Buddhism and Ancestor Worship
From: Charles Waugh
Date: Sat, Sep 3, 2011 at 2:12 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear VSGers,
Can anyone explain how Buddhist notions of reincarnation are reconciled with Vietnamese ancestor worshipping beliefs? Does the spirit reincarnate, or does it remain an intact identity in the spirit world? Or both? Or something else?
All comments and suggestions for reading are very much appreciated.
Charles Waugh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Utah State University
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From: Jo <jkirk@spro.net>
Date: Sat, Sep 3, 2011 at 4:26 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
You might try looking at Heonik Kwon’s Ghosts of War in Vietnam , 2008.
Joanna Kirkpatrick
Visual Anthropology
From: Chung Hoang
Date: Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 6:04 PM
Subject: [Vsg] Re: Vsg Digest, Vol 79, Issue 14
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
Dear Charles Waugh
Your questions are interesting. I am thinking about them. Hereunder are my initial thoughts only:
1. In the new religion you mention, does the spirit only become capable of interceding in his/her descendants lives once he/she finally makes it to the Heavenly realm? Or else where does the ancestor worship part come into play?
- No. Once an ancestor dies, he or she in form of a spirit (by "spirit" here I mean the soul, not as a deity or god) can intercede in his/her descendants' lives by other assist and protect them. Ancestor is believed to even inform his/her descendants in daily business or how to avoid bad things as unwanted conflicts, traffic accident or making wrong decisions. Basically, such information can be received by interpreting dreams, or going to a spiritual master for consultancy.
- It is believed that it is descendants' filiat piety (which shown in how they seriously worship their ancestors) will assist their ancestors' sefl-perfection to finally get to the Heavenly realm.
- Once get to the Heavenly realm, ancestors often choose not to intervene in any other realms. In case they do so, it is because they are assigned duties by the Heavenly Jade Emperor. In this case, they will intercede in human life in a larger scale, the whole nation and people for example, rather than in their descendants' lives only.
2. Do you know whether Buddhist stories about reincarnation (when the Buddha was a monkey, or a lion, etc.) get told much in Vietnam?
I do not know about this. What I know is the Chinese novel of the Journey to the West is very much popular in Vietnam.
3. Or how a Vietnamese Buddhist might understand his or her own ability to have had past lives?
- A Vietnamese Buddhist will always believe that he or she has had past lives. But he/she can only know what he/she has been in previous lives when get enlightened. In some cases, a high ranked, enlightened monk may tell he/she about his/her past lives.
- To the Buddhists, the ultimate purpose of doing self perfection is to escape from the circle of reincarnation. Thus, it is not really meaningful to know about previous lives. However, a Buddhist may want to know whether in his or her previous lives he/she had been a human and had done self-perfection before. This is important because one may spend many many lives to do self perfection in Buddhist way before being qualified enough to get to the Nirvana.
Best wishes
Chung Hoang
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From: Charles Waugh
To: Vietnam Studies Group
Date: Mon, 05 Sep 2011 10:55:54 -0600
Subject: [Vsg] Re: Buddhism and Ancestors worship
Dear Chung Hoang,
Thank you very much for your explanations and suggestions, which confirmed my suspicion that for many Vietnamese ancestor worshipping beliefs take precedence over Buddhist beliefs in reincarnation. In the new religion you mention, does the spirit only become capable of interceding in his/her descendants lives once he/she finally makes it to the Heavenly realm? Or else where does the ancestor worship part come into play?
Do you know whether Buddhist stories about reincarnation (when the Buddha was a monkey, or a lion, etc.) get told much in Vietnam? Or how a Vietnamese Buddhist might understand his or her own ability to have had past lives?
Thank you also for the reading suggestions!
Charles
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On 9/5/2011 7:13 AM, Chung Hoang wrote:
Dear Charles Waugh
About Buddhism and Ancestors worship
Basically, in Vietnamese traditional belief, there is a separation between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Only spirit mediums who can act like a bridge between the two worlds.
When one dies, his or her soul will be led to Yin world thanks to a dedicate funeral and rituals. Although Yin world is invisible to the living, it is not somewhere so far and unreachable. It is believed that the tomb is where the soul of the dead reside. Thus the tomb or grave is extremely important to the dead. If the grave is moved, or touched both intentionally or unintentionaly, the dead will be affected and he or she may strike back to the subjector of action, or to his or her living offsprings. Normally, there is no such thing as reincarnation. Ancestors are believed to continuously protect and assisst their children once they are worshipped and rememebered.
Regarding spirits, there are good and bad. Good spirits are souls of the great personages who did contribute a lot for the building of, and protection of the nation and the people when alive. Bad spirits are souls of the people who died at the holy hours or having unjust death. These spirits often act as evil agent, are believed to cause Yin illness which can only be cured by a spiritual master.
Recently, there is a combination of Buddhist ideas of reincarnation and the ancestor worship among new religious groups. It is believed that when a man dies, its soul will be sent to Yin realm. If that man is a good person when alive, the soul will soon be re-incarnated, back to the Yang realm. If the person made very good deeds when alive, i.e. acted as national heroes, he or she can get to Heavenly realm (Thiên) and stay there eternally. The soul of very bad persons must stay in the lowest level of in Yin realm, the Hell, to be seriously tortured. Some can be released after long time, some stay in Hell forever. It is believed that if a person tries hard for tu(self-cultivation, self-correction, self-perfection) when alive, he or she will have a greater chance of at least re-incarnate to be human beings, instead of other kinds (castle, evils, demons, etc.) of next life when he or she will continue to self-perfect until qualified to get to Heavenly realm to forever enjoy ultimate happiness and absolute freedom. (This piece of writing comes from a part of my working PhD thesis).
I would recommend you these books though they are not exactly relevant to your question. If you would like to discuss further, you can email me directly.
1. 1. Th? Hi?n Nguy?n. Yin Illness: Its Diagnosis and Healing within Lên Ð?ng (Spirit Possession) Rituals of the Vi?t, Asian Ethnology, Vol. 67, No. 2, 2008.
T?2. Ta Chí Ð?i Tru?ng.
- Th?n, Ngu?i và d?t Vi?t (Spirits, People and the land of Viet), Van Ngh?, California, (first edition in the USA), 1989.
3. Thien Do. Vietnamese Supernaturalism: Views from the Southern region. RoutledgeCurzon, London and New York, 2003.
Hope it helps
Regards,
Chung Hoang
--
Van Chung Hoang
PhD candidate
School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria 3086
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From: Charles Waugh
Date: Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 8:23 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Chung Hoang,
Thank you again for sharing your thoughts about this topic.
I think my question about recognizing past lives was more a question about recognizing the possibility for future lives, which would then seem to conflict with the notion of becoming a static/stable ancestor spirit. Maybe there's no simple answer here, and the closest we can get is something like Philip Taylor's in _Goddess on the Rise_, where he describes Buddhism as "a more negotiated social practice, and fluid epistemology" and Buddhists who recognize that spirit worship really isn't Buddhist, but accept it anyway for a variety of reasons (or at the very least, tolerate it). Maybe a lot of people end up coming to some kind of similar reconciliation of the contradictions on their own.
Charles
Charles Waugh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Utah State University
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam
Date: Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 4:23 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Trust a scholar to ask questions that ordinary people do not ask themselves! that's our job, isn't it?
Ancestor worship predates the introduction of Buddhism in Vietnam (1st century), and was grafted onto existing beliefs. It is the Vietnamese genius not to seek coherence, so it is possible to believe simultaneously that our ancestors remain themselves in the other-world and also to believe in reincarnation (and depending on one's sins or virtues, as different life forms). As well, it is possible to believe that sinners are forever condemned to inhabit one of the 10 hells (on this topic, Stephen Teiser is the authority)
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Kenneth T. Young Professor
of Sino-Vietnamese History
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From: <jmcdan@sas.upenn.edu>
Date: Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 4:33 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>, "Tai, Hue-Tam"
Dear All,
This is a very interesting thread. Lao/Cambodia/Thai Studies has been dealing with this important issue as well. Pattana Kitiarsa's new book (coming out in a few months from Silkworm Books) and my new book The Lovelorn Ghost and the Magical Monk (Columbia U.Press) also explores the topic. This topic was also of interest to Donald Swearer in his 2004 Becoming the Buddha (Princeton U.Press) and even Baas Terwiel's well-known 1975 Monks and Magic. There is also a lot of emerging work in Burma Studies on this topic. Philip Taylor's work has been influential on TLC studies and some of these TLC books might be of interest to Vietnam Studies readers. If anyone is interested in a detailed bibliography, please feel free to contact me off list.
best,
justin