THE ZEN OF HUYỀN - QUANG Is there a Vietnamese philosophy? It is doubted, and so even more is the existence of Vietnamese philosophers. In my point of view, that depends on the manner, by which philosophy and philosophers mean. If philosophy does not consist in making the abstract and general ideas into system, philosophers spending their times of reasoning about the concepts of human and natural things, but on the contrary, if the former first of all means the effort to catch hold of living and spiritual reality, the latters are those who devote themselves to live up their idea and to fulfil their ideal to which they attach all their souls ; certainly there exist, I think, philosophy and philosophers in ancient Vietnam. It is true that the Vietnamese intellectual is little inclined to abstract speculation. However Bergson, a well-known French philosopher in his "La Pensée et le Mouvant" has luminously demonstrated, in order that philosophy must be merely conceptual no-more, and by reason that "the insufficiency of natural conception which has urged philosophers to complete perception by conception, the latter, before heaping up the intervals between the data of the senses or of conscience, and, by that, unifying and systematizing our knowledge about things", makes philosophers remove from concrete and living reality, moving creator, and spend their times "of interpreting the world each by his manner" as reproached Marx -- perception must, therefore, be continuously widened. And if it is thought that in so far as attention can specify, illuminate, and interpret, it does not bring in the field of perception what does not exist at first, to this logical objection, Bergson will reply: "there are, indeed for centuries, those who function is just to look on and to make us look on what we do not naturally perceive, those are artists" 1

And Bergson is right, chiefly of what generally concerns oriental philosophy and especially Vietnamese thought, here culture belongs to an over millenary tradition, by which a privileged place is given to those who ) that are gifted with Knowledge by Birth "Sinh Nhi Tri" ( means the men and supermen who gifted with sight can directly have the experiences of the eternal truth. Then come those who get (knowledge by ) getting knowledge by very hard study) or "Khôn Nhi Tri" ( study who reach this truth by a continuous effort of thinking and study. That is the reason why philosophy hereby does not only consist in reasoning about concept, but certainly making experiment on spiritual and living truth. In fact, Vietnamese philosophers, if there are both sage and artist like their Chinese and Indian masters. They have devoted their lives to carry out a meaning to which they attach a sincere and intense faith, and an aesthetic and moral ideal. In order to illustrate what I have just told, I have only to point out an example amidst many others, the life of one of our sages, known with the pseudonym Huyền-Quang (Mysterious light) ) and by his famous poem about the pagoda setting on an unique ( pillar, or Một-Cột, which stands up on an enormous cylindrical stone pillar without decoration, in the middle of a square pool, situated near the citadel of Hà-nội. Huyền-Quang belongs to the Lý family, his real name is LýĐạo-Tài, and he originally came from Văn-Thai village of Bắc-Giang province. His father Tuệ-Tổ, was celebrated by his prowess against the Chàm, but refused to his appointment as mandarin. Huền-Quang's feature is rather ugly, but his intelligence is extraordinary. At the age of twenty years-old he was 1st. laureate at the national competitive examination of the three systems: Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. Before examination, his mother wanted to see him married, but she did not succeeded to find a wife for him. After his success in the examination, all noble families in the country concurrently offered their girls to him as wife. The King himself wanted him to be his son-in-law, but HuyềnQuang refused all these beneficial proposals; disgusted with the unsteadiness changeability of mankind sentiments, he expressed his bitterness in two following verses: "No one has a look to a man in his poverty 2

No-one condescends to look at a man while he is poor, Thousands of people are eager to please him after his When he has passed the examination as the laureate, be success in the examination is eager for by thousands". His bitterness was so deep that he thought of taking refuge in Buddha's protection. He was nominated as President of National Academy, and in his time all the diplomatic letters of the Vietnamese Court, to Chinese one were drafted by him. One day, he accompanied the King on an excursion to Vĩnh-Nghiêm pagoda, there he made acquaintance with the bonze PhápLoa who preached the Zen, Huyền-Quang was illuminated and pronounced these verses: "Being a mandarin, I hope to come to the "Enchanting isle", the immortal country Realizing the Truth, I'll reach Buddha's land. In the human society one is god, In the Nirvana, one become Buddha Honour and riches all are as ephemeral as autumn coloured leaves or summer white clouds Who in this transitory world can take hold of what he loves? " By these thought three times he presented his request to ask the King his retirement from the earthly life to become disciple of Pháp-Loa (The spiral of Dharma) the second eminent patriarch of Vietnamese ZenBuddhism, by the latter baptized him Huyền-Quang. By his immense erudition and his profound metaphysical knowledge, Pháp-Loa had quickly thousands of disciples. From this date, Huyền-Quang followed step by step the two Zen masters of that time, King Trần-Nhân-Tôn, vanquisher of the Mongolian invaders who himself was also a bonze under the name "Diệu Ngự Hoàng Đế" (the Emperor who in equilibrium controls himself) and First patriarch. Huyền-Quang died in 1364, at eighty years old. After his death he was given the posthumous title of "Third Patriarch", and was ranked by Vietnamese Buddhist Tradition with two precedents in the list of "The three patriarchs in the Bamboo-Forest"_(From the "Textes Bouddhiques Annamites", E.F.E.O. ed. 1943). 3

About his abundant writings rich in philosophical lessons. It seems that nothing is left, but some of his poems, here is the one. It is a stanza of metrical Tang calling up the process of progressive internal illumination, that the author led his mind to have experiences in his spirit on the "dhyanique" attitude. The poem is recorded in Chinese characters, an essential ideographical scripture system which is the mode of "polyscopique" expression, and the only one particularly fitted to translate the metapsychic experiences of such kind, in which the subject and object evolve in the same continuous and moving flux of spiritual matter. The ideograph scripture is a picture which suggests us by imagination, the simultaneousness of dynamical aspect from the phenomena of spirit trying to concentrate to produce the intuitions of the absolute. Reciting the poem in right order or in reading it, if one has not a rapid imagination about Chinese characters, one may contemplate their images which succeed one another and found all together then one will be a vision of a spiritual unity which is concretized by manifold undulations. I try to translate in logical language what could be made a dialectical movement. In order to offer to our readers some imaged sensations, I'll want to present this text to them in Chinese characters:

From the square meditative room, the last sound of the bell is dying in an autumn evening. Outdoors, the moon-light is twinkling on the coloured leaves of the banyan trees.

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The bill of an emblematic bird which is stood on a curved corner of the roof is reflected in a pond as a sleeping bird in a square mirror. Two "stupas" standing in parallel direction, in front the pagoda, are radiant on their top of jade impregnated with frozen fog. The multiplicity of exterior conditions trouble no-more the spiritual interior of the citadel that the walls of the fortress preserve against all of earthly obscenity. There is not the least anxiety that veils any more the spiritual eyes which are watching everything with tolerance, and which penetrate the phenomenal equality of right and wrong. The vision of blissful love illuminates at the same time the Hell and the Heaven". _ (From Việt-Ẩm Thi-tập, line 144, p. 20, book III . preserved by E.F.E.O.) That is the indifferent translation of what the famous poem says, through which the author has utilized an artistic expression both symbolical and metaphorical to describe faithfully one of his spiritual experiences. It is to speak properly about "yoguique" experience which is called "dhyanique" in the Buddhist spheres, the essentially religious experience has said the well-known American philosopher William James: "This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the Individual and the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition hardly altered by differences of clime or creed. In Hinduism, in Neo-Platonism, in Sufism, in Chistian-mysticism, in Whitmanism, we find the same recurring note, so that there is about mystical utterances and eternal unanimity which ought to make a critic stop and think, and which brings it about that the mystical classics have, as has been said, neither birthday nor native land. Perpetually telling the unity of man with God their speech antedates languages, and they do not grow old". _ (The Varieties of Religions Experience,Lecture XVI-XVII) In the above quoted poem, the two conjugated scriptures Thượng-Phương literally mean "superior square" and figuratively "the room for meditation at the top of the pillar, in a pagoda". But the scripture closely connected with the expression Phương-Thốn means a square thumb 5

designating the "heart" or the siege of the meditative thought, and also Phương-Trượng "square of ten feet" that means a mountainous island in the East ocean, mythical world, the completely paradisiacal stay of the immortals. But Phương-Trượng justly means also the room of retreat, the reduced universe for the bonze in contemplation who was presently Huyền-Quang. The author uses all these analogies with the intention of suggesting to us that at this moment he is in the contemplative position of his dhyanique retreat, and his conscience begins to part from external things for the sake of concentration in an interior point, the square of thumb, the spiritual heart where any agitation is extinguished little by little with the last vibrations of the bell sound. But before being intensely extinguished, psychic phenomena are belated in the play of dark and light in the phenomenal world, the world which exists but is not real the world of moving duality as said Tsong-Khapa, of Maya: Sắc-không or Name and Substance. As the moon-light twinkling, playing at hide and seek on the coloured leaves where the wind waves or the bird half-slumbered which is reflected in the mirror of the pond, or as the beam of jade on the top of two stupas standing face to face. It is easy enough to be detached from the existence. Therefore, the author makes us going from material phenomena to the psychological ones, from multiplicity to simplicity by contradictory way, contrast by contrast until the conscience is widened, intensified, takes part in conceptual ideas, pervades in the delusive contradiction of opposites: right and wrong, good and bad, after all, to get a global vision of the creative love which distinguishes no-more the appearance of the Hell and Heaven. The spirit has achieved Unitarian transcendental plan of Buddhisattwas, Nirvana. So by the way the cognitive thoughts of Huyền-Quang has fulfilled the synthesis of three oriental philosophical systems, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, in which, the transcendental is in relation with the existence in aesthetical experience at such point that the trace of ligature is no longer seen but all of the three are founded in one rich unity. This unity is not the general and abstract idea of conceptual systems, but it is a kind of tendency in the fair way of continuous change, a sort of flux that is running. It is the full love which overflows tow and creation, to Hiếu-sinh (Forgiveness) exactly as water in the oceans raised by the wind to make small or great waves which are different in appearance but 6

identical in essence. That is the reality of vital current which is continuously created from the Sinh-Sinh (Life Life) at its bosom the author is placed by an intuitive act and not from firm concepts that he has inferred. He does not begin from what is static, but certainly from fleeing images, the state of conscience which is widened and detached gradually as which progresses by inverse direction of discursive thought that is stretching out. It is, "the movement of return which is the very movement of truth" that Lao Tzu said in his "Book of the Right Way and its Virtue" and that Bergson has expressed in nearly identical terms to define his philosophy: "To philosophize is to inverting the usual direction of work of thinking"_(Introduction to Metaphysic). In the movement of return the spirit will attain the essence of things, the very movement of their interior lives, because the author is not satisfied with the symbol of the living reality. But he wants to enter into reality and participates in it, and because he thinks that the more "bouddheité" exists as reality in the exterior as well as in the interior, or after his expression: "Có thì có tự mảy may Không thì cả thế gian này cũng không Kìa trông bóng nguyệt lòng sông Ai hay không có có không là gì? If the existence of the world is affirmed, so is the infinitesimal, If it is not affirmed, nor is the whole universe Look at, over there, the image of the moon at the bosom of a river. Who know the meaning of existence and of nothingness? It is the both immanent and transcendental reality, Unity among Diversity, synthesis of the phenomenal antinomy of existence: life and death, vidya and avidya ect ... that is what the King Trần-Thái-Tôn has expressed in a quatrain at the end of his "Lessons about Sunyata" . "Birth, oldness, sickness, and death are the permanent law of existence When one get free from one chain One in get caught in another In illusion one prays for Buddha In doubt one prays for Dhyana 7

But Buddha and Dhyana are not to be invoked They are silent and above words". By these verses the Buddhism of Trần-Thái-Tôn, the author of "Lesson about Sunyata", is so far from nihilism and pessimism. It is that, from the "sorrows of the existence" Trần-Thái-Tôn carried out the ideal of delivery, because it doesn't matter to search escaping the existential world but no doubt to plunge deeply into it to find salvation. On the light of illuminated eyes, the Samara and the Nirvana are identical. Only to those who are blinded by egoistic desires, the world appears like Hell, while to those who have divines eyes, it is a paradise. "In the square room of meditation above by an autumn night when the last sound of the bell vanished in the air. The moonlight waved on the red leaves of the Phong tree. The symbolic bird carved in the frame. Work of the roof reflected down in the cold water of the pond like a reversed sleeping bird in a square looking glass. Two stupas standing opposite each other with their peal on their top shivering in the cold. Million of causes no more disturbed the mind of one who was meditating thanks to the fortress keeping his soul from all rudeness of existence. Even half of an anxious thought did not remain and the spiritual eye began to open generously to the world. His mind penetrated deeply the meaning of the right and wrong, the true and untrue notion which appeared as equal. And then the Hell and the Buddha hood were to be seen under the standpoint of creative love".

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