Editing Vietnam (section)

== Buddhism in Vietnam ==
Buddhism entered Vietnam in the early centuries CE and, by the medieval period, enjoyed sustained royal patronage under the Lý and Trần dynasties. From the fourteenth century, neo-Confucian court literati increasingly criticized the sangha for corruption and incompetence, and Confucianism displaced Buddhism as the dominant elite ideology under the Later Lê and Nguyễn dynasties.<ref>Do, Thien (1999). "The Quest for Enlightenment and Cultural Identity: Buddhism in Contemporary Vietnam". In: Harris, Ian (Ed.), ''Buddhism and Politics in Twentieth-Century Asia'': 254–283. Cassell, pp. 258–260.</ref> Historians have traditionally read this as evidence of a long Buddhist "decline," but Thien Do has argued that this narrative reflects an elite, text-centered bias and understates the religion's continuing vitality among ordinary people, especially in the newly settled southern regions.<ref>Do (1999), "Quest for Enlightenment," pp. 260–263.</ref>

The colonial period (from the 1860s) brought a genuine institutional crisis: fewer monks could read the Chinese-language sutras central to Vietnamese Buddhist textual authority, and reformers on all sides — Buddhist and secular alike — diagnosed a religion "filled with superstition."<ref>McHale, Shawn (1995). "Imagining Human Liberation: Vietnamese Buddhists and the Marxist Critique of Religion, 1920–1939". ''Social Compass'' 42.3: 329–344, pp. 335–336.</ref> In response, a Buddhist Revival took shape from the 1920s, centered on Saigon's Linh Sơn temple and modeled explicitly on the contemporary Chinese Buddhist Revival associated with Taixu.<ref>McHale (1995), "Imagining Human Liberation," pp. 337–338.</ref> Revivalists founded study associations, opened monastic schools, and, aided by the new colonial print culture, published hundreds of romanized-script sutras, catechisms, and magazines (e.g., ''Pháp Âm'', ''Từ Bi Âm'') aimed at both a small revivalist readership and a much larger popular Pure Land audience.<ref>McHale (1995), "Imagining Human Liberation," pp. 337–339.</ref> By the mid-1930s this print-driven renewal, which began in the south, had spread to central and northern Vietnam.<ref>Do (1999), "Quest for Enlightenment," p. 265.</ref>

Alongside the textual Revival, the same decades saw popular millenarian Buddhism flourish independently, most importantly in the Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương tradition and its twentieth-century successor, the Hòa Hảo movement founded by Huỳnh Phú Sổ in 1939, which fused Pure Land devotionalism, Zen, and Maitreyan apocalypticism into a mass politico-religious movement that came to control large areas of the Mekong Delta.<ref>McHale (1995), "Imagining Human Liberation," p. 341; Do (1999), "Quest for Enlightenment," pp. 264, 276–277.</ref> The syncretic Cao Đài religion emerged from a related milieu.

The Vietnam War brought Buddhism to the center of national politics. In 1963, the Diệm government's discriminatory religious policies provoked mass protest; the self-immolation of the monk Thích Quảng Đức in Saigon that July, followed by several further self-immolations, galvanized the Unified Buddhist Church's "struggle movement" and contributed directly to Diệm's overthrow.<ref>Do (1999), "Quest for Enlightenment," pp. 267–269.</ref> After reunification in 1975, the socialist state subordinated the sangha to a single state-sponsored body (the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha), while the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, which refused to join it, was suppressed; tension between the socialist state and religious institutions has persisted since.<ref>Do (1999), "Quest for Enlightenment," p. 272.</ref>