Love in Action

Summary

The talk presents a detailed account of engaged Buddhism as a lived response to suffering, war, and social injustice in Vietnam and beyond. Speaking from Hanoi during a 2008 retreat on Engaged Buddhism in the 21st Century, the speaker recounts how, in 1964, he returned from teaching at Columbia University in New York to help in Vietnam during the war. One of the earliest initiatives was the creation of the School of Youth for Social Service, later linked with the development of Van Hanh Buddhist University in Saigon. These efforts were described as practical expressions of compassion and loving-kindness, or “love in action” and “compassion in action,” aimed at training young monks, nuns, and laypeople to serve rural communities affected by poverty, disease, war, and social injustice. A major theme is the nonaligned, grassroots nature of the movement. The school refused sponsorship from either the South Vietnamese or North Vietnamese governments and avoided identification with political parties or military factions. Students were organized into small teams and sent door to door to explain their mission. They also studied models such as the kibbutz and the Philippine rural reconstruction movement, while building their own classrooms, dormitories, wells, and other facilities. The speaker emphasizes that the movement grew from a few hundred trainees to nearly 10,000 social workers, forming a kind of theology and doctrine of engaged Buddhism rooted in service. The talk also highlights the spiritual and ethical risks of social service in a war zone. Because villages were often controlled by opposing sides at different times of day, neutrality was dangerous; social workers were suspected by both anti-communists and communists. Many were harassed or killed, and graves at Pháp Vân Temple in Ho Chi Minh City stand as reminders of their sacrifice. The speaker stresses that without a strong spiritual dimension, social workers would burn out or lose themselves. For that reason, the Order of Interbeing provided ongoing support through mindfulness days, emotional training, breathing practice, and deep relaxation. The ordination of the first six members of the Order of Interbeing, including Sister Tien Khong, is recalled as a moment of care and symbolic blessing. Another important section recounts the speaker’s international peace work after being invited to Cornell University in 1966, with support from the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Rather than merely lecturing, he toured North America to speak about the real situation in Vietnam, meeting students, intellectuals, religious leaders, and humanist organizers. He held press conferences in Washington, DC, called for an end to the bombing of North Vietnam, and advocated a peace conference. This activism led to his exile by the South Vietnamese government. During this period, the speaker describes the self-immolation of Sister Nhat Chi Mai, one of the first members of the Order of Interbeing, who left letters and poems calling for peace and reconciliation. He also mentions the murder of five social workers on the Saigon River bank and the imprisonment of friends who circulated his book Lotus in the Sea of Fire. The latter part of the talk turns to Buddhist psychology and the practice of true diligence. The speaker explains store consciousness as the repository of all seeds, both wholesome and unwholesome, and introduces Manas as the consciousness that clings to a separate self and generates comparison, inferiority, superiority, and attachment. He uses vivid examples, such as his two hands working together without discrimination, to illustrate non-self and interbeing. A flower is described as containing the entire cosmos—sunshine, cloud, soil, rain, and consciousness—while being empty of a separate self. This leads to the teaching that emptiness and interbeing are not opposites but complementary truths. The four practices of true diligence are then laid out in practical terms: do not water negative seeds; if a negative mental formation arises, return it quickly to store consciousness; actively water wholesome seeds such as joy, compassion, and forgiveness; and keep wholesome mental formations alive as long as possible. The speaker connects this to mindful consumption, noting that what one reads, watches, and hears can nourish despair or peace. Depression is framed as something sustained by nutriment, and therefore transformable by changing one’s habits and environment. He encourages practitioners to build supportive sanghas, choose wholesome companions, and help others shift out of harmful mental states through breathing, storytelling, and mindful attention. The talk concludes by extending these teachings to families, schools, prisons, and society at large. Teachers can become Dharma teachers in classrooms, offering children a second family and helping them heal from lack of love. Buddhism, he says, can be practiced in a non-confessional, non-religious form, without outward markers of religion, yet still remain deeply Buddhist. The overall message is that engaged Buddhism is a daily practice of compassion, nonviolence, interbeing, and psychological transformation, capable of healing individuals, communities, and societies.