Submitted by Riley Hazel the 2024 Spring program in Singapore, Republic of Singapore…
Vietnam: Communism and Religion
As a practicing Catholic, you would expect me to stick to churches. However, I try to explore other religions, respect them, and learn what they teach to understand them better. This week, I went on Spring Break to Vietnam and Thailand, but here I wanted to talk about Vietnam, a communist country, and its religion. Unlike China, which extremely restricts religion, Vietnam embraces religion, although about 14% of the population practices something. The most common religion here and in most of Asia is Buddhism, more specifically Mahayana Buddhism with half of the 14% practicing it and the rest being Catholic. However, when I was touring the country, I came upon a temple with massive statues of the reclining Buddha, happy Buddha, and standing Buddha. I learned that the reclining Buddha is calm in death, the standing Buddha is teaching, and the happy Buddha means prosperity. While at the temple, simply walking around the temple and seeing all the worshipers of Buddhism astonished me. The quietness, the respect by taking off shoes in each area, and the prayer across every statue were wondrous. While most view Buddhism as a religion, I view it as more of a philosophy of life in how we as humans can learn to be better based upon the past teachings of others. While reading the teachings of the Vietnamese Buddha who reached Nirvana, the pure afterlife of Buddhism, I understood that life is about the struggle, it’s about the ups and downs. It only isn’t until you realize the good in everything that you can learn to be as free as the Buddha. This journey of understanding and learning was able to further support my philosophy of life and for that, I’m grateful. Vietnam in the end, is a vastly communist country with propaganda everywhere, it doesn’t feel much like it, even when it comes to religion. (Submitted on March 15, 2024)