Thich Minh Tue English News: SILENT REVOLUTION 2024

I wrote this article after the alms-seeking group of monk Minh Tue was disbanded by the Thua Thien Hue police in the late evening of June 2nd. Five days later, state information showed images of monk Minh Tue going through the fingerprinting procedure with the statement “Mr. Le Anh Tu has declared to stop his journey and will go into seclusion”. Then on June 9th, exclusive news from state media also showed the address with images of monk Minh Tue continuing to practice alms-seeking. But on June 13th, monk Minh Tue disappeared for the second time. In short, after many inconsistent reports, in the end, monk Minh Tue is indeed still alive and continues to practice. However, the news at least makes observers no longer fear that a sudden death will happen to monk Minh Tue like the previous mysterious disappearances of Huynh Phu So or Minh Dang Quang. In two months, the “Thich Minh Tue phenomenon” which according to experts’ statistics has broken the record of incidents in Vietnam since social networks became a mass information activity. There have been tens of thousands of comments from simple and honest to academic analysis, although there are many different perceptions, people must see that the “Minh Tue monk event” although there is no leader or organizer has created an earthquake in many fields from literary and artistic activities to a new perspective on the spiritual and religious life of many Vietnamese people – especially Buddhist followers. That is why I wrote this short essay with the title of Minh Tue monk as a silent revolution 2024. I call it a revolution because I believe that it will continue to be a long-term effect – which I hope will have positive achievements.

The initial development of the online debate about the alms-seeking journey of monk Minh Tue has caused three reactions from three famous senior monks of the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha (VBS), including Senior Monk Thich Chan Quang, abbot of Phat Quang Pagoda, Senior Monk Thich Duc Thien, vice president and general secretary of the VBS Executive Council, and Senior Monk Thich Chan Tinh, abbot of Hoang Phap Pagoda. On many social networking sites, there has been a series of profound articles by Dr. Vu.

The Dung (Hanoi) criticized the very noisy talk of Venerable Thich Chan Quang and another series of articles by Lawyer Le Ngoc Luan (Saigon) criticized the shortcomings and mistakes in the announcement of Venerable Thich Duc Thien on behalf of the reputation of the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha. Therefore, here I will only briefly comment on the mistakes in the talk of Venerable Thich Chan Tinh of Hoang Phap Pagoda. Although this talk has received little attention, I believe that it is the theoretical basis of the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha and of those who do not agree with the practice of Dau Dat Alms of Venerable Minh Tue. First of all, the talk of Venerable Thich Chan Tinh was wrong when he said that the Dau Dat Alms was an excessive ascetic practice of the heretics that Prince Siddhartha rejected and so later became the Buddha with the doctrine of the Middle Way. In this speech, Venerable Thich Chan Tinh intentionally or unintentionally stated that the ascetic practice (dhutanga) that Venerable Minh Tue is practicing “is not the orthodox Buddhist teaching because the Buddha himself abandoned it to follow the Middle Way teachings and thus attained enlightenment and liberation”. The important point is that this teaching of Venerable Thich Chan Tinh coincides with the declaration “Mr. Le Anh Tu is not a Buddhist monk” in the announcement of Venerable Thich Duc Thien on behalf of the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha to the entire Buddhist Sangha organization and compatriots to ask the government to intervene.

First, perhaps because he was too busy with the management of the Hoằng Pháp temple, Venerable Thich Chan Tinh did not have time to read the sutras and treatises carefully. The truth is that the Buddha only rejected the contemporary ascetic practice of punishing the body (danta) from restricting food and activities to torturing the body such as beating oneself, bathing in mud, bathing in cow dung to “return to heaven” (svarga) in the hope of achieving unity and communion with God Barhma – Until today we still see some skinny Indian monks naked in the middle of the market, standing on one leg all day and using whips to beat their bodies – This is the ascetic practice that the Buddha rejected because he thought that this was only a physical practice, mortifying the body to suppress physical desires, so it could not bring practitioners to liberation (mokṣa).

Dhuta (頭陀) originally means “to wash away”. Dhuta is the orthodox practice of Buddhism and is not the physical practice that the Buddha rejected. The practice of Asceticism was explained very thoroughly and clearly by Buddhagghosa in the Theravada Visuddhi-magga of the Magāvihāra. Briefly according to this treatise, Asceticism includes 13 practices called Asceticism Thirty-fold, including: (1) pamsukūlika-aṅga: wearing ragged clothes patched with scraps of cloth; (2) tecivarika-aṅga: wearing three-part clothes; 3) pindātika-aṅga: only begging for food to live; (4) sapadānacārika-aṅga: namely, begging for alms in pairs without distinction between rich and poor families; (5) ekāsanika-aṅga: eating only once a day; (6) pattapindika-aṅga: eating only one part; (7) khalupacchābhattika-aṅga: meaning not eating between meals; (8) araññika-aṅga: in the forest; (9) rukkhamūlika-aṅga: at the foot of a tree; (10) abbhokāsika-aṅga: in the open air; (11) sosānika-aṅga: in the cemetery; (12) yathāsanthatika-aṅga: sleeping anywhere; (13) nesanjjika-aṅga: only sitting, not lying down.

In short, first, the practice of Dhuta (頭陀) is the orthodox practice of Buddhism, not the practice of self-mortification of non-Buddhists that the Buddha rejected. The practice of Dhuta is very arduous, requiring the practitioner to have extraordinary willpower and a strong body, so very few practitioners can practice this method. Therefore, the Buddha once praised Mahakāśyapa for being a practitioner of Dhuta’s teachings all his life (and then passed on the “true dharma eye treasury” to Mahakāśyapa as the Zen lineage believes). In the history of Buddhism, not only Mahakāśyapa, but both the Southern and Northern sects have had a number of monks who continued to practice this practice. In Vietnamese history, we also know that King Tran Nhan Tong, after becoming a monk, practiced this practice, so he was also called Truc Lam Dau Da (竹林 頭陀) or Huong Van Dai Dau Da (香雲大頭陀). Master Minh Tue was not the one who created this practice, as Master Minh Tue always said, “I am just a person who practices the thirteen practices of Dau Da begging for alms according to the Buddhist scriptures”. Currently, Master Minh Tue is different and shines because he is a determined monk and has the will to practice this practice in the present era, and especially in the specific reality of Vietnamese Buddhism, which is in the trend of using means to develop large pagodas and statues, develop festivals, spiritual tourism and Dharma talks on mass media. Second, the Buddhist Middle Way (madhyamapraripad) is not simply a practice of “neither too much nor too little” like the Confucian Doctrine of the Mean, or the “average” theory of popular materialism, as Venerable Thich Chan Tinh explains, as being in the middle of the extremes between material life and asceticism. The Middle Way is not as simple and materialistic as choosing between eating three meals a day and eating one meal a day, or concentrating on studying in a monastery or practicing alone in the mountains and forests, or begging for alms every day or cooking in a monastery, but is a teaching that transcends all dualities to enter the liberating nature of emptiness. The Middle Way is always a teaching that permeates all sectarian teachings. Although the Middle Way is often talked about in Vietnam, very few people practice it because the sutras and treatises are lacking and the Madhyamaka school does not have a lineage in Vietnam. I have published ten studies in the Long Thu and Tinh Khong books printed in Vietnam in the past decade, also hoping to truly disseminate this Middle Way doctrine, and I hope that Vietnamese readers will be interested.

Third, when it is said that during the Buddha’s lifetime, monks only gathered to live in monasteries such as Ky Vien Tinh Xa, it is true that Venerable Thich Chan Tinh has not read the sutras and commentaries carefully when he said that the solitary lifestyle of the Ascetic practice is not the authentic teaching that has existed since the Buddha’s time. Those who truly study Buddhist scriptures all know that since the Buddha’s lifetime, there were many monks who lived alone or left the Buddha to spread the Dharma in all directions. The practice of solitary living has always been praised by the Buddha in many sutras and commentaries. The familiar sutra Dhammapada in the Bhikku-vagga chapter once recounted that the Buddha himself congratulated the group of disciples who “went into the forest to live alone” and all attained the fruit of Arhatship compared to the group of monks who studied the sutras in the monastery. Also in the Brahman chapter (bhahmana-vagga) of this sutra, the Buddha also praised the Venerable Kisa Gotami for “patching up his mind with rags picked up from a garbage heap and going into solitary confinement in the forest”. By looking down on the solitary practice or considering the ascetic practice “incompatible with modern 4.0 life”, Venerable Thich Chan Tinh is indeed the one who abandoned the ultimate goal of Buddhism, the path of liberation (mokṣa), when he hastily sought to adapt or accommodate to the modern lifestyle according to today’s Buddhist movements or modernization called “good life, good religion”.

Fourth, the fear of Venerable Thich Chan Tinh is that if people abandon the ascetic practice, there will be no one left to translate books, print sutras or study the sutras, which is extremely naive and simple. Venerable Chan Tinh forgot that in addition to the ascetic practice, Buddhism also has many other practices (often called 8,400 dharma doors) that Buddhists can pursue depending on their circumstances and conditions. Let me reiterate that the ascetic practice is only an orthodox teaching, but it has been very difficult for people to practice it, so now, although Vietnamese people praise the monk Minh Tue for practicing the ascetic practice, it is like we praise the poet Nguyen Du, but no one is afraid that the whole country will only have people who only know how to write poetry.

Now I would like to discuss very briefly the positive meaning of the phenomenon of monk Minh Tue in the situation of Vietnamese Buddhism. The cause and context of this “silent revolution” are the whole, then we see the general phenomenon of the world and Vietnam that many people have been discussing. Here we will temporarily not discuss the world’s overall reality of war, epidemics and natural disasters, only the current situation of Vietnamese Buddhism and also leave out the differences in sects, religions or political views. Besides the achievements of large pagodas, large statues or crowded festivals, the majority of Vietnamese Buddhists have witnessed many negative images of Buddhist activities from the practice methods to the qualities of many monks (I do not want to repeat the names here because I know that besides these unworthy people, there are still monks who truly practice and study). But anyway, many negative news have made Buddhists tired and lose faith in current religious organizations. The alms-seeking journey of Master Minh Tue, although he himself did not consider himself a monk or preach the Dharma, but the pure lifestyle of observing the precepts of the Dau Tue practice was a personal teaching, although not eloquent in words, it was a cool stream that revived in the masses the belief in the true Dharma of Buddhism which in the past years had been hidden under the forms of Dharma. I hope that this wordless Dharma will create a revolution in all social activities. As the Buddhist scriptures once said, the fragrance of morality will spread against the wind and spread in all activities, this silent revolution will be a rebirth of the Dharma that the Buddha once turned the wheel of Dharma. I hope that the venerable monks still exist in all churches. Especially that the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha will have the opportunity to correct its own shortcomings. Instead of taking a critical and sarcastic stance towards Master Minh Tue, let’s follow the opinion of the majority of Buddhists to purify the unworthy elements in all members of the Sangha. I call the phenomenon of Master Minh Tue a “silent revolution” with the optimism that the phenomenon of Master Minh Tue is not only a mournful cry in the era that many people call the end of Dharma (paścimkāla) but also a source of cool breeze to revive the noble qualities that for many years we have lived only in the material values ​​of life surrounded by short-term realities, from economic life to religious faith. So that we can finally realize in a vivid way the teachings of impermanence and non-self that the Buddha pointed out more than twenty-six centuries ago.