Losing our religion

VnnNews - A number of Vietnam’s most sacred traditional festivals have become chaotic and overly commercial events.
 
It takes half an hour to find a place to park my car at Tran Temple in Nam Dinh province. I’m happy to get out despite paying a fee 10 times the normal rate. Thousands of pilgrims have come to attend the Opening Seal ritual. During the Tran Dynasty (1225 – 1400) this was an annual event to officially launch new administrative activities and to confer titles of merit on successful members of the royal court.

Today people come in the hope of procuring a symbolic seal which will be a token of good luck for the year ahead. The ritual is due to begin at 10pm with the seals distributed only after 11.30pm but the temple complex is already heaving with around 50,000 people by 7pm. There are five security rings with almost 2,000 guards, police and military personnel shepherding the eager crowds.

Some 15 minutes before the anointed hour, the crowd lurches forward in excitement. Like a tsunami, the crowd starts to rumble and roll. Punters fall to the ground. Others push on through the security rings in spite of the anguished screams and apparent pandemonium.

“I felt as if I was in hell. Then I thought I was going to die. The crowd trampled over my body,” says Le Van Hai, a visitor from Hanoi who needless to say failed to get one of the seals. He eventually scrapes himself of the ground and staggers away.

But he can count himself lucky. More than 60 people faint in the ordeal and are taken to hospital. And perhaps they should be thankful not to have been robbed. As the crowd jostles for the seals, pickpockets go to work. There are numerous reports of wallets and phones disappearing over the course of the night.

A commercial affair

The suffocating atmosphere of the Tran Temple festival is overwhelming, if not a little frightening. The Dam Da festival held in Hoa Binh is more sedate but it is also one of the most commercialised festivals I have ever attended.

Recognised as a national-level cultural historical site in 1989, the Dam Da pagoda located in Lac Thuy district is home to beautiful caves and grottos. Under the management of a privately owned company, the area is now geared towards tourism. Oddly, the pagoda is 50 per cent concrete. Traditionally pagodas are made entirely out of wood.

The complex area is actually a mishmash of religious ideologies – namely Buddhism, Christianity, Taoism and the traditional worship of matriarchs. Not satisfied with the beautiful landscape, artificial caves and hills were produced. Much of this is covered by plastic sheets or iron hoarding. Freshly painted statues sit in glass boxes.

Nothing seems particularly sacred. Least of all the donation boxes placed expectantly under each statue. In one cave, staff count a pile of money left behind the altar. Pilgrims leave money in trays by joss-stick bowls under statues.

I am asked not to photograph the money. One of the staff explains that the money will be taken out of the cave and used for money-changing services so pilgrims can leave small denominations.

A monk in a pair of jeans and a drab brown cloak appears. He introduces himself as the cave tour guide. Using a flash-light to point at the figures on the ceiling and walls of the cave, he cooks up a few magical stories then holds out a tray as if he’s a beggar.

Over the top

During festival season pilgrims also flood the pagoda complex on Yen Tu mountain in Quang Ninh province’s Uong Bi town. Known as the “Buddhism capital” of Dai Viet (Vietnam), this is a particularly popular spot. Visitors stuff cash into the palms of statues or on top of the numerous altars. Some statues look as if they have been sprinkled in coins. Many pilgrims also offer boiled chicken and pork.

Strictly speaking these are not Buddhist practices. Buddha after all was a vegetarian who refused money from devotees. All that is deemed necessary, when paying your respects, is a single joss-stick.

Paying for luck

The increasingly widespread practice of “handing” money over to statues in pagodas to invite luck has been decried by some scholars as a form of commercialisation of religion.

“The practice is destroying the real value of worship and offering. The belief that the more people offer to the gods, the more they are blessed, is misplaced,” says Tran Lam Bien, a historian working for the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism’s Department of Cultural Heritage.

“Why do they think they can bribe the genies and in return the genies will give them good luck? It is a shame that they are forgetting that success can be obtained through hard work. I think its time people are educated about how to worship properly,” Bien says.

He says that the most important thing was that people should know when to stop. “People offering as much as possible to Buddha and genies are turning them into greedy mandarins in an unreal trades,” he says.
Offerings can only be accepted as part of religious activities when they are simple. When they become lavish and elaborate, they should be considered superstitious acts, he adds.

Hoang Chuong, director of Vietnam Centre for Preservation of Folklore Culture, says more and more festivals have been restored thanks to rising living standards in Vietnam. “But people are taking advantage of festivals to enrich themselves or to pray for a promotion,” says Chuong.

“The chaos in Tran Temple festival has demonstrated people’s blind belief. If you are talented, you will be promoted. It is ludicrous that when you are lazy and untalented, you think that you’ll get promoted thanks to a sealed piece of fabric,” he says.

Both Chuong and Bien are critical of the lax management of authorised agencies. “It is clear that agencies clearly know about the situation, but they, in many cases, support negative phenomena in festivals,” Bien says. 

Source: Time-out

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