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THICH NHAT
HANH
A Buddhist Poet
in Vietnam
Originally
published June 9, 1966
The essay
and poems that follow are by the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, the
former
Director of the School for Social Studies in Saigon and one of the most
popular
poets in Vietnam during the 1960s. The poems were translated by Nhat
Hanh
himself and the essay was written by him when he arrived in New York in
the
middle of May, 1966 to lecture on the Vietnam crisis and on the work of
the
School of Youth for Social Service that he describes below. Nhat Hanh
was born
in 1926 in Dalat and became a novice at sixteen. He was a student of
literature
and philosophy at Saigon University and of the philosophy of religion
at Princeton
in 1961. He lectured on Buddhism at Columbia in 1963 and then returned
to
Saigon to play a leading role in the Buddhist political and social
movement. He
was Editor of the principal Buddhist weekly paper, and his many books
include
Oriental Logic, Actualized Buddhism, and Engaged Buddhism. He also
contributed
a letter, "In Search of the Enemy of Man," addressed to Martin Luther
King, to the symposium Dialogue, which reflects the attempt of young
Buddhists
to formulate a synthesis of Buddhism and existentialism appropriate to
the
problems of Vietnam. Thich Nhat Hanh was exiled from Vietnam in 1966
shortly
after writing this article. He has since lived in a spiritual community
in France.
The few
poems published here are not typical of my own poetry or of Vietnamese
poetry
generally. The tradition of poetry in Vietnam is very old and complex.
It draws
on early Chinese poetry, on the French Romantic and symbolist poets of
the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and, in my own case, on Zen
Buddhist
writers. Much of my poetry could be called "philosophical" and
friends have found it in some ways similar to the work of Tagore: at
least, it
is extremely difficult to translate it into English.
But the poems published
here are different. They are popular poems in free verse and when I
write them
I feel I am trying to speak very simply for the majority of Vietnamese
who are
peasants and cannot speak for themselves; they do not know or care much
about
words like communism or democracy but want above all for the war to end
so they
may survive and not be maimed or killed. I wrote the poems first for
myself; when
I read them over I can regain once more the state of intense feeling in
which I
composed them. But they have now been read and heard by many
Vietnamese; and
they have been denounced by both sides fighting in the war. A few days
after
they were published last year government police came to seize them from
the
bookstores, but by then they had all been sold. They were attacked by
the Hanoi
radio and by the radio of the National Liberation Front. They have
since been
read in public along with the peace poems of other Buddhists and they
have been
sung with guitar accompaniment at student meetings, much as songs of
protest
are sung in the United States.
I risk my
life publishing these poems. Other Buddhists who have protested the war
have
been arrested and exiled, and now they are being killed in Danang. It
was
because of this great risk that the Buddhists who demonstrated this
spring were
reluctant to advocate openly an end to the war through
negotiations: instead they called for elections and democracy. We have
been
placed in an impossible dilemma. If we openly call for peace, we are
identified
with the Communists and the government will try to suppress us. If we
criticize the Communists, we find ourselves allied with those
Vietnamese who
have been the paid propagandists of the Americans for years and whose
words
against communism are soiled and discredited because they have been
paid to say
them. To be honorably anti-Communist has been to remain silent, and,
being
silent, we have been called innocent of the dangers of communism; but
we are
not. We are very well aware of the restrictions on Buddhism in the
North. We
have studied what has happened in China. We know there is no place for
spirituality in Marxism. We are ready to undertake a peaceful political
struggle with the Communists if only the destruction of the war can be
stopped.
We are confident that the South Vietnamese can protect themselves from
Communist domination if they are allowed to carry on their political
life in
peace.
The tragedy
of American policy is that it has made such a peaceful political
struggle all
the more difficult. For the Americans could have helped to reconstruct
the
country peacefully if they had cooperated with, and strengthened, the
Buddhists
and others who had the respect of the people. Instead they
tried to divide the Buddhists and prevent them from becoming an
organized
force. This was disastrous. Catholicism came to Vietnam with the
French, and
the Catholic leaders backed by the United States were suspect from the
first;
the Buddhist tradition is closely linked with nationalism and it is
unthinkable
to the broad mass of the people that the Buddhists would betray them to
a
foreign power. At the same time, Vietnamese Buddhism is syncretic in
character;
there are Catholic priests who are closer to us on the question of
peace than
some Buddhist priests who are old and have lost courage. (A few months
ago,
eleven Catholic priests issued a strong statement calling for peace.
They were
attacked by the Catholic leaders.)
Now the United States has become too afraid
of the Communists to allow a peaceful confrontation with them to take
place;
and when you are too afraid you cannot win. Sending
300,000 American troops to Vietnam and bombing the countryside have
only caused
the Communists to grow stronger. American military operations have
killed and wounded
more innocent peasants than Vietcong, and the Americans are blamed and
hated
for this. The peasants are not violently antagonistic to the Vietcong:
the
strong anti-Communists are mostly people in the cities who fear loss of
their
property, cars, businesses, and homes, and rely on the foreign army to
protect
them. The American soldiers, moreover, are not well educated and do not
understand the Vietnamese: Every GI will make a small mistake that
offends a Vietnamese
every day, even when he is not drunk or in search of women-at least
300,000
mistakes a day. And the continual roaring overhead of planes on their
way to
drop bombs makes people sick and mad.
So it is understandable that the people
in the villages distrust those who are connected with the government
and the Americans.
Along with others, I have organized a Buddhist School of Youth for
Social
Service at Cholon to train teams of young people to work at "community
development" in the villages. About two hundred have already been
trained. We have
refused to accept money from the government or the American Military
Assistance
Group. That would have been ruinous. Instead 1,200 Buddhists each
contributed
the small sum of fifty piastres to start the school in a Buddhist
convent. We
went into the villages carrying no weapons, owning nothing of our own
but our
robes, and have been welcomed. The peasants we have worked with tell us
that the
government officials assigned to "assist" them kept thousands of
piastres a month for themselves and did nothing for them. They have
come to
dislike the Vietcong and they fear the Americans, whose artillery
bombardments have
fallen upon them.
If the
United States wants to escalate the war, nothing that the Vietnamese
can do
will matter. A change of government will make no difference. The war
will go
on. The Buddhist leader Thich Tri Quang believes that we may attain
peace
indirectly by means of political maneuvering and through elections. He
is a man
of action, and of courage and intelligence, whose life is good: he is
not bound
by money. But there
are other Buddhists who have chosen a less "activist" political role
who have high prestige and whose views will also be influential. There
is, for
example, the group of young monks and writers who publish the magazines
Giu Thom Que Me (To Help the Motherland)
and Thien My and other publications of the La
Boi publishing house in Saigon, and who are trying to create a new
Buddhist
ideology emphasizing ways of helping the people who live on the land.
I doubt
myself that much will be gained by indirect political maneuvering
against the
government and the Catholics, so long as the United States is
determined to continue
the war. Underlying the truggles with the government in Danang and
other cities
is the unstated question whether the war will go on; and this the
United States
will decide. I believe that the most effective thing we can do is to
follow the
open and direct way of advocating peace, however dangerous this may be,
by
telling the world that we do not accept this war; that the Communists
grow
stronger each day it is fought; that a cease-fire must be arranged with
the
Vietcong as soon as possible; that we would then welcome the help of
Americans
in the peaceful reconstruction of Vietnam. Only America can stop this
war which
is destroying not only our lives, but our culture and everything of
human value
in our country.
Condemnation
Listen to
this:
Yesterday
six Vietcong came through my village.
Because of
this my village was bombed-completely
destroyed.
Every soul
was killed.
When I come
back to the village now, the day after,
There is
nothing to see but clouds of dust and the river, still
flowing.
The pagoda
has neither roof nor altar.
Only the
foundations of houses are left.
The bamboo
thickets are burned away.
Here in the
presence of the undisturbed stars,
In the
invisible presence of all the people still alive on earth,
Let me raise
my voice to denounce this filthy war,
This murder
of brothers by brothers!
I have a
question: Who pushed us into this killing of one
another?
Whoever is
listening, be my witness!
I cannot
accept this war.
I never
could, I never shall.
I have to
say this a thousand times before I am killed.
I feel I am
like that bird which dies for the sake of its mate.
Dripping
blood from its broken beak, and crying out:
Beware! Turn
around to face your real enemies-
Ambition,
violence, hatred, greed.
Men cannot be
our enemies-even men called "Vietcong"!
If we kill
men, what brothers will we have left?
With whom
shall we live then?
Our Green
Garden
Fires spring
up like dragons' teeth at the ten points of the
universe.
A furious
acrid wind sweeps them toward us from all sides.
Aloof and
beautiful, the mountains and rivers abide.
All around,
the horizon burns with the color of death.
As for me,
yes, I am still alive,
But my body
and the soul in it writhe as if they too had
been set
afire.
My parched
eyes can shed no more tears.
Where are
you going this evening, dear brother, in what
direction?
The rattle
of gunfire is close at hand.
In her
breast, the heart of our mother shrivels and fades like
a dying
flower.
She bows her
head, the smooth black hair now threaded
with white.
How many
nights, night after night, has she crouched
wide-awake,
Alone with
her lamp, praying for the storm to end?
Dearest
brother, I know it is you who will shoot me tonight,
Piercing our
mother's heart with a wound that can never
heal.
O terrible
winds that blow from the ends of the earth
To hurl down
our houses and blast our fertile fields!
I say
farewell to the blazing, blackening place where I was
born.
Here is my
breast! Aim your gun at it, brother, shoot!
I offer my
body, the body our mother bore and nurtured.
Destroy it
if you will,
Destroy it
in the name of your dream,
That dream
in whose name you kill.
Can you hear
me invoke the darkness:
"When
will these sufferings end,
O darkness,
in whose name you destroy?"
Come back,
dear brother, and kneel at our mother's feet.
Don't make a
sacrifice of our dear green garden
To the
ragged flames that are carried into the dooryard
By wild
winds from far away.
Here is my
breast. Aim your gun at it, brother, shoot!
Destroy me
if you will
And build
from my carrion whatever it is you are dreaming of.
Who will be
left to celebrate a victory made of blood and fire?
Peace
They woke me
this morning
To tell me
my brother had been killed in battle.
Yet in the
garden, uncurling moist petals,
A new rose
blooms on the bush.
And I am
alive, can still breathe the fragrance of roses and
dung.
Eat, pray,
and sleep.
But when can
I break my long silence?
When can I
speak the unuttered words that are choking me?
-Nhat Hanh
