The Residue of South Vietnam's Elite Bureaucracy in U.S

The fourth truth implies the require to reject acquisitiveness implicit in scrambling for survival in a new floriculture. It is at this point that the multifaceted Vietnamese Buddhistic tradition becomes relevant.

Mahayana Buddhism, prevalent in northern and central Vietnam, is polytheistic and emphasizes social justice and assisting opposites in reaching enlightenment. Theravada Buddhism, prevalent in the southern part of Vietnam, is more monastic in emphasis, i.e., focuses on enlightenment solely via the sangha, or spiritual community. In other words, according to Theravada tradition, enlightenment is possible only for the religious and not for the specify person ("Buddhism"). It has been noted that most Vietnamese lay people adhere to Pure Land Buddhism, which holds that present-day actions of chastity may influence one's future fate tomorrow. Thien (Zen) Buddhism, with its emphasis on meditation, is significantly present among the Buddhist clergy (Topmiller 232f).

In the mid-1960s, as Topmiller explains, Buddhists move in opposing the north-south war while also preserving religious options, organized the Unified Buddhist Church (UBC),

Dickey, Jim. "Buddhist Nuns Practice a Tenet know As 'Loving Kindness.'" San Jose Mercury News 3 September 1993: c9.

forth from VCP suppression, the big picture of Buddhism in Vietnam is its decentralization based on differences between Buddhists aiming for social justice and those who seek disconnection from vulgar-world craving. However, in the US, there appears to have been less friction per se than an allowance of laity and clergy to the dynamics of Western social and economic culture and the particular needs of Vietnamese immigrants to cope with the culture into which they were transplanted.

The decentralized nature of Vietnam's religious traditions, as well as the self-sufficiency it implies, appears to have fostered greater assimilation for Vietnamese than for other refugee-immigrants from south-east Asia, such as the Cambodians, "who brought with them [from Asia] all the old social rigidity, question and fear" ("From" 28).

As most first- and second-generation immigrants with roots in Vietnamese Buddhism know, religious institutions, customs, and events focused around a temple in Vietnam have historically been the province of the Buddhist clergy, with virtually no involvement of the Buddhist laity. The influx of Vietnamese into the US afterwards 1975 was marked by the fact that Buddhist temples by and cosmic were organized around lay people who came together, in their verse as a minority relative to the the Statesn mainstream, "to spue their cultural and religious heritage" (Ebaugh and Chalfetz 599). The reproduction was not exact, precisely this points up the importance of the sangha as the focus of experience.

McGraw, Carol. "Buddhists in America Pursue Old Quest." Orange County Register 29 swear out 1995: C3.

Fox, Thomas C. "A Refugee's Odyssey Leads to Theological Peaks." National Catholic newsperson 36 (11 February 2000): 5.

The tradition of individual devotion in Buddhism suggests that no one in particular leads temple services in the manner of Chri
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