Vietnam Quotes

“In the desperation of war people forget every other value in the attempt to survive and will do anything that advances their chances of survival.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“People cannot believe in the words of those who have invaded their homelands and are engaged in shooting, destroying, burning their homes, and terrorizing their fellow citizens, and this irrespective of the objective truth of what they may be saying.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“In fact, the people of Vietnam generally are fed up with the whole absurd war, and if there are those who still fight valiantly in the National Liberation Front, it is because they are convinced it is the only way to secure their independence, and not because of any ideological alignment.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

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― Kosen Gregory Snyder, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“Basing their teaching on the essay on the Amitabha Sutra by the great monk Van The, the Vietnamese Zen masters have thus realized a synthetic doctrine combining Zen and the Pure Land practices that suits the masses of the people. Except for the pure Zen monasteries, almost every pagoda in Vietnam practices this combined Zen-Pure Land doctrine.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“Suicide is an act of self-destruction, having as causes the following: (1) lack of courage to live and to cope with difficulties, (2) defeat by life and loss of all hope, (3) desire for nonexistence (abhaya).”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“In the Buddhist belief, life is not confined to a period of sixty or eighty or one hundred years: life is eternal.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“To burn oneself by fire is to prove that what one is saying is of the utmost importance.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“Buddhists do not accept the argument that there are no choices except that between victory and surrender. The combination of a cessation of bombing, North and South, and of all positive military action by the United States, with the creation of an independent, nonmilitary government in South Vietnam, offers another possibility.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“what has developed in Vietnam is an international, ideological war between the United States and the People's Republic of China.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“The most effective way is not to support either of the two sides, but rather to support those Vietnamese people who seek a third way of achieving peace in the way that I have suggested.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“The revolution of 1963 against Diem brought a new vitality to Vietnam, indicating that the people had the power to overturn a government that they disapproved of, but this vitality has been dissipated by the fact that the overwhelming power of the United States is directed against any faction in South Vietnam that expresses itself as having a will for peace.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“But if we withdraw, the Communists will take over. Would you like that?" American friends ask us. There are Vietnamese who are unable to answer this question. But not being able to answer it does not mean acceptance of a continuation of the present hopeless situation.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“The war in Vietnam has already lost its meaning, and the longer it goes on, the deeper the hatred and frustration in the heart of the Vietnamese.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“Officially the Americans are there at the invitation of the Vietnamese to save them from "communism"; if the Vietnamese people were free to say what they really want, this official reason would be exposed as the falsity that it is in the eyes of the world.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“As in other countries, religion has its greatest hold outside the cities. The populations of the cities are more inclined to be "atheistic.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“People were herded into the villages against their wills and the total concept of the village became a military concept. Peasants were forced to leave villages that had been the homes of their families for generations, and in leaving them to leave behind not only the graves of their ancestors but many relics and mementos, including family altars, which perished in the same flames that consumed the village.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“The essence of the war is this: The American effort could succeed if it could detach nationalism from communism, but the Americans cannot do this just as the French could not do it in their turn. What they do instead is to force these two elements closer together, and this is the reason the Front constantly grows more powerful.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“Americans should ponder the fact that the leaders of none of the major religions of Vietnam have ever declared themselves in violently anti-Communist terms, not because of any sympathy with communism, but because to do so, in the temper of Vietnam today, is to suggest that they are profiteering from the war through the acquisition of American dollars.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“I know it is a hard fact for Americans to face, but it is a fact that the more Vietnamese their troops succeed in killing, and the larger the force they introduce into Vietnam, the more surely thy destroy the very thing they are trying to build.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“The spirit of patriotism among the peasants is very high. They are not informed about world history or ideological struggles; what they see is a large force of white Westerners doing their best to kill their fellow countrymen, many of whom previously fought against the French. The peasants do not see the victims of the American military as dead Communists, but as dead patriots.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“The peasants are not concerned about ideology: no one can frighten them with stories of the evils of communism. With their property already destroyed, they do not fear that the Communists will take their property. And if one speaks to them of freedom and democracy, they say, "Of what use is freedom and democracy if one is not alive to enjoy them?" So it is clear that the first problem of the Vietnamese peasant is a problem of life itself: how to survive in the midst of all the forces that threaten them; how to cling to life itself.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“Since early 1964, I have frequented the remote villages of Vietnam, along with teams of young social workers, and it is from these visits that I interpret the mind of the peasant.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“As is common to any church organization, both conservative and progressive elements are present in the Buddhist Church. The former is slow to respond to the need for actualizing Buddhism, while the latter desires to speed up the reorganization of the Church in order to take a more active part in the life of the society. The young monks belong to the latter element, grouped as they are about the Church's cultural and social institutions but lacking key positions in the Church itself. The influence of their thought and action is strong among the population, however. They have a greater awareness of the issues that Vietnam has to face in economics, culture, education, and social welfare and are anxious to make use of the potential resources of Buddhism in order to solve these problems. The young monks naturally have the support of the intellectuals and younger generation. However, this support is not the Church's support. Conservative dogmatism and fear of change have always hindered progress. The real issue is how the Buddhist Church can get on with its internal revolution while fulfilling its duty toward society.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“The Buddhists of Vietnam desire to mobilize the potential force of their religion in order to rebuild their society, and consequently they have carried Buddhism into every domain of life: culture, economics, politics, and social welfare. Such a revolutionary effort naturally requires time for its realization.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“The idea of Buddhism as a national religion did not take shape in the 1940s but much earlier—in the days of the Truc Lam Zen set on Mount Yen Tu. But the idea crystallized during the hardship and suffering that the Buddhists had to endure under the French occupation and the regime of President Ngo Dinh Diem. The campaign to overthrow the Ngo Dinh Diem regime in 1963 not only succeeded in mobilizing the people to the defense of Buddhism but also awakened the nationalistic consciousness of the masses. In every Buddhist the idea of Buddhism and nationalism are intertwined and cannot be easily separated.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“According to the glorious history of our people, the Vietnamese have always desired to create their independent culture in order to resist the oppressive threat from the north. In this great and noble task of creating a national culture Vietnamese Buddhism played an important part. This is proved by the great achievements of Buddhism under the dynasties of Dinh Le, Ly, and Tran. The truth is that Vietnamese Buddhism is a national religion.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“Objective conditions in Vietnamese society have compelled the Buddhist religion to engage itself in the life of the nation.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“The majority of the peasants take little or no interest in the problems of communism or anti-communism. They are direct victims of the war, and consequently they welcome every effort in the direction of ending the war.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“Because "anti-communism" has taken on a mystical, nonrational, almost religious character in the United States and some other Western countries, I want to explain that I do not use it in these terms in referring to my own attitude or that of Vietnamese Buddhist or other nationalist leaders. Communism has a base of social and personal idealism, and recruits thousands of people who are passionately concerned to eliminate the exploitation and inequality that have characterized much of Western society, and to create a form of social organization whose slogan will be "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." This is an objective that is theoretically consistent with the best in most of the world's great religions, and with which religious people can have no quarrel. Moreover, the economic organization of society in socialist terms, meaning a society in which the means of production are operated for the good of the people generally rather than for the profit of a minority, is consistent with the needs of a country like Vietnam. Few Vietnamese Buddhist or nationalist leaders could believe that their country could adopt a Western-type capitalism, even if they thought it was a moral form of social organization. Vietnamese anti-communism stems from the methods that organized communism uses to attain its ends: the suppression of all significant dissent and debate; the liquidation of even the most sincere and committed opponents, violently if need be; the assumption of omniscience on the part of the party, which is a form of fanaticism that is stultifying to a never-ending search for truth—to which Buddhists, for example, are committed; and the willingness to sacrifice the very existence of a small country like Vietnam to the "larger" interests of the Communist side in the cold war between the great powers. This is not theorizing for Vietnamese non-Communist nationalists, who have found themselves and their organizations repressed with the same ruthlessness north and south of the seventeenth parallel, by the North Vietnamese-NLF-China coalition as well as by the Diem-Ky-US grouping. I do not mean to imply that all Vietnamese nationalists who are also anti-Communist share exactly the same view. Some of them undoubtedly are far to the right, politically. Many would oppose the Communist tactics on the quite simple grounds that they believe in their own goals for Vietnam and want to work for them. For many of us, however, for whom the stated objectives of communism are largely acceptable, the opposition we feel grows from our conviction that when such methods are used to attain these "good" ends, the ends themselves become unattainable because the methods used corrupt the whole struggle. If humanistic religion has any meaning at all, it is that humanistic ends cannot be achieved by inhuman and depersonalizing means.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire