238 CHAPTER NINEbeautiful and talented heroine, Kie'u, who is forced to part with her true love,
young scholar Kim. To save her family from ruin (thus answering the call of
Confucian filial piety), she is driven into a life of prostitution. After years of
suffering, she finds refuge in a Buddhist convent, where Kim accidentally dis-
covers her. In the intervening years Kim has married Kie'u's sister, Van, as
Kie'u herself had arranged before her departure from the family. He has also
risen in wealth and official rank. Despite his fulfillment of the Confucian pri-
orities in life, something is missing in his success; he has never forgotten his
true love.
At first Kie'u refuses to give up her secluded life, feeling that her past ex-
periences have made her unworthy. Totally devoid of bitterness, she invokes
the Buddhist notion of karma and her own past misdeeds to explain her terri-
ble sufferings. Kim responds by appealing to those same Buddhist values, for
karma also brought the lovers back together. When Kie'u depicts herself as a
fallen flower, Kim invokes the Buddhist image of the luminous mirror-mind
from which worldly dust can be removed. Kie'u finally relents.
The couple does indeed live happily ever after, although Kie'u asks that
their marriage be platonic. The poem ends on a Taoist note, advising an ac-
ceptance of the Tao, balanced by a recognition of inner goodness (pristine
Buddha-nature) that makes human beings responsible for their actions. The
shifting fortunes of all the characters in the work illustrate the Buddhist no-
tion of impermanence as the fundamental characteristic of human existence.
From this insight follows the lesson that spiritual practice-ironically symbol-
ized by the pure love that pulls Kie'u out of the convent-is far more valuable
than fleeting sensual gratification.
9.11 The Modern Period
Through most of the Nguyen dynasty, Buddhism's fortunes were on the wane,
first because of the Confucian ideology that dominated the court, then be-
cause of the activities of the Catholic missionaries who, under French rule,
were able to convert large numbers of Vietnamese, especially in the south.
The end ofWorld War II in 1945 eventually gave Vietnam an opportunity for
self-rule, although the country quickly fell into a protracted civil war between
a Communist north and an anti-Communist south.
The war grew to devastating proportions. The most graphic symbols of
Buddhist reaction to the war were the monastics who practiced self-immola-
tion as a way of calling world attention to their double plight: the suffering
caused both by the war and by the pro-Catholic south Vietnamese govern-
ment's persecution of Buddhists (Strong EB, sec. 8.8.4). Many of the monas-
tics who gave their lives in this way were Theravadin, but the historical
precedent for their actions came from China (see Section 8. 7.1), where self-
immolation had once been a devotional practice. In the context of the Viet-
nam War, however, its impact was primarily political. Pictures of burning