Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Religious tension mounts in Vietnam

Nguyen Giang (BBC Vietnamese service)

PlumVillage.org; the Bat Nha monastery at the center of complex dispute (BBC)

Four years ago the Zen master [and Nobel Peace Prize nominee] Thich Nhat Hanh, a monk who popularized Buddhism in the West, was invited by the Vietnamese government to return home after 39 years in exile. The move was seen as a sign that the authorities were becoming more tolerant of religion, a very sensitive issue in the communist state. More>>