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Though it asserts the insignificance and futility of the world, Buddhism has been powerfully active in the world before. It has known warriors and politicians, god-kings and bonzes who whispered the advice of the pagoda into the obedient ears of the palace. Its variety is attested by the countless images of Buddha—smiling or somber, frail or vigorous, regally enthroned or easefully reclining. Yet nowhere, so far, has there been enshrined an image of Buddha on the barricades, of the Enlightened One with a hand grenade.
Visual Aids. Buddhism's strident inner contradictions were on display last week in a great red, orange and blue tent pitched in the Deer Park of Sarnath, India, where Buddha preached his first sermon 500 years before Christ. There some 150 Buddhist leaders from 25 nations gathered for the Seventh World Fellowship of Buddhists. Begun in 1950 as a kind of informal, monk-to-monk faith forum, this year's meeting often sounded more like a U.N. debate. Russia's Venerable Lama Jambal Dirji Gomboeve—representing 500,000 Soviet Buddhists living mostly in Asiatic Russia—urged the conference to "condemn provocations against the borders of Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos." Red China and its satellites, which brutally suppressed Buddhism but found plenty of tame monks to collaborate with the regimes, decided to boycott the meeting, charging that it was dominated by the West. Living evidence of Red suppression was the conference's guest of honor, the Dalai Lama, who has been in exile in India since Peking drove him from his Tibetan throne in 1959. With pointed indirection he only noted that, "although material progress is better than a thousand years ago, mental suffering still exists or has gotten worse." Indonesian Delegate Willyse Prachna Suriya was on hand to equate Sukarno's socialism with the teachings of Buddha and to denounce the Malaysians as imperialist stooges. The Malaysian delegates listened with admirable dhyanaic self-restraint.
As for the South Vietnamese delegation, it came armed with a statement describing the three years since the last fellowship meeting as "a terrible ordeal unprecedented in the annals of our history." It supported this with a barrage of oil paintings and photographs, plus a movie, A Message from Viet Nam, which was shown after a Sarnath Rotary Club tea. The visual aids all documented outrages suffered by the Buddhists in South Viet Nam, but somehow managed to avoid mentioning Communism, the Viet Cong, the U.S. or the war. Said the delegation: "The Unified Vietnamese Buddhist Congregation solemnly declares before the world that it avoids all activities which are opportunist, discriminating and political."
Less than a week before that statement, Buddhist Spokesman Thich Tam Chau had flatly announced that the South Vietnamese government of Premier Tran Van Huong "will have to go." Three days after the statement, a Buddhist communique called the Premier "stupid, a traitor, a fat, stubborn man without any policy." In Saigon, Huong replied pluckily: "If the situation gets out of hand, we must again use force. They simply want to control the government. The Viet Cong are also trying to overthrow this government. We can't allow the Buddhist leaders to do this for them."