Another interesting thing about Vietnamese culture is the
amount of superstition, and the belief in luck.
Although similar, religion and superstition are slightly different. Superstition in my definition, is more like
little ‘practical’ bits of religion, i.e. religious thinking (belief in ghosts,
spirits, etc) that concerns itself with day to day living, rather than ethics
or afterlife. In almost every Vietnamese
house and business, you will see a little altar in the corner with a Buddha in
a little house, and at the foot of the Buddha, a lot of little offerings, often
beer, fruit, and incense. When I got
here, this interested me, and I tried to get the Viets to tell me what all that
meant. What was the spiritual
significance of all that?
No Viet I met could actually tell me, was the weird
thing. The typical response is “It’s for
the Buddha.” Yeah, ok, I can see the
little fat guy, but what does it mean? Blank look response. The thing is, religion in Vietnamese culture
doesn’t have a focus on the afterlife, karma, or even morals as we would define
them. Instead, religion is about dealing
with powerful unseen forces, which can ruin you or make you successful. It’s a religion focused on the pragmatic side
of this life.
Vietnamese are by
label, Buddhist largely. However, the
actual belief is a mishmash of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and a little bit
of old fashioned shamanism. For as much
emphasis as the West has put on religion, the Vietnamese just kind of take it
all with a shrug. Sure, spirits exist,
but that’s about as specific as they get.
You have the spirits of your ancestors who watch over your family, and
demand offerings in order to protect you from bad luck/spirits. Then there’s the gods, vague sort of
pre-Buddhist ideas of powerful supernatural beings, then there’s the Buddha,
who is like the head honcho spirit rather than an ethical ideal, and then
there’s the concept of reincarnation tossed in there.
I asked them, if you believe in reincarnation, then how can
your ancestor’s spirits be floating around?
Shouldn’t they be reincarnated?
My Viet student looked surprised, like he had actually never considered
that. He just kind of smiled and
shrugged, and said “Yeah, that’s a good point.
I don’t know.” Fair enough. But this interaction sums up Vietnamese
religion pretty well. It’s just one of
those things that everyone believes because it’s what people believe, but
nobody pays much attention to. Kind of
like spiritual background noise.
Religion here is for practical purposes, in order to have
success in this life. You make an
offering to Buddha at the pagoda or altar in order to receive good luck. There’s no spiritual aspect as we would
define it. The afterlife is vague and
undefined, and their ethics derive largely from Confucian philosophy, rather
than Buddhist thought.
Which brings us to the concept of luck. In Vietnamese culture, there’s an unspoken
view that humans have little actual control of their life. If you are successful, it is about 20% your
work, and about 80% good luck. The
forces of the world are so enormous that each individual is essentially
powerless against things like the gods, the spirits, the bosses, the government, the weather, etc. In this culture, you can work all your life
very hard, but not get anywhere. If
you’re born a peasant, you’ll die as one too.
Social mobility isn’t an Asian thing.
Your best bet is to rely upon luck, fortune, and the goodwill of the
ancestors.
In this culture, and even so in ours, this makes sense. In the West, we have more ability to change
our situation in life, not much more, but still, there is some social
mobility. Theoretically, if you want to
be rich, you can pursue certain paths in life.
This is the big selling point of capitalism; upward mobility. As the rich continue to become the Super Rich
1%, and the rest of slide into lower middle class, this American Dream is
becoming less and less a reality, thanks to tax breaks for the rich and the
corporations, “free” trade treaties, outsourcing, and the rising cost of
education.
So, in Vietnam, they hope to persuade the things that
control luck and fortune through offerings.
If you were to ask almost any Viet why they go to pagodas or make
offerings to the Buddha, it is exclusively to receive good fortune (luck) in
this life, rather than any spiritual reason.
In the Vietnamese mind, spirits are not part of religion, they are a
force of nature to be reckoned with. And
they take it seriously. People will pay
HUGE sums of money ($1000’s) to have ‘lucky’ phone numbers, and a wedding day
is always decided by consulting a fortune teller to find the most lucky day and
time for the couple to get married on.
Some weddings take place on Tuesday morning at 9 a.m., possibly the least
romantic time.
As an atheist, I can actually appreciate this type of
thinking. In life, there is so much that
truly is out of our control, and while some people resort to the belief that
there is some divine order in the universe (‘God has a plan’ or ‘everything
happens for a reason’), I can appreciate and in fact, agree more with the Asian
idea that chaos and chance are the foundations of the universe. Evolutionary science and science in general
tend to agree on this. You can be ready to think on your feet in
order to react well, or take advantage of opportunities as they arise, but as a
wise man once said, “Shit happens.”
In Vietnamese spiritual thinking, they are just trying to
hedge their bets with a little supernatural graft to the spirits, a friendly
“gift” that might get the Powers That Be to do you a favor. Us
Westerners call it ‘corruption’ but here, it’s just a way of life and
afterlife.
