Vietnam's violent dispute with Zen master

HANOI (AP) — Communist Vietnam's sometimes edgy relationship with religious freedom is being tested in a dispute over a monastery inhab-ited by disciples of Thich Nhat Hanh, one of the world's most famous Zen masters.

• PHOTO: Thich Nhat Hanh more peacefully in 2007 though now in August, 2009 religious freedoms are being tested (AP/file).

For four years, the Buddhist monks and nuns at Bat Nha monastery in central Vietnam have been quietly meditating and studying the teach-ings of the 82-year-old Vietnamese sage who is perhaps the world's best-known living Buddhist after Tibet's Dalai Lama.

But lately they are in a standoff that could test the patience of even the most enlightened. First, local authorities cut off their power, water, and telephones. Then a mob descended on their compound with sledgehammers, smashing windows, damaging buildings, and threatening [Buddhist monastic] occupants.

Communist authorities have ordered the 379 Vietnamese monks to leave the monastery in Vietnam's Central Highlands. They say the standoff stems from disagreements between two Buddhist factions at the monastery. But Hanh's followers believe they are being punished because of Hanh's praise for the Dalai Lama and his call to broaden religious freedom in Vietnam.

The affair represents a remarkable turnaround from four years ago, when France-based Hanh returned to his native land after 39 years of exile during which he developed a philosophy called "Engaged Buddhism" and sold more than a million books in the West.

In 1966 he had been forced out of what was then U.S.-backed South Vietnam for criticizing the Vietnam War. His return in 2005 made the front pages of state-owned newspapers, and he met with the prime minister. The abbot at Bat Nha, which belonged to the official Buddhist Church of Vietnam, invited Hanh's followers to train monks in their brand of Buddhism at the temple there. Many saw all this as evidence that the Communist government was easing restrictions on religious freedom. Hanh's supporters spent $1 million to buy land for new buildings and a meditation hall that holds up to 1,800 people.

But the harmony began to unravel last year, Hanh's followers say. Chinese officials were upset about published comments he made in support of the Dalai Lama and pressured Vietnam to bar the Zen master from addressing an international Buddhist gathering in Hanoi, they say. More>>