Word: nhat
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Thich Nhat Hanh's followers say he has also has had to contend with communist obstruction. Originally, the Grand Requiem ceremonies were to be billed in Vietnamese as the "Grand Requiem for Praying Equally for All to Untie the Knots of Unjust Suffering." But Vietnamese officials objected, saying it was improper to "equally" pray for soldiers in the U.S.-backed South Vietnam army, not to mention American soldiers. "The spirit of the Vietnamese people doesn't agree with the idea of praying for foreign imperialists coming to kill millions of Vietnamese," says Bui Huu Duoc, director of the government...
...Nhat Hanh has turned his attention to healing the wounds of war in his communist-run native land. But his mission faces opposition from a surprising front - fellow Vietnamese Buddhists. Last week, Nhat Hanh arrived in the former Saigon for a 10-week tour, his second in two years. His plans include a series of three-day Buddhist mass-chanting ceremonies, the first starting March 16, to pray for the dead on all sides of the Vietnam War, unprecedented "Grand Requiem" ceremonies that Nhat Hanh's followers hail as a leap forward in Communist-Buddhist relations...
...banned Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam sees Nhat Hanh's pilgrimage as betrayal, not breakthrough. The UBCV's two top officials, Thich Huyen Quang, and Thich Quang Do ("Thich" is an honorific held by most Vietnamese monks) have been under house arrest in their respective monasteries due to their pro-democracy stance and opposition to strict government control of religion, which was established after the communists won the war in 1975. A spokesman for the outlawed sect said he is "shocked" that Nhat Hanh is willing to work with his co-religionists' oppressors. "I believe Thich Nhat Hanh's trip...
...placed Vietnam on its list of "Countries of Particular Concern" for blocking religious freedom (North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia and China are all on the list), Hanoi passed a new law outlining ways for non-state religions to gain official approval. The next year, it allowed Nhat Hanh to return to Vietnam for the first time in 40 years. Late last year, Washington removed Vietnam from the religious-freedom blacklist...
...Unified Buddhists say the Communist Party's strategy is to promote Nhat Hanh's non-political teachings in order to sideline the religion's legitimate leaders, those who stayed during the war. But Nhat Hanh's followers say that he only wants to promote Buddhism among ordinary Vietnamese and point out that both of the banned sect's leaders refused to meet with Nhat Hanh during his first visit in 2005. Quang Do rejected overtures for a meeting and when Nhat Hanh led a delegation to the monastery where Huyen Quang is confined, the UBCV patriarch locked himself...