American Buddhist Net

Hanoi - Vietnam has officially allowed exceptions to its longstanding two-child policy under certain circumstances, a government official confirmed Wednesday. A new decree details seven scenarios in which couples are to have the right to a third child, Nguyen Thi Thanh Huong, director of the Hanoi Population Department, said.

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At a time when Buddhist pilgrims and tourists are flocking to the Huong (Perfume) Pagoda for the country’s most elaborate spiritual festival, Lao Dong newspaper has exposed a shocking truth: Several restaurants in the pagoda complex are openly slaughtering wild animals.

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By Peter J Brown

Japan's Okinotori Island, which has a Tokyo postal address even though it lies roughly 1,770 kilometers south of the capital and it is actually a pair of tiny islets, has become a bone of contention for China.

Among other things, China refuses to grant it island status, and refers to it instead as an atoll, reef or simply a rock. By doing so, China hopes to throttle back Japan's plan to create an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) there. The dispute over Okinotori, which Japan calls Okinotorishima, persists because it involves strategic concerns and rights to undersea resources over an area that is roughly equivalent to the entire land mass of the four main Japanese islands.

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Thanh Pagoda in the northern border province of Lang Son held a ceremony this week to congratulate elderly Buddhists on their longevity and honour them for their role in raising their children.

The honoured Buddhist believers included 155 people over 70 years old – a few of them well over 100.

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Ho Chi Minh City – The Vietnamese Church will baptise 650 new catechumens on Easter Sunday. During Lent, 200 will be trained in Hanoi diocese; the other 450 will do the same in Ho Chi Minh City. They were introduced to the community last Sunday in the cathedrals of the respective dioceses. In Ho Chi Minh City, more than 1,500 worshippers took part in the Mass conducted by Card Pham Minh Man.

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"Asia, our common task for the Third Millennium" -Pope John Paul II

A delegation of the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha (VBS) will travel to India to receive a sari, said to be that of the Lord Buddha, to be brought back to Vietnam early next month.

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KIEN GIANG — Herbalist Tran Van Hay, the man with longest locks, died of natural causes at his home in Kien Giang Province yesterday. He was 79 and unfortunately died before receiving formal acknowledgement of his record.

He had stopped cutting his hair 50 years ago and his hair was 6.8m long and weighed 10.5kg. The world record is now in the name of a Chinese woman whose hair is 5.6m long.

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Hanoi - Vietnamese religious officials Tuesday rejected proposals by a controversial France-based Buddhist monk for increasing religious freedom in the communist country.

Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese monk with a wide international following, called for greater tolerance by the government in a proposal published February 13.

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BANGKOK - While global markets fret about European sovereign debts, could Vietnam be Asia's first over-stimulated economic domino? With a wobbly currency, fast and loose bank lending and an absence of local confidence in the government's economic management, Vietnam stands out as the region's prime candidate for a sudden market re-evaluation of the financial impact of recently ramped and frequently misallocated fiscal spending.

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VietNamNet Bridge - An exhibition themed “Arts of Ancient Vietnam: From River Plain to Open Sea” opened at the Asia Society in New York on February 1.

The exhibition introduces new scholarship on the history of Vietnamese art, with approximately 110 objects dating from the first millennium BCE through the 17th century on rare loan from ten leading Vietnamese museums.

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In Vietnam hundreds of monks undergo re-education to infiltrate overseas temples with the aim to destroy the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam

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HANOI — One of the world's most influential Buddhist monks made a plea for religious freedom in Vietnam Monday after his followers were forced from two temples.

Devotees of French-based Zen master and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh say they have gone underground in Vietnam since last month when they were driven from the Phuoc Hue temple where they sought refuge after an earlier eviction.

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One of the world's most influential Buddhist monks has made a plea for religious freedom in Vietnam after his followers were forced from two temples.

Devotees of French-based Zen master and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh say they have gone underground in Vietnam since December when they were driven from the Phuoc Hue temple, where they sought refuge after an earlier eviction.

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HANOI - A VIETNAMESE Catholic monk was beaten and seriously injured after trying to reach a parish which remained sealed by police two weeks after unrest over a crucifix, the local priest said on Thursday.

About 20 uniformed and plainclothes officers on Wednesday stopped Brother Nguyen Van Tang and several other Catholics from entering Dong Chiem parish in My Duc district, about 70 kilometres (40 miles) from Hanoi, said parish priest Nguyen Van Huu.

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BANGKOK — Four democracy advocates in Vietnam were convicted Wednesday in a closely watched trial of trying to overthrow the state, prosecuted as part of campaign against dissent that has led to dozens of arrests in recent months.

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HANOI, Vietnam, January 18 (Compass Direct News) – A Vietnamese man violently forced to recant his fledgling Christian faith faces pressure from authorities and clansmen to prove his return to traditional Hmong belief by sacrificing to ancestors next month.

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HAI DUONG, Vietnam -- One of the flamboyant entrepreneurs making it big in booming Vietnam unveiled a massive precious stone on Monday that he plans to transform into the world's largest jade Buddha.

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Reminds me of the Buddha's request that no images be made of him. I am neither here nor there on the imagery issue, but there does seem to be a trend in traditional Buddhist countries to make gaudy temples and statues. The usual argument is that showiness attracts people, so it's good. To a point, I can agree. But let's remember the basic monastic ideal--a shaved head, rags stitched together for a robe, a single begging bowl, no food after noon. ABN

A famous Zen master has accused Vietnam's communist government of hiring mobs of people to violently evict his Buddhist followers from two monasteries.

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In the realm of geopolitical disputes, the barren Paracel Islands are a far cry from the mountains of Kashmir or the alleys of Gaza. Claimed by both China and Vietnam, the archipelago comprises some 30 tiny spits of land in the middle of the South China Sea with innocuous names like Woody Island and Antelope Reef. No one lives there, nor has there been any evidence that lucrative natural resources lie beneath its lagoons and reefs. But, experts say, at a time when regional economies are booming — and nationalist sentiments swelling — the Paracels and the heavily contested Spratly islands further south remain a flashpoint in this part of the world, where the traditional balance of power is tilting further toward China.

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HANOI, Vietnam — A famous Zen master has accused Vietnam's communist government of hiring mobs of people to violently evict his Buddhist followers from two monasteries.

Thich Nhat Hanh, who helped popularize Buddhism in the West and has sold millions of books worldwide, also called on Vietnam to lift restrictions on religious freedom and respect human rights.

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All hearts up on Doi Pahee in Mae Sai district were heavy when they heard the news that the Asean Free Trade Area would take effect last Friday.

In this mountaintop village, all residents make their living from growing coffee. For years, middlemen have come to this village to place orders for their harvests in October. However, they received not a single order last year and are still waiting expectantly for a buyer to show up.

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FOLLOWERS of a Buddhist monk have abandoned the temple in southern Vietnam where they had sought sanctuary and are on the run from police.

The students of Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, who helped to popularise Buddhism in the West and sold millions of books worldwide, slipped away from the Phuoc Hue temple under cover of darkness.

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Followers of a famous Buddhist monk have abandoned the temple in southern Vietnam where they had sought sanctuary and are on the run from police, who have been pressuring them for months to break up their monastic community and return to their home villages.

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HANOI — Members of an "illegal" Buddhist group in communist Vietnam who took refuge in a temple for three months have left the pagoda in accordance with a deadline, the temple's head said on Wednesday.

Their departure from Phuoc Hue pagoda follows what Human Rights Watch, a US-based watchdog, alleged was a year of intensified government efforts to disband the community of young monks and nuns.

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Please do not expand the following observation beyond a simple illustration of how a religious group can be viewed as a threat in the country of its origin, but as no threat at all - even a great benefit - everywhere else. Thich Nhat Hanh's group is being tossed out of Vietnam because they are viewed as a threat to those in power only because they have the potential to grow and have some influence independent of the government within that society. The same basic statement applies to the repression of Falun Gong in China. There is no other reason for it. ABN

The 11th Sakyadhita International Conference on Buddhist Women (SICBW) opened in Ho Chi Minh City on December 28, drawing over 2,000 Buddhist women from more than 47 countries and territories worldwide.

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I bet none of them will dare to raise this issue: Several hundred followers of a banned Buddhist group in communist Vietnam on Friday asked for asylum in France, where their leader is based, claiming that they face persecution at home. ABN

Socio-economic development and urbanisation exert more pressure on Viet Nam’s river systems every day, while national stakeholders fail to co-ordinate their conservation efforts.

The health of rivers, as urbanisation increases and industrial parks are built everywhere, has become an increasing public concern and the topic of many conferences.

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BANGKOK — In the first of a series of trials of dissidents in Vietnam, a court on Monday convicted a former army officer of subversion for pro-democracy activities and sentenced him to five and a half years in prison.

The conviction of the former officer, Tran Anh Kim, 60, comes as the government is tightening controls on dissent in advance of a Communist Party congress in early 2011.

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Hanoi - The trial of a group of former students accused of running Vietnam's largest and best-known pornographic website was due to begin this week in Ho Chi Minh City, a court official said Monday.

Vu Phi Long, deputy president of Ho Chi Minh City's Criminal Court, said the group consisted of Nguyen Tang Truong, 26; Lam Duong Hieu, 29; Nguyen Do Cong, 30; and Tong Hoang Anh, 57. The four were reportedly members of the website's management board.

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How Christmas traditions have been embraced in small-town Phan Thiet, Vietnam, with a few notable twists

After the Vietnam War, Christmas celebrations and other public forms of Christian religious expression, viewed by authorities as a relic of America’s occupation, were more than a little frowned upon. However, in conjunction with Vietnam’s Doi Moi or “Renovation” economic reforms (begun in 1986,) religious freedoms increased, cultural connections with the outside world were re-established and holiday traditions were not only revived but have since assumed a place in the nation’s popular culture.

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Hanoi - Vietnam is a social networking paradise, a giant village of 86 million people where everyone seems to be just one or two degrees of connection away from everyone else. It is either the kind of society that designers of social networking websites like Facebook dream of, or the kind of society where nobody needs such websites at all.

For the first 10 months of this year, it looked like the former was the case. Facebook, which had struggled to find a toehold in Vietnam, took off in 2009, and now claims 3 million members. The service received a boost in July, when Yahoo shut down the Vietnamese branch of its social networking site Yahoo360.

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