Our day started late as usual. It seems most of the group is unable to meet in the lobby at the specified time so we got to our class on Buddhism eventually. This was a really interesting class that taught us the major difference between Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism. That is that in Mahayana, which the Vietnamese follow, there are multiple Buddhas acknowledged, which opposes the view in Theravada that there is only one Buddha.
After being told some about the idea of Buddhism, we were posed with an odd question: is Buddhism a religion or a philosophy. I reflexively thought religion, because that’s what I’ve been told, but most of the lecture was on how Buddhism was teaching a way of life that was being kind to others and learning about one’s true nature. This made me think it was a philosophy on how to live life, but the piece that is making me answer that it is a religion is that Buddhism teaches that everyone and everything is reincarnated and that if you achieve enlightenment, nirvana, you break the cycle. To me, as soon as something claims you have some form of a soul that does things after death, it is a religion.
After learning about that and then visiting a Pagoda here in Ho Chi Minh City, we went to the reunification palace, and then to the war remnants museum. During this we learned that the Vietnamese call the Vietnam war, the American war, because to them, it was us who did most of it. Going into this, I knew that war was bad. I knew that the US did horrible things in Vietnam. I knew that there were still lingering effects from the things America dropped here. What I didn’t have a concept of was to the extent all of these things are true to. The first room I walked into was the “War Crimes” room. Not only is it stunning to me that people could do that to other people, I was amazed that war photographers had the courage to take these photos and then get them on the world stage. I would have feared the people commanding for these acts to happen would not want the rest of America and the world to know they were in charge of that. I would have worried that I would be taken by Americans and silenced.
While walking around, there was a quote that had an idea expressed that left a profound mark on me. The quote was from the Nuremberg Trials after WWII and was saying something along the lines of “committing aggressive war is the worst war crime of all because it is that act which creates all following crimes.” That was in 1946, and there we were 20 years later in 1966, aggressively expanding a war that we shouldn’t have been in.
Some actions we didi we heinous at the time, but some still have lingering effects. There was millions of pounds of ordinance dropped and mines laid and some still are in fields, ready to explode. So there are still Vietnamese people being blown up by American weapons today. The use of Agent Orange is destroying lives to a much greater extent than I can comprehend. There are children born four generations separated from their ancestor who had interactions with agent orange, and they are born with defects that completely change a life. It has been four generations and kids are still born without arms, with tumors, with mental deficiencies all because of agent orange. I just hope that humanity will find a way to learn from the horrors of war and live in peace together.
