From her paper about a play by Thich Nh’ât Hanh by Olivia Rawlings-Way in 2004:
At 12.30 a.m. on July 5, 1967, in the village of Binh Phuoc, Gia Dinh Province, a group of strangers abducted five young men, brought them to the bank of the Saigon River, and shot them. All five were volunteer workers in the School of Youth for Social Service, [the SYSS] a non-violent organisation that sought only to heal the wounds of war and reconstruct the villages. Their names were Tuan, Tho, Hy, Lanh, and Dinh. Tuan was a Buddhist novice.
Four died immediately. The fifth, Dinh, survived, but his clothes were soaked in blood and he lost consciousness. The strangers thought all five were dead, so they left.
Silence on the river. There are many stars in the sky, but no moon. A small sampan comes gently to the shore. Mai appears. The sampan is large enough to take the four, only four, because the fifth, Dinh, is still alive, and must stay behind. (9)4
This is where the play begins, just after the murders have taken place. Upon their raft, the five characters journey from the finite to the infinite, traversing the primordial waters of creation towards re- creation. Thus, the play unfolds as a metaphysical exploration of life beyond death; uniting the realm of the living with the realm of the dead, and offering assurance of the illusion of separation.
. . .
From the beginning of the play there is a sense of reconciliation and resolution in the dialogue. Upon the small boat that is to carry these spirits to ‘the other shore,’ the characters confront their deaths with serenity and acceptance. They laugh and banter, listen and remember, lucidly recalling the moment of their horrific deaths without sorrow or attachment and, most strikingly, with forgiveness. We are compelled to question how the murdered are able to forgive their murderers.
A principle teaching of Nh ́ât Hanh’s Engaged Buddhism, which is a pervasive theme in his poetry and this play, is the practice of ‘identifying the real enemy.’ Nh ́ât Chi Mai, one of the five characters in the play, was a young Buddhist nun who worked with the SYSS. In 1967, Sister Mai immolated herself for peace. She is also depicted as a bodhisattva. Throughout the play, Nh ́ât Hanh uses Mai’s voice as his own. She relates the notion of the ‘real enemy’:
Those who are shooting at this very moment do not know who they are fighting. All are victims...
Men kill because, on the one hand, they do not know their real enemy, and on the other, they are pushed into a position where they must kill…
So, men kill unjustly and in turn are killed unjustly, and it is their own countrymen who kill them...
Who is really killing us? It is fear, hatred, prejudice. (30-2)
The practice of ‘identifying the real enemy’ reflects the Engaged Buddhist emphasis on personal responsibility and inner transformation and it is grounded in the Buddhist belief in the non- duality of self and other. It is the false separation of self and other which causes suffering; ultimately, the true enemy is to be found in this fundamental delusion. Nh ́ât Hanh proposes that rather than objectifying our fear, hatred and prejudice onto the ‘other,’ we must transform the roots of violence within the self through spiritual practice. Our own inner enemies of fear, hatred and prejudice can be transformed and the non-duality of self and other can be realised. The Dalai Lama has called this ‘internal disarmament.’5 Nh ́ât Hanh’s essential teaching is that the only way to create peace is to ‘be peace.’ He further proposes that the realisation of the interdependence of self and other can induce the complete empathic identification with the perpetrator or the oppressor which gives rise to understanding and non-judgment. This practice of non-dual identification reveals that the perpetrators of suffering are in as much pain as their victims as they suffer from ignorance of their true selves and the true nature of reality. Such understanding gives rise to compassion and forgiveness.
(—from, ‘The Path of Return Continues the Journey’ – Engaged Buddhism and the Prajñāpāramitā Heart Sūtra in the Popular Theatre of Thích Nh ́ât Hanh! By Olivia Rawlings-Way, conference paper, January 2004)
The author concludes her paper with the following:
Nh ́ât Hanh has spoken of his initial response to the deaths:
I was in Paris when I heard about the assassination of four students of the School of Youth for Social Services, a school I had helped start. I cried. A friend said, ‘Thây, you should not cry. You are a general leading an army of nonviolent soldiers. It is natural that you suffer casualties.’ I said, ‘No, I am not a general. I am just a human being. It is I who summoned them for service, and now they have lost their lives. I need to cry.’21
The idea that artistic creation can function as religious praxis is prevalent in many schools of Buddhism. To repeat Mai’s comment: ‘Every artist is capable, through his art, of reaching the supreme objective of life itself.’ (33) This line can be read as an instance of authorial intrusion. With regard to Nh ́ât Hanh, his art is the art of narrative creation inspired by spiritual practice, and the supreme objective is love. For the author, the play embodies the transformation of individual suffering into an offering of forgiveness, reconciliation, hope and compassion. Thus, I would suggest that the play is as much a personal spiritual rite and a profession of faith and love, as it is an expression of grief. Understood in this context, the play becomes an act of communion with the dead. Ultimately, it reads as a celebration of life, an act of worship; homage to those who died, a poetic eulogy of praise.
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21 Nh ́ât Hanh: Call Me By My True Names, op cit, 25.
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‘The Path of Return Continues the Journey’
Initially, The Path of Return Continues the Journey appears to be a simplistic poetic drama, a quiet meditation upon life and death. However, penetration and analysis reveal an elucidation of the teachings of Engaged Buddhism and the metaphysics and dialectic of the Prajñāpāramitā teachings, profound in its theological insight and authentic in its dramatic expression. The skill of the bodhisattva, the upāya, is the ability to convey the teachings in ways that are suitable and understandable to whoever is being addressed. Thích Nh ́ât Hanh’s ability to translate the complexities of Buddhist philosophy through metaphoric and symbolic mediums deems him the exemplar of a bodhisattva, or indeed, a ‘Buddha of Suburbia.’
(ibid)
Read with gratitude!
