Teachings From Ancient Vietnamese Zen Masters – 5
Introduction
Stretching two thousand years of dharma
transmission, and after many generations of patriarchs and
great Zen monks, the Vietnamese Buddhism now has a
dharma treasure, in which hundreds of dharma texts have
showed the Way and encouraged learners via poems,
verses, chants and praises. Carrying profound meanings
and practical instructions, those dharma texts have helped
so many practitioners to experience the awakening and
attain liberation
The Vietnamese monks wrote most of those
precious dharma texts originally in ancient Chinese. These
days, a majority of those texts are already translated into
modern Vietnamese language; though still limited, those
poems and verses are greatly helping the young Buddhists
who don’t understand Chinese.
For those who live outside Vietnam, now and in the
future, it would be very difficult to understand those
dharma poems, even in the modern-Vietnamese language.
The reason is that the young Vietnamese who are born and
live outside Vietnam cannot understand Vietnamese well;
they can have a simple conversation in Vietnamese, but
most of them cannot read and write Vietnamese. Thus, it is
very hard, in general, to preserve the Vietnamese culture,
and, in particular, to pass on the Buddhist treasure to the
young overseas Vietnamese – both now and in the future.
So, it is necessary and urgent to get the Vietnamese
