nghi) wanted them off the property, and had asked the police to evict them, and that according to the letter the monastics were living there illegally. Since that day the police have come almost every night to check the identification of each monastic, and ask them to sign a paper that says they are living there illegally. The monastics refused to sign the papers and remained calm and kind in face of this. They always used gentle speech towards the police and even offered them tea and songs to relieve their tension. The policemen were very embarrassed by the situation, but could not disobey the orders of their superiors. With the pleading for help from the public to the Vietnamese government, the people have been waiting for the wise intervention of the government with no response.

From August, 2008 to this present, the immigration service has not given visas to Plum Village Dharma teachers of non-Vietnamese citizenship to enter Vietnam. These Dharma teachers can not return to teach these 400 monastics who have been ordained at Prajna Monastery since our teacher’s first return to Vietnam in 2005. The visa service office at the Vietnamese Embassy in France even canceled the five-year visas previously given to two Plum Village sisters to visit Vietnam. We have not protested any of this but remain patient to the leaders of Vietnam.

On November 13, 2008, we requested the Ambassador of Vietnam in Paris to transmit 600 letters of the French practitioners to the government of Vietnam that kindly asks the government to intervene in the situation of Prajna Monastery. The Embassy wholeheartedly supported this effort by sending all the letters by e-mail instead of diplomatic mail. On November 19, the central government held a meeting in Ho Chi Minh City to try resolve the problem peacefully. After the meeting, many high monks and dignitaries in the Buddhist Church joyfully announced to us that everything was okay and that the decision was made that the young monastics could stay and practice at Prajna Monastery, at their only spiritual home in peace. We requested a written report of the meeting and the decision and was promised that the report would be sent to us shortly. After three months, the reports finally arrive, but in it, the report stated the opposite of what was announced previously as the result of the November 19 meeting. The 400 young monks and nuns were told rudely to remove themselves from the monastery grounds by April 29, 2009. From that day, the monastery entrance gate has been chained locked. Lay people coming for weekend retreats at the monastery are chased away.

On June 26, 2009, Duc Nghi’s disciple Dong Hanh and a few others tried to burn our thatch-roof huts that monastics used for solo retreats. As it was raining, the huts didn’t burn, so they used pickaxes to pull the huts down. When a monk and a nun came to ask them to stop, they attacked us with the tools. Fortunately, we barely escaped without injury. One young woman knelt down and begged the attackers to kill her instead of the monks. Some of us have taken photos of these events. Because of the escalation violence and danger to these monastics, we earnestly requested the Ambassador to bring this to the attention of the central government.

We understand the simple faith of Duc Nghi’s disciple Dong Hanh in his teacher and why this has forced him down this dark path. Dong Hanh himself has said he has gone too far and cannot return. This is an alarming statement. We all can still pray that there can be hope and a way out for him if he has the courage. There are a number of reports from longtime residents of Bao Loc province, where Bat Nha Monastery is located, about the past actions by the monk Duc Nghi, that are similar but on a smaller scale, yet as wrongful and harmful as the present. Now in front of us, we are asking only to live and practice peacefully in our spiritual home with all the rights of any other Vietnamese citizen.

In regards to the monk Duc Nghi, our teacher has written a letter to him in November 2008 asking him to come back to his responsibility as father-teacher to these 400 young monastics. Our teacher was ready to forgive and forget any past wrongs. We still stand by our teacher’s request and are ready to do what is necessary to bring peace to Prajna Monastery, on the condition that the lives of these 400 monastics are safe.

Last week, in a coordinated propaganda effort, the heads of the fourteen hamlets of Dambri village each called a meeting of its residences and declared that if the government evicts our monastics, it is because the monastics are legally ordained and are engaging in politics. This would be difficult to prove, since the monks’ and nuns’ daily and yearly activities mostly include sitting meditation, chanting, caring the gardening, walking in meditation, and many other mindfulness practices. Their sole intention is to live a simple and peaceful life without engaging in any political involvement. There have been many reports of police calling the parents of all these young monks and nuns, asking them to call their children back to the family life and renounce their chosen spiritual life. These covert incidences reveal to us that this is not just an internal matter between Duc Nghi and our own monastics, but a coordinated effort by various governmental forces, whose motives are becoming clearer with each event.

This letter is a personal letter written to clarify to those who know our community and of our situation in Bat Nha Monastery. If any of you out there can help our brothers and sisters with your connection and influence, please be moved from a place of compassion and a spirit of reconciliation. If this letter can be shared to the Vietnamese Ambassador in France, America, or Canada, maybe it can be transmitted to a number of high authorities in the Vietnamese central government who are acquainted with our teacher and do love and support these young monastics. Please be moved to action. With love and trust, CK