Vietnam
has a very rich and diverse spiritual life. With a tradition of open mindedness,
the Vietnamese people have adopted foreign regions and integrated them into
native religions and beliefs.
When
western missionaries and tradesmen came to Vietnam centuries ago, they learned
form Confucian scholars and Mandarins that Vietnamese people practiced three
religions: Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. In observing people’s behavior,
however, Westerners soon came to a different conclusion. Unlike Christian
people in Western countries, Vietnamese people did not belong to organized
religious congregations. Westerners thus hastily concluded that Vietnamese
people practiced animism, or even atheism.
Throughout
its long history, Vietnam has experienced many important religions. During 11th,
12th, and 13th centuries, Buddhism was considered the
national official religion by the Vietnamese monarchy. During the 15th
and 16th centuries, the throne adopted Confucian thought and
subsequently rejected Buddhism. Despite this change, Vietnam never experienced
a religious war. The Vietnamese people were generally allowed to express their
own beliefs without constraints set by the state.
The
Vietnamese people used to believe that every natural object had a spirit. From
a big stone to a tree to a single leaf, each object had its own spirit for men
and women to worship. People used to express their respect by placing incense
at the foot of the tree or beside a tone. The common belief was that everything
on earth shares human feelings like pain, affection, or anger, so the incense
appeased these objects and protected them from harm. Rivers, lakes, and
mountains also had ruling spirits, with created manes such as God of the
Mountain, God of the Soil God of the River. At each of these locations, people
built small temples where they could worship by placing incense at the temple
altar on the first and the fifteenth days of the Lunar month. Many of these
rituals are still practiced today.
The
most lingering belief of the Vietnamese people is the Mother spirit, or the
Mother Cult. The prevalent image of the Mother is protecting her children and
guiding them through all aspects of life. The Mountain Mather (Mau Thuong Ngan)
helps people to near children, the River Mother (Mau Thoai) protects travel and
helps people overcome difficulties or accidents there are many other Mother
spirits who exist beside people to help them in specific areas of life.
Mother
spirits were worshiped in separate temples, each temple with its own worshiping
calendar. Since the Mother Spirit worship normally involves witchcraft or
sorcery rituals, much like shamanism in other Asian countries, ceremonies serve
as communication tools between human beings and spirits. The Mother Cult was
historically vilified by Confucian scholars was overly superstitious. More
recently, the Mother Cult is still criticized by authorities. But many ordinary
people, especially women, still keep a very strong attachment to the Mother
Cult Confucianism infiltrate Vietnam along with the Chinese invasion in the
first century BC. Confucianism it is not a religion, but an education and
ethical system of social regulation. It values ancestor worship, which lays the
foundation for the strong value in family and community that pervades Vietnam
today. Confucianism also led to worshiping those who had outstanding merits in
setting and guarding their villages. Thus, each village has a temple for the
God of Tutelary.
Vietnamese
people also worship forsaken and unfortunate spirits. Throughout the country,
at a crossroad or at a gate of the village, there the villagers come for
incense worship, wishing that the forsaken spirits can be reincarnated into
other human lives. In some places, the crooks of the old banyan tree roots are
stuffed with incense burners and bowls of the rice gruel, denoting that
unfortunate spirits are being worshiped. This tradition is called “banyan-tree
gruel worshipping”. All these customs reflect how Vietnamese tradition values
sympathy towards others.
When
Buddhism came to Vietnam in early centuries AD, the first people who adopted
the intellectuals and aristocracy, who were interested in its underlying
philosophies. For the masses, Buddhism was interpreted as a way of life; a
religion aimed at finding life; a religion aimed at finding life’s truth
through years of the spiritual cultivation. Since Buddhism doesn’t discriminate
against other beliefs when Vietnamese people worship by saying “praise God and
Buddha”, they place Buddha at an equal standing with their other local deities.
Some
Vietnamese people accepted the Catholicism propagated by Western missionaries
in the middle of 17th century. At the beginning, Catholicism was
less easily accepted because it rejected other traditional beliefs, such as
ancestor worship. Furthermore, missionaries’ evangelism went hand in hand with
Western colonialism. The prejudice against Catholicism has since dissolved into
a curious phenomenon of cultural acceptance, which is especially apparent
nowadays during Christmastime, which Vietnamese often celebrate as a common
festive day for everyone.
Previously,
women were seen as the most religiously active, as men are rarely seen at
places of worship. This is a custom that remains from long time ago, when
Confucianism still dominated. During that era, men only worshiped the founders
of Temple of Literature and worship to pay their families at their ancestor temple.
Women, on the other hand, visited all places of the worship to pay their
respects. Presently, although this custom has changed and men now play a role
in the religious rituals, women still keep an important role in preparing
ceremonies.
Through
the varying forces that historically contributed to Vietnamese religions,
spirituality has developed into a multi-faceted and rich component of
contemporary life.
This
article written by Lanh Nguyen from Vietnam Heritage Travel
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original article, please visit:
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