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introduction it was early morning. Quán sứ pagoda, the most important pagoda in hanoi, was crowded.1 Because it was the fifteenth day of the lunar month, middle-aged and elderly women were everywhere, wearing the brown robes and the Buddhist prayer beads that marked them as lay Buddhists. in the large main hall there were nearly two hundred devotees sitting on grass mats that flowed out the doors and onto the balcony that surrounded the pagoda. They were waiting for the sutra recital to begin; some of them had been waiting for as long as an hour in order to get a good place, close to the altar. gently waving their purple fans to cool themselves in the stifling heat, they chatted to their neighbors, or quietly counted on their prayer beads: “Nam-mô A-Di-Đà Phật...Nam-mô A-Di-Đà Phật...Namm ô A-Di-Đà Phật....”2 Then, as now, women made up the vast majority of people in hanoi who consider themselves devout Buddhists. Therewasalsoascatteringofmensittinginthefirsttworows,directlybelow the large multitiered altar that held gilded statues of the most important figures of the mahayana Buddhist pantheon. The men, also wearing brown robes, were mostly over sixty years of age, and some of them had long goatees in the fashion of hồ Chí minh. unlike the women, the men did not chat. They sometimes greeted other men who arrived, but they did so in a quick and quiet manner, after which they resumed sitting silently and waiting for the service to begin. They did not come to the pagoda early, because their place in the front was assured. some of them looked at Chinese characters written on a paper. one of them, younger than the others (perhaps in his mid-fifties), sat with his legs crossed and eyes closed as if in meditation. These people had assembled for the ritual called the Sám Nguyện—the Buddhist version of a penitence ritual—that takes place four times every lunar month.3 it consists of chanting particular sutras in unison, and was led that day by one of the old men in the front, who used a microphone. near the end of the ritual an official document in Chinese characters called a sớ, printed to look like an imperial petition, was read by another layman who had made himself a religious specialist by studying how to read Chinese characters for ritual purposes. The petition identified the group, the date, and the location, so that the buddhas would know who the supplicants were. during the chanting, chatting, vying for seats, and making room for friends 2 • introduction before the ritual began, there was another activity taking place—not by a group but by individuals acting on their own behest. mostly young and middle-aged women, they brought offerings of fruit, flowers, and incense; spirit money (vàng mã) to be burnt as offerings; and a few small bills of vietnamese currency that would be left as offerings and donations.4 after placing the offerings on the altar and praying for the well-being of their families and themselves, or maybe for a special favor, they went to the back of the hall and talked with their friends or waited silently. after about five minutes, they reclaimed their now spiritually charged offerings, called lộc. They then left the pagoda and returned home, where they distributed the lộc to members of their families and sometimes their friends to pass on the Buddha’s blessings. outside the main hall, but still in the pagoda compound, there were other activities in progress. in the library there were a few men reading books about Buddhism. in the offices upstairs a team of monks and lay Buddhists were working on the next issue of the magazine published there, The Research Journal of Buddhist Studies (Tạp chí nghiên cứu phật học). in the store run by the pagoda, there were women buying books and tapes of Buddhist chanting, and in the alcoves and corners of the pagoda complex, still others were engaged in different activities: chanting sutras, counting prayer beads, talking with friends, or bartering with vendors who sold religious books and votive items. Beyond the front gate there were others who passed by, giving no credence to Buddhism or to religion in general. This book is about all of these people—from the most cynical to the most devout. it explores some of the reasons why they...

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