For years, this peaceful community has been targeted by the Iranian authorities and subjected to discrimination and detention. Baha’i leaders have been arrested and imprisoned for practising their faith. Iranian officials have also made statements to try to link the Baha’i to the political unrest in that country. These are trumped-up accusations and a cause of concern for the safety and well-being of those unjustly detained in Iran. In fact, today, on the fourth anniversary of the arbitrary arrests and detention of several Iranian Baha’i community leaders, we are particularly reminded of the ongoing, persistent and pervasive prosecution of religious minorities. (Deepak Obhrai, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs)

The plight of the Baha’i in Iran offers a looking glass into the plight of human rights in Iran in general, and the criminalization of innocence, as finds expression in the criminalization and targeting of Iran’s largest religious minority in particular. (Irwin Cotler, Mount Royal)

Bahá’ís are routinely executed. Others are arrested arbitrarily with no clear reason for it. Worst of all, this is done with the full support of the country’s judicial, administrative and law enforcement systems. The mullahs of Iran have long regarded the Bahá’í faith almost as an enemy of Islam. According to a report from Amnesty International, at the end of January 2012, over 80 Bahá’ís were held because of their beliefs. (Wayne Marston, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek)

From my familiarity with Baha’i people in my riding, these people promote peace wherever they are. It is just absolutely incomprehensible that any regime would target them as enemies. (John Weston, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country)

You can take a moment to read through the debate on your own, or browse through highlights mentioning the Baha’is (PDF).

Update: The Baha’i World News Service and the Canadian Baha’i News Service are also carrying this story.

So, just a little note about an upcoming event in Ottawa. Ridiculously talented singer-songwriter MJ Cyr is coming to the Ottawa Bahá’í Centre (211 McArthur Ave, near the Vanier Parkway) to perform her latest devotional album, Canopy, a collection of spiritual writings presented in a variety of musical genres that everyone can enjoy. Please don’t hesitate to invite friends, as attendance is free. Don’t miss this rare chance to hear one of Toronto’s hottest new artists performing in Ottawa!

MJ’s thoughts on Canopy: “All the lyrics have been extracted directly from Writings of the Baha’i Faith. My intention with this record is to find concepts, and ideas, that are universally inspirational to everyone no matter the belief or school of thought. Too often, concepts connected to spirituality or Faith seem so out-of-reach, or taboo. I hope to create something that can show a softer, more tangible side.”

To put a bit of a personal spin on this invitation, I remember hearing MJ something like 15 years ago at a series of provincial youth conferences in Kingston. I would always hang out at the coffeehouse events in the evenings just to hear her sing, nay, belt out her original songs with her piercing, passionate voice, which I always found to be well suited to devotional projects such as we now see in Canopy. While her voice may be somewhat tempered compared to her early days, it still clearly conveys her passion, especially in the album’s heartbeat-backed title track. The strength and clarity of her voice and her deft use of vocal harmony, two of her characteristic musical traits, are present even in the album’s more down-tempo tracks. Most of Canopy is light-hearted and upbeat, which may come as a surprise to those whose concept of devotional music revolves around gregorian chants or ragas. Oh My‘s sing-along vibe and Intone‘s boppy rhythm and instrumental variety would fit nicely on a roadtrip mixtape, while I could listen to Innocent in Heart‘s ambient electronic tones and Destine for them Every Good‘s driving synth-centred pop-rock rhythm all day at work. The Watchman, meanwhile, puts the traditional story of a “heart-surrendered lover” driven by seemingly hostile watchmen towards his heart’s desire to a melodious country beat. Overall, Canopy is an enjoyable, accessible album that should please not only those seeking musical enlightenment, but also those looking for a solid collection of songs that offer a little more than just a catchy tune.

The Baha’i Community of Vietnam held its fourth National Congress in Phan Thiet city, the southern province of Binh Thuan, on April 23 and 24.

More than 300 Baha’i dignitaries and followers nationwide attended the congress, which also saw the participation of representatives of the Government’s Committee for Religious Affairs and the Baha’i advisory board for Asia and the Board of Trustees of Huququ’llah for Southeast Asia.

The congress elected a nine-member religious council of the Baha’is of Vietnam for the 2011-2012 term.

It also set forth key tasks with the emphasis on mobilising Baha’is to live up to the motto of “living well in one’s life and one’s faith” and strengthening the nation’s great unity and solidarity with other religions.

Introduced into Vietnam in 1954, the Baha’i community now has more than 7,000 followers in 43 cities and provinces, mostly in central and southern regions.

The Baha’i Community of Vietnam has been recognised as a religious organisation by the Government’s Committee for Religious Affairs in July 2008.

This article—a short one to be sure—isn’t a direct translation of the Vietnamese one, nor is the French article. The original reads something more like the article on the Can Tho convention in 2010 I blogged last year, with a lot more references to the Baha’i Faith being completely lawful and being in full accordance with regulations, etc. Despite not saying much, of course, the English article’s at least correct. I’m mostly just surprised they included the word “Huqúqu’lláh”.

Anyway, as soon as I get a little more time, I’ll take a stab at translating the Vietnamese and French articles for a little comparative coverage. Keep your eyes peeled. And if you’re interested in reading more articles like this, then why not follow me on Twitter and let me know?

Read about last year’s Baha’i National Convention in Can Tho.

But by far the most exciting feature of Google Goggles is that it will recognize text—block letters, not necessarily handwritten—and translate it. I tried it with some bilingual signs on an OC Transpo bus here in Ottawa and the translation turned out to be more or less correct. Here’s how it works:

Take a picture of some sort of text. It should be fairly legible; I figure block letters are best. OCR isn’t the best at picking up messy letters. Goggles will find the text in your picture and tell you what it sees. In this case, it’s pretty close.

Click through to the translation screen, and you’ll see Google Translate giving you roughly what the words say. It’ll automatically tell what language is displayed and translate it into English (or whatever else).

Now, at the moment, Goggles seems to only be able to recognize a small subset of languages, among them English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. It definitely seems to work best at recognizing languages written in Latin characters. It was even able to recognize some Vietnamese text I found, although the sentence it spat back at me was mostly garbage. I tried it on a number of other alphabets that use non-latin scripts—Chinese characters, Russian, Lao, and Thai—and didn’t have any luck; it didn’t even recognize them as language. That would probably be my main request to the Goggles team—recognizing non-latin scripts, especially things like Chinese, Thai, Korean and Japanese. Definitely a promising app, though, with sweeping potentialities: imagine if you could understand any shop sign you came by on your trip to China, or Japan, or wherever, just by snapping a picture of it with your smartphone?

It’s been several months since Quynh’s father Hai passed away, and the one hundred days—the “tốt khốc” (“end of tears”), marking a resumption of “normal” life after a loved one’s passing—have elapsed long since. Being surrounded by family has helped Quynh’s mother Lam cope with the tragic loss greatly. Quynh commented on her mother’s evident sense of joy at the large turnout for the 100th-day commemoration—sixty people or more arrived to pay their respects and to be with the family, if I recall correctly.

Vietnamese people are tightly interconnected with those around them. When I first came to Vietnam, I often mused about how little “personal space” I enjoyed, chalking it up to a case of high population density. Vietnam’s a small country, right? Long but thin. It must be hard to fit 85 million+ people in here. But more than that, the Vietnamese people aren’t afraid to be close as a community. Since returning from my first trip, I began to note how woefully separate, isolated I felt in Canada—as if every trip back home was like shutting myself into a cell. In Vietnam, there are no such barriers isolating people—or at the very least, they’re much less apparent than in the “developed” West. Sure, it means that people can pop in unannounced for a visit at all hours of the day, but hey, is ten minutes’ worth of tea and chatter so much to ask? Or are those ten minutes really better spent holed up watching TV? (Full disclosure: I tend to hole myself up with my laptop, which isn’t much better. And yes, I reproach myself for it.)

Quynh’s family has this interconnectedness in their blood—visiting and receiving friends and family, just to be with them. We often go together to visit relatives each time I come. We always take trips to Dien Ban, a small town in the countryside of Quang Nam province, to see Quynh’s grandmother, who I love dearly. She never remembers me, of course, since, as I’ve mentioned, her memory is long gone—although the last time I saw her, she claimed to remember me from when I was just a little boy, living across the street from Quynh in Da Nang. We also visit the aunts and uncles there—several of them live nearby—and now, since August, we always cross a little further into the bush to visit Hai’s resting place on the way back home. Lam said that visiting is one of the things that she and Hai would do regularly, just to keep in touch with people. An honest culture of home visits. What more could you ever want from your in-laws?

In a previous post—in which I described my adventures taking care of the family shrine—I briefly explained the memorial gathering that took place shortly after I arrived, on the 14th day following Hai’s passing. That morning we worked hard to get everything ready quickly, so that we could start around 10:00. Sweep, sweep. Mop, mop. Clean the house. Get candles ready. Buy flowers for the shrine—Hai’s shrine downstairs, and the shrine for the ancestors upstairs. Rice, salad, stew, spring rolls, tofu, and plateful upon plateful of other vegetarian foods were prepared and laid out, first for the spirits of those who had passed away, but then for the family and friends who had gathered. And when the family came, they came in great numbers. I remember feeling awkward, surrounded by so many people—some my age, some older Vietnamese gentlemen and ladies—all speaking a language of which I only had a tenuous grasp, laughing and curiously enjoying my antics and my broken speech. But their presence there had a purpose beyond the laughs, and beyond even paying their respects; they were there to help the family move on. Once, twice, three times, at regular intervals, family and friends come back to be with those close family members who grieve and mourn, to show their fellowship and love. Quynh’s family held memorials at 7, 14, and 21 days following Hai’s passing, but in many other places, Vietnamese families hold weekly memorials, up ’til the 49th day—the “lễ chung thất”. After that, the 100th day is the next milestone, and after that, yearly memorials are held (according to the lunar calendar), the second of which marks a formal end to mourning.

Dieu-Hien T. Hoang, a Registered Nurse at the University of Washington, describes the memorial process as a way of providing structure for the grieving family, calling a proper funeral “more than an empty gesture to the dead, it helps the living to grieve and go on with life”.

To the bereaved, the image of the deceased as part of this world is still fresh in their minds and recedes itself into another world only gradually. In the first three to five days after death, before the funeral takes place, the bereaved grieve in waves; at times deeply and intensely, with quiet moments to work through their feelings in private and to reconnect and receive social support from family, friends, and the community. Each successive wave of deep public grieving takes the deceased a little farther away from the living [...] The last stage, leaving the deceased in company of the ancestors, creates a sense of continuity, a feeling that the deceased is actually going somewhere to be among other loved ones.

Dieu-Hien T. Hoang, RN,
from Death Rituals in Vietnamese Society

The outbursts of crying that were so frequent in the first few weeks gradually subsided as time went on. Quynh tried her best to be strong, and my mother noted that she was lucky—I was able to be by her side during this formidable test. Her mother was much harder hit, and took a long time to fully recover. For months afterward, we observed her struggling to come to terms with her husband’s passing, wrestling with denial, making comments suggesting that her husband was still alive, calling his resting place his “new house”, and so on. At times, it wore our nerves thin, but we managed with the help of the friends and family, and with lots of prayers. We prayed for the unity of the family every night. With time, life gradually returned to normal, or at least semi-normal.

Just as family can help wounds to heal, of course, they can cause old wounds to reopen, inadvertently or otherwise. During the Tet season this February, Lam found it hard to receive the flood of guests that would usually have come to wish her and her husband a happy and prosperous New Year, full of health and happiness. Thus there are bumps in the road to overcoming grief. And while the first 100 days nominally mark the “end of tears”, those tears are rarely the last to be cried. In Canada, it’s often said that the first Christmas after losing a loved one is the hardest. It’s natural, because we miss their presence, their warmth, their laughter. So although I came back to Vietnam to celebrate Tet with the family, it was a bittersweet occasion, marked with as many tears as laughs and smiles. But what can we do? We move on, focus on our future. And, above all, as we do every night and every day, we pray. Not just praying with incense—praying in the depths of our souls, for God’s influence in helping these wounds to heal.

One thing that has sustained all of us, apart from our day-to-day busywork, is our service to the Baha’i community. We knew Lam was beginning to recover when she showed herself willing to return to her active life of service as a member of the Spiritual Assembly in Da Nang, dutifully taking notes in meetings, visiting the Baha’i friends, studying with them and accompanying them in their own service. “When sadness visits us,” ‘Abdu’l-Baha once said, “we become weak, our strength leaves us, our comprehension is dim and our intelligence veiled. The actualities of life seem to elude our grasp, the eyes of our spirits fail to discover the sacred mysteries, and we become even as dead beings.” But joy, He explains, gives us wings. “[W]hen our thoughts are filled with the bitterness of this world, let us turn our eyes to the sweetness of God’s compassion and He will send us heavenly calm!” Then, as He describes, we become able “to cope with the world and to find our sphere of usefulness”. When I wrote about the life of a Vietnamese son-in-law, I ended off by telling the story of my conversations with Lam following her husband’s death, while she struggled to see the way forward, to see a future for herself. And in time, bolstered by her determination to serve the way her husband had always served, that veil was lifted from her eyes, and she was able to find a new sphere of usefulness for herself.

So life goes on. Friends and family continue to pop in unannounced, to offer incense, drink tea and chat. New friends are made, babies are born, the healing words of God help to soothe the hurt. Time goes on, and we grow closer, learn to support each other better, become more and more interconnected. Indeed, each time I come back to Vietnam, armed with a few more words and sentences in Vietnamese than before, I feel a little closer to those around me, like I fit in a little bit more, even in the crush of people. I feel a little more part of the family—the immediate family, the extended family, and even the greater family, that nationwide sea of “anh” and “chi”—brothers and sisters.

so yeah, look for the final post sometime this week. I’ll be back in Vietnam in about two weeks to celebrate Tet, so I’ll be nice and busy visiting relatives and taking pictures. What a blessing, to be involved in uniting the East and the West so directly.

On these, the coldest winter mornings when the roads are covered in snow and ice, I roll groggily out of my bed to get ready for work. Shower, brush teeth, shave. Get dressed in long johns, spiffy tailored pants and shirt from Da Nang. Lumber downstairs and feed the cat. Then pull a little piece of black plastic out of my pocket and pin it above my breast pocket, and walk quietly into the den, where the shrine awaits. Gaze with love at the portrait that stands there, and take three sticks of incense, applying a flame until they smoulder. Then holding them before me, I utter a quiet prayer, and bow three times, repeating the Greatest Name of God. Planting the sticks in the handmade ceramic pot in the centre of this small, humble shrine, I bow once more and turn away to start my day.

I used to burn incense, but only because it seemed cool and exotic. It didn’t occur to me that I could ever use it to pray.

Well, not pray. I can’t really use a stick of incense to pray, or can I? Maybe worship is a better word. I’m still not sure where that line is, or if there even is a line. I know how Baha’is pray, and I know the way we were taught to pray in Catholic schools. I know the Lord’s Prayer by heart, and I’m doing my darndest to memorize the Tablet of Ahmad. I even know what Muslim prayers look and sound like. But I still wonder whenever I see people offering incense at shrines, temples and pagodas: What exactly are you thinking? Not in a “wondering about your sanity” way, of course, but genuinely wondering what goes through the minds of the Vietnamese, the Chinese, the Koreans and Japanese when they offer incense. How exactly do you pray?

What does it mean to pray? When we answer that question, we probably answer using some combination of knowledge and experience of our own religious or spiritual tradition, or that of the society that surrounds us. “When I pray, I kneel down, bow my head and put my hands together.” “When I pray, I prostrate myself and face the direction of Mecca.” “When I pray, I sit in the lotus position.” “When I pray, I ask God to send blessings upon my family and my loved ones, and to keep us safe and secure.” “When I pray, I tell God about all the things that are worrying me, and that way I can unload my heart.” “When I pray, I ask God to help me serve Him better, and to help me accept His will for my life.”

As a Baha’i, Quynh told me, she generally offers some form of Baha’i prayer whenever she offers incense. What people do as they offer incense, she said, might differ based on their upbringing. A Buddhist might praise the Buddha and ask Him for assistance. A Christian might do the same for Jesus. Even someone who eschews organized religion, as many in Vietnam do, might simply converse with the spirits of the departed, and ask them for their protection and support. Quynh’s father would recite entire Baha’i prayers when offering incense. It was often noticeable, as he would take more time to offer incense than others who did the same. I remember seeing him do this at Quynh’s and my engagement ceremony, and wondered what was going on, why he was taking so long with the incense—until Quynh explained that he was actually reciting a prayer from memory. I thought this made a lot of sense, so I ended up doing the same and still do.

‘Abdu’l-Baha said that prayer is a conversation with God. “We should speak in the language of heaven , in the language of the spirit,” he said, “for there is a language of the spirit and heart. It is as different from our language as our own language is different from that of the animals, who express themselves only by cries and sounds. It is the language of the spirit which speaks to God.” That makes sense, doesn’t it? Prayer is universal to the human experience because the language of prayer is higher than the syllables and sounds we hear in our day-to-day lives; it comes from the level of the individual’s soul, and creates a connection between that soul and God. So, while I might wonder about the different forms of prayer as expressed in different cultures, I also know that each of these forms is simply a different way of approaching the same thing: the individual’s relationship with the Sacred, the Divine. Whether one prays to God, Allah, Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, or to the spirits of ancestors, it’s simply one way or another to express that ineffable, mystical relationship.

When I gather my thoughts in front of the shrine I keep in my den, I often sound out my feelings, my worries and cares, to see if I want to ask anything of God, or, at the very least, where I should focus my prayers. Perhaps I’m worried about someone or something. Perhaps I’m happy with the way something went and I want to give thanks. Sometimes I ask God for the strength to deal with a challenging situation at work or in my personal life. Sometimes I pray for the safety of the world as humanity sinks deeper and deeper into its world-encompassing, adolescent identity crisis. And sometimes, I just want to say hello to Ba (“Dad” in Vietnamese), and thank him for all that he’s done to raise his daughter to be a strong, steadfast Baha’i, and to be my loving, caring wife.

Why have I continued to offer incense all this time, even though I’m in Canada, not in Vietnam? Certainly, no one in Canada expects me, a big white guy, to offer incense to anybody. For sure, it lights up the smiles on my wife’s face, and on those of her family. But honestly, I do it because I realized that when I was taking care of the shrine in Da Nang, not only was I taking care of the family, I was also taking care of me. I need to converse with God and make part of my day sacred. I need time to collect my thoughts and offer up my worries to a Higher Power. I need to shed my ego, step outside of my selfish little box and offer praise to the One who keeps me moving and breathing and living. Not only will it help make me a better person, I believe, but a better husband, a better father, a better brother, a better son. I wouldn’t stop that—as they say—for the world.

Next post: grief and the value of community.

Apart from the family memorial gatherings and the weekly devotional gatherings for Quynh’s father Hai, my time in Vietnam was rather quiet and uneventful. It rained heavily for a good part of my stay, which left me stuck inside most of the time. In my free time I did some tele-work for my employer in Ottawa, using a remote access provider to debug CSS and code up ASP.NET controls from the comfort of my chair in Da Nang. Yes, that was my free time. Whenever we weren’t visiting Hai’s resting place south of Da Nang—replacing flowers, planting rows of incense, refilling oil lamps—I mainly puttered around the house, taking care of chores. As I mentioned before, I spent a lot of time figuring out how to be a good son-in-law (in Vietnamese, con rể), hoping to learn the ropes, as it were, of Vietnamese family life. It turned out that my main task was, well, to stay in the house and wait for things to happen.

I eventually got into a routine that involved taking care of a few daily chores: preparing rice for lunch, taking out garbage, and fetching cola and other small items from nearby shops. Another big part of that routine was to take care of the family shrine—meaning, offer rice and keep the incense burning at all times. At every mealtime, we would take some of our rice (or noodles, or whatever) and place it in a little bowl on the shrine. Quynh explained to me that while she and her mother, being Baha’is, didn’t necessarily believe that her father’s spirit would “consume” the food—or that his spirit would even need such sustenance—the act of offering food to the deceased was mainly for the family, to help them grieve. Offering incense, she said, carried the same significance.

Traditionally, the idea behind burning incense as an offering was to keep the spirit of the deceased warm, and also assure it of the family’s continuing love and devotion. In Vietnam, incense is burned almost continually in the first 100 days after a family member passes away, to ease their transition into the afterlife. After these 100 days, it’s said, the spirit of the deceased has come to terms with its fate and leaves this life to join its ancestors in the next world.

Apparently, the day after Quynh’s father passed away, the metal fence in front of the house was removed to make way for the flood of people who came to visit. It was welded back on afterwards, leaving black burn marks. Topping off my arsenal of filial practices, I put on a typical conical hat and went out to the front of the house to touch up the paint on the fence—which is now a nice, neutral, fashionable grey.

Quynh’s mother Lam seemed very proud that I could take care of all of the chores I did—even though the only real barrier to me doing them was having someone explain what went where. In fact, she was so proud that she made it a point to mention it to any visiting relatives, so much so that in the first month I had already memorized the Vietnamese phrases for “make rice”, “take out garbage”, “go to market” and “offer incense”.

Apart from receiving relatives at our home, we also went to visit relatives and neighbours a number of times. Despite feeling awkward about the language barrier, I tagged along as Lam introduced me (or reintroduced me) to friends, cousins, friends of cousins, cousins of friends. At the outset, I got the feeling of being paraded around, making me wish (fruitlessly) that I could somehow fade into the background and disappear. I’m still not sure I’ve gotten used to it. To her credit, I think Lam could tell I felt awkward, because she took the time afterwards to explain to me the point behind visiting the relatives. She said that when Hai was still alive, they would regularly go and pay visits to neighbours, friends and family; they would make it a part of their day-to-day activities, just to keep in touch. Throughout their lives, of course, they were always busy, and sometimes there wasn’t a lot of time to visit—but they still visited, even if only for five minutes at a time, just to let people know they were thinking of them. An honest culture of home visits. What more could you ever want from your in-laws?

At one point, we went to the country to visit Quynh’s grandmother (Lam’s mother) and uncles/aunts, just to say hello before we went to visit Hai’s resting place. Her grandmother’s memory is very short, so when we visit, she often doesn’t remember us. She’s always very impressed to see me, though. The monologue usually goes like this: “A foreigner? A BIG foreigner? And he’s my granddaughter’s husband? Good job!!” She’s a remarkable, lovable character.

Her short memory isn’t always a source of laughs, of course. It was painful for Lam to try and get across to her that Hai had passed away, only for her to drift off a few minutes later. As I’ve mentioned before, Lam was definitely the hardest hit by her husband’s passing, and I spent a lot of time during this visit to help her through it. Often times, this just meant hanging around, waiting to help with whatever needed taking care of.

At the beginning, Lam was still so distraught that she had little motivation to take care of herself or the family—so Quyen, her sister and I had to do double shifts. In a way, though, I struggled to feel useful, since most of the time, I wasn’t actually doing anything, just sitting around in front of a fan waiting for something to happen. It was confusing at first. Still, I knew that that was the price to pay to make sure Lam was well taken care of and remained stable. She and I managed to have some frank conversations about depression and grief; I shared with her my experience of going through depression and coming out the other side a healthier, happier person. We shared like this several times, and I did my best to remind her that what she was going through was the normal process of grieving, and that yes, life would eventually get better. “I can’t see any future,” she told me one morning, to which I replied, “You will.” If there was any filial duty I performed that I found most important—more important than offering incense, painting the fence or placing rice on the shrine—that would be it: helping to restore hope after it was lost.

Next post: the nature of prayer.

The gesture of offering incense is omnipresent throughout Asia, it seems. China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, India—anyone who’s Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, Shinto—even some types of Christian—knows what it means to offer incense. “In North America, not so much,” as I would tell everyone in Da Nang. In the West, most people treat incense as a way to make your house smell good, not as an object of religious practice.

I spent my time during my last trip to Vietnam trying to discern how to be a good son-in-law. Eventually, I figured out a few things that seemed to be key: preparing rice at lunch, taking out the garbage, fetching things from nearby shops, and regularly offering incense at the family shrine. If you remember my post about Vietnamese funeral customs, you’ll recall that when someone dies in Vietnam, a shrine is erected as a memorial, and that a central element of that shrine is a pot of sand used to plant sticks of incense as offerings, generally placed in front of a photo of the deceased. This shrine is an active centre of worship for (at least) the 100 days following their passing. “Worship?” I hear you ask. Yes, worship, or at least that’s how they refer to it—the act of paying one’s respects by offering incense. Vietnamese, even Baha’is, tend to draw a line between this act of “worship” and the personal prayers one might say before bed, or in times of trouble, and so on. Paying one’s respects at the family shrine is one of the most fundamental acts of Vietnamese spiritual life, and this applies irrespective of “membership” in one religious community or another; it is a tradition that helps to define what it means to be Vietnamese, and acts as a base for the family and society. Without understanding it, you cannot understand Vietnam.

Soon after I arrived in early September, there was a memorial gathering commemorating the 14th day since Quynh’s father’s passing, which many family members and friends attended. The shrine was decorated with fresh flowers and fruit, candles were lit. Each in turn, the friends came to pay their respects: taking one or three sticks of lit incense, holding them with both hands before their faces, perhaps quietly uttering a prayer, bowing three times to the portrait in the centre, planting the incense upright in the sand- and ash-filled pot. Each repeated this set gesture. Before the shrine, a large table was prepared with all kinds of food, but all made without meat. We were not to sit at the table to eat until it was “offered” to the spirits of those who have passed—including Quynh’s father, but also relatives and ancestors. Around this table we stood, close family members wearing white robes and headbands, and, as Hai and his immediate family are Baha’i, recited Baha’i prayers for the deceased. Behind the shrine was raised a large banner, written in Vietnamese, but which I was able to roughly translate as “Baha’i Community of Vietnam / Baha’i Community of Da Nang / [Sends its] endless loving regrets for co-religionist Ho Thanh Hai / Implores God in His justice to allow his soul to return to the Abha Kingdom”.

A word about food. Every day, at breakfast, lunch and dinner, the family would offer a little of our food—usually rice at lunch and dinner, although it could be noodles, porridge, or whatever else we were eating—place it on the shrine, and again offer incense. One of us, usually one of the children (this is good son-in-law duty), would return to the shrine to fetch the offering about fifteen minutes later, and the family would finish it off as part of their meal. The same happened at the memorial gathering on the 14th day; as I mentioned above, the food was first “offered” to the spirits of relatives and ancestors, after which those assembled would sit down to “finish” it. This aspect of devotional life, and indeed anything related to spirit traditions, initially left me baffled. How could I, as a Baha’i, reconcile the teachings of the Baha’i Faith—some of the most progressive religious teachings available to mankind in this era—with the complex system of check-and-balance rituals prescribed by Vietnamese tradition?

As a Baha’i raised in a place where such traditions of ancestor worship are largely nonexistent, I didn’t really know how to feel about it. I knew Quynh’s father used to recite Baha’i prayers quietly whenever he offered incense, so I started out simply emulating his example—quietly offering short prayers such as the Remover of Difficulties whenever it was my turn in front of the shrine, or if speed was of the essence, an ad hoc prayer asking for God’s blessings, prosperity of the family, the growth and development of the Faith in Vietnam, and so on. I would tend to have little conversations with Quynh’s father each time, offering expressions of love and remembrance, or praying for the progress of his soul towards God, or asking for intercession on someone’s behalf (asking him to watch over his family, for example). Sometimes I felt a little unsure of how to pray, but I figured things would work themselves out in God’s boundless mercy and grace. One thing I noted is that offering incense several times each day helped me stay more conscious of the sacred nature of life. Perhaps that’s all I needed to take away from it; isn’t one of the overarching effects of religious practice to help the believer stay aware of what is sacred?

Quynh and I talked a fair bit about integrating Baha’i beliefs into the vast network of traditional spirit beliefs prevalent in Vietnam. We both found that, given the right frame of mind, it was easy to reconcile the practice of “paying one’s respects” to the deceased—particularly ancestors and family members—with Baha’i principles. Offering incense and taking care of the shrine is a way of honouring the bonds of unity and fellowship that exist between family and close friends, of making them more sacred. Throughout history, God has always taught that children should honour their parents; the particular form this honour takes before and after death is simply a detail. So in essence, taking care of the shrine is taking care of the family—and who can argue with the need to take care of one’s family?

Observing the differences between Western, Asian and Baha’i cultures—because being a Baha’i brings with it the expression of an entirely new, emergent culture—certainly brings up a lot of questions. That’s a good thing, because I could always stand to ask myself more questions in life. I don’t do it nearly enough.

Next post: the life of a vietnamese son-in-law.

This post is the first in a series on Vietnamese customs relating to death, from a personal and a Baha’i perspective.

Arriving in Da Nang on September 6th, i was just about two weeks too late to say goodbye to my father-in-law. I had only a vague idea of what had happened, pieced together from brief phone calls as the nightmare unfolded. Upon arriving, the family had me offer incense at his shrine—a traditional gesture that would become very familiar to me in the following six weeks. This gesture is performed at every funeral in Vietnam—and during the six weeks I was there following Ba’s passing, no fewer than three close friends and family members also passed away. You bet I got a lot of practice. (More about offering incense later—lots more, I promise.)

Vietnamese funeral customs are based on a mix of Buddhism and indigenous spirit beliefs that date back several millennia. An extensive set of rites and customs govern every aspect of death, before and after it takes place, even extending years into the future. The process of grieving itself involves not only whole families, but whole communities, with entire neighbourhoods gathering to help mourn a loss.

When someone dies, a shrine is erected as a memorial, and decorated with flowers, candles and lights. A picture of the deceased is placed prominently in the centre, and a bowl for planting sticks of incense is placed in front of it. Family and friends gather to pay their respects, attend prayer gatherings, and comfort the immediate family and share their grief. Upon arriving, visitors burn an odd number of sticks of incense, and circumambulate the coffin—or the body, if the coffin isn’t yet ready.

Everything has a set time for a Vietnamese funeral. Historically, the Vietnamese always depended on oracles and sages to read the stars and determine locations and times for every important event of their lives. The time the body is placed in the coffin, the location of the cemetery, the time the coffin is brought to the cemetery and placed in the ground—all are planned and optimized for maximum auspiciousness. While they wait for the auspicious moment, the family will hold an honour vigil around the body, staying up all night at its side, praying.

To perform the traditional rites—which sometimes seem about as complicated as a wedding—families may hire a company to coordinate a “funeral package”. These packages take care of things like the coffin, decorations, transportation, mourners/pallbearers, monks, and even the infamous brass band, the one that wakes everyone up at 5:30 on the morning of the funeral procession. The procession is led by the band, who clear the way ahead, followed by the monks and male members of the family, who carry along the objects on the shrine, including the portrait of the deceased, the incense bowl, candles, and so on. As an aside, Vietnam is highly patriarchal—meaning that the duties of worship are usually borne by the men in the family. (This isn’t universal, however; Quynh told me that she carried her father’s portrait during his funeral procession.) Afterwards, the coffin is carried out of the house, with the female members of the household following. Friends and neighbours follow along and accompany the family to the cemetery for the burial.

Soon after I arrived in Da Nang, we paid a visit to the cemetery where Ba was buried. It’s about twenty minutes south of town in Hoa Tien village, a truly beautiful place surrounded by forest. Covered in sheets of white sand, the family plot is surrounded by a half-metre-high orange wall, with a family shrine jutting out of a two-metre-high back wall. At the back, Quynh’s grandmother and grandfather rest in “tombs” on a slightly raised platform. These “tombs” themselves are actually not inhabited, and seem only to act as a cover for the grave—bodies are actually buried beneath, contrary to what I had thought before. On one end of the tombs is the Chinese character for “blessing” (probably the most ubiquitous character in the world, behind “double happiness”, the one used in weddings). On the other end is a tombstone, noting, well, tombstone information. In front of the tombstone is a small pot for incense. At the top of each tomb, there is a little alcove; things are stored there, like small oil lamps, sticks of incense for burning, and so on. There’s a shallow bed of sand in the alcove; in the one on Ba’s tomb, a Baha’i prayer book and a stone engraving of the Baha’i ringstone symbol are buried.

In the post-funeral tumult, Quynh was able to tell me a little about some of the challenges the immediate family had integrating Baha’i beliefs into the Vietnamese funeral traditions. Because of the extended family’s great love and respect for her father, they were quite tolerant of the departures from tradition that he had asked for in his will, although there was the odd clash. He wanted a short, simple funeral according to Baha’i custom, but it was extended to three days to allow the extended family time to visit his body and pay their respects, the normal practice in Vietnamese custom. One anecdote that stuck in my mind was about the funeral procession, bringing the body from the family home to the cemetery south of Da Nang. In Vietnamese tradition, votive paper is scattered in the wake of the funeral procession, to give the newly deceased spirit a “path” to follow back home. Quynh’s father didn’t believe this was necessary, and told his children he would not want this done at his funeral—so the family didn’t scatter votive papers either coming or going. This prompted one extended family member to follow behind the hearse shouting loudly, asking frantically why the family wasn’t scattering the papers, to which Quynh shouted back that her father didn’t want it that way.

We returned to the cemetery several times while I was in Da Nang, offering more incense, planting it in the white sand that surrounds the tombs, and generally keeping the plot clean. That’s for a future post, of course. There’s a lot I still don’t know about funeral customs, having never been present, for example, during the first few days of grieving when a body was prepared for burial, or during the burial itself. I sincerely hope I don’t have to learn for the time being—the family’s losses this year have been more than anyone would want to handle.

In case you didn’t notice (or you’re reading this in a format that doesn’t display it), I’ve posted a video at the top of this post, called, for lack of a better title, “Vietnam: Travelling between life and death”. It contains footage of the funeral procession of Quynh’s neighbour in Da Nang, footage which her mother encouraged me to take to share with family back in Canada. So here I am, sharing it with you, along with some more general information about funeral customs in Vietnam. Click to watch it, or see it on Youtube.

Next post: taking care of the shrine.

• vietnamese funeral customs
• taking care of the shrine
• the life of a vietnamese son-in-law
• say a little prayer
• grief and the value of community

As noted, I expect these posts will come out every 3–4 days, as I have time to work on each of them (that said, the dates noted here are approximate).

Edit: All posts are now up (finally)!

Baha’i Centre of Ottawa in Vanier since 2007
by Ruby Pratka

Heather Harvey and Ayafor Ayafor want to build a better world. And they believe that a better world starts in the front room of a former Mexican restaurant on McArthur Avenue.

Ayafor and Harvey are members of the Baha’i faith, a religious community that they say has about 1000 adherents in Ottawa and about 5 million scattered across the world. The Baha’i presence in Ottawa dates from 1948, says Harvey.

“We’ve gone from nine in 1948 to over 1000 now,” she says. The Baha’i Centre of Ottawa has been in Vanier since 2007.

The Baha’i faith was founded about 150 years ago in Iran, by a spiritual leader who believed he was the next in a series of prophets serving the same God. Baha’is consider Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad to be prophets as well. There is no clergy, only a democratically elected ‘spiritual assembly’ in each area with a Baha’i presence. The faith has since spread worldwide; according to the Centre for Faith in the Media it is the second most geographically widespread faith after Christianity. Baha’is, Harvey explains, respect the texts of all major religions and believe in the “unity of God” across world religions.

“At its basis there is a commonality to what our relationship is with God…and to life after death,” says Harvey.

“One of our fundamental principles is the idea of the oneness of mankind,” says Ayafor, who was born in Cameroon and raised a Christian. “Fundamentally we are like cells of a body; we’re evolving. The writings are there to bring unity in the world, but Baha’is don’t know how that is going to happen.”

Harvey and Ayafor say they believe that it is impossible to separate science and religion, and that world peace is inevitable. They also believe in the importance of community service.

“To work in the service of humanity is highly looked upon,” says Harvey.

To that end, she says, the centre holds youth study groups for teenagers to figure out how to best serve their community. “It’s all about ‘what can I do tomorrow?’,” Harvey says. “The reality of what you can do varies from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. In those study circles things emerge, like a literacy campaign or a health campaign. . Our junior youth groups clean the parks; simple things can be done and something leads into something else. It’s very important for youth–and everyone–to believe they have a purpose.”

In addition to the youth groups, the centre holds devotional meetings where attendees study the texts of all major religions, children’s classes, and summer day camps. And anyone is welcome to come to the centre and have a look around. These programs are open “to all people, whether Baha’is or not,” says Harvey. “We are not an inward-looking community.”

On the morning of May 2nd, nearly 300 followers of the Baha’i Community in Vietnam attended the third annual National Convention of the Baha’i Community in Vietnam in Can Tho city.

The convention elected nine members of the religious council of the Baha’is of Vietnam for the 2010-2011 term and set out key tasks, following the motto “Sống tốt đời, đẹp đạo” (“Living well, in one’s life and in one’s faith”), aiming to improve the lives  of their brethren and benefit their country, to work effectively and mobilize their numbers to promote unity within the nation and solidarity with other religions.

Speaking at the conference, Mr. Đặng Tài Tính, Director of International Cooperation for the National Committee for Religious Department, stressed that the Government of Vietnam always implements a consistent policy to respect and ensure the freedom of belief and religion of the people, but that the people also have to comply with Vietnamese laws.

The charter of the Baha’i Community in Vietnam confirms in its principles and objectives that “activities shall be held in compliance with the laws of Vietnam, and shall uphold the spirit of harmony and unity of the nation and of religion, for the socio-economic development of the country…”, a crucial principle which serves to orient believers and grassroots organizations following the doctrine and laws of the Baha’i religion and the laws of Vietnam.

At the meeting, representatives of the Board of Counsellors[1] for Asia stated their appreciation to the Government of Vietnam’s facilitation for its help in facilitating the implementation of the activities of the Baha’i Community in Vietnam.

Mr. Nguyen Thuc, head of the interim board of representatives[2] of the Baha’i (religious) Community of Vietnam, said that since the recognition of its legal status, the entire community has entered a period of development and has achieved outstanding large-scale growth in individual religious practice, religious education, Holy day gatherings, the formation of committees and work groups and other administrative functioning.

In whichever locality Baha’i believers live and practice their religion, they largely have good relationships with government at all levels, allowing their activities to flourish in accordance with the Government’s policies on belief and religion and the provisions of law.

The Baha’i Faith came to Vietnam in 1954. The Baha’i religious community in Vietnam has almost 7,000 followers, faith activities in 43 provinces and cities, mainly concentrated in the central and southern regions.

The Baha’i community of Vietnam officially obtained its Certificate of Operation Registration[3] with the Government’s Committee for Religious Affairs on February 28th, 2007.

After nearly a year of operation, in July 2008, the Government’s Committee for Religious Affairs decided to recognize the religious organizations of the Baha’i religious community of Vietnam.

Up to now, the Baha’i Community of Vietnam has nearly 80 representatives of the Provisional Committee in the local level.

Footnotes:

The article mentions the rule of law many times over. I didn’t see the point of this until I started to read up on the history of religious groups in Vietnam, most of which seem to have had the unfortunate historical tendency to not only quarrel amongst themselves but try to overthrow governments. Some religious communities still display these tendencies, hence the constant reminders in modern government speech. Baha’is, though, are already enjoined by the core teachings of their Faith to show obedience and loyalty to their government, as the next paragraph states—a fact which apparently inspires some shock and awe in Vietnamese officials.

The term “Baha’i Community” is rendered consistently as “Baha’i religious community” in the original Vietnamese, but I’ve translated it as simply “Baha’i Community” for English readability.

1: The Continental Board of Counsellors, a high-level, non-clerical institution, purely advisory in character, with counterparts throughout the world; rendered as “Continental Advisory Committee” in the Vietnamese text.

2: The term translated here as “board of representatives” refers to the National Spiritual Assembly, a national body elected by the believers in a country to oversee the administrative affairs and spiritual health of the community.

3: I’m not really sure how this should be translated, but basically it’s a cerficate that shows they are officially registered as a religious community with the Government, and they are authorized to operate and conduct activities as such.

Quynh’s dear father, a humble, steadfast believer who tirelessly served the Cause of Baha’u'llah in Vietnam for forty years, passed away at the end of August. it was an accident; no warning, nothing. the family was devastated, and remains so, although with around six weeks worth of coming terms with the reality of what’s happened, wounds are slowly beginning to heal—perhaps tears act as a soothing balm in this case.

I’ve been in Vietnam since September 5th, or around two weeks after his passing, most of that time in Da Nang with Quynh’s mother, who’s taken her husband’s death the hardest. Part of my time is taken up with remote work for the Conference Board (a very positive arrangement that’s been working marvelously so far), and the rest with hanging being a good Vietnamese son-in-law—preparing rice for lunch, taking out the garbage, folding laundry, fetching things from nearby shops, doing odd jobs around the house, and keeping incense burning at the family shrine. I make sure to stay nearby in case Quynh’s mother needs anything, and I keep an eye open to make sure she’s not starting to sink into depression, which was common for the first while after I arrived. A 100-day period of mourning is common when a close family member passes away, and Hai (Quynh’s father) was very highly respected and very much loved by a vast group of friends and extended family. The hurt runs deep. I’m at a loss sometimes, because my command of Vietnamese isn’t good enough to express how I feel, or offer significant words of comfort. But I try my best, speak slowly when I need to, and things seem to work out.

When Quynh called me to tell me her father was in the hospital, I was having dinner with Catherine at a Vietnamese restaurant (a mediocre one—I won’t name names). after spending something like an hour speaking to her over the phone, I came back to my seat, finished my meal quickly, and cracked open the stereotypical fortune cookie, which told me to smile. Smiling was the last thing I wanted to do, especially after I heard the news the next morning. It was a difficult time. But I took it as a message, if not an incipient mission statement, for the journey on which I was about to embark: sometimes, especially when language and culture are barriers, the best thing you can do is to be strong, offer a shoulder to cry on, and smile. Sometimes i feel like I could, or should, be doing more, but maybe God has other plans for me right now.

As a postscript, thanks to all of you who’ve written with your condolences and assurance of prayers—even if I haven’t gotten around to thank you personally yet, you can rest assured that every single prayer has made a difference to the family.

just booked e-ticket from Ottawa to Vietnam for Next Feb-Apr. now to prepare for the rest of the wedding!
1:12 AM Dec 2nd, 2009

WOOHOO RED TAPE
11:10 PM Dec 8th, 2009

AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH LAWYERS O______________O
11:45 PM Dec 8th, 2009

WHAT THE HECK IS A STATEMENT IN-LIEU OF CERTIFICATE OF NON-IMPEDIMENT TO MARRIAGE ABROAD
2:20 AM Dec 9th, 2009

taking Lorraine’s suggestion and looking into www.goldform.ca for wedding rings right now. hopefully i can squeeze in a visit tonight!
12:39 AM Dec 12th, 2009

@jrenken hehehe, not legal advice particularly (not just yet, anyway). just figuring out some wedding/immigration stuff right now.
12:41 AM Dec 12th, 2009

Wishing a very happy birthday to someone special in #Vietnam ^_^
10:28 PM Jan 19th

just dropped off documents and a visa application at the #Vietnam embassy, picking them up next week. I love living in #Ottawa.
January 23, 2010 12:22:31 AM

Just got my passport back with a visa for #Vietnam. Next up: #China. And my wedding papers are ready to ship to Da Nang… finally!
2:43 AM Jan 29th

@cybervassals hehe yeah :) btw I’ll come down your way soon to check out the ring design…maybe not tonight tho, what with this blizzard :P
2:49 AM Jan 29th

Reading: “Traveling As A Mixed-Race Couple In Asia: No, Sir, I Did Not Buy My Wife” #travel #Asia ( http://twitthis.com/adma6b )
11:00 AM Jan 29th

WEDDING PAPERS SENT! After an emergency trip to the #Vietnam Embassy to correct a bad translation, that is… don’t let me down now, Fedex.
3:41 AM Jan 30th

Wedding papers received in Da Nang! Next: submit them to the city… <3wks till I arrive in #Vietnam, >1mo til THE DAY :)
1:53 AM Feb 3rd

Let’s see. Visas back, Tues… Last #travel shot, Wed… Hotels booked… Plane tickets bought… Looks like I just need to pack! #Vietnam
3:13 AM Feb 9th

Visas & travel shot GET. putting together slideshows for the wedding, and coordinating a few going-away celebrations :)
5:25 AM Feb 11th

Gift shopping done. Time for packing and goodbye parties. T minus 68 hours to departure from @FlyYOW on Air Canada; T-95 to #Vietnam.
11:49 PM Feb 16th

T minus 60 hours and counting. #Vietnam
10:35 AM Feb 18th

I’ll be in #Vietnam soon and it’s starting to sink in. Only two more sleeps (including this one) before I leave. A sort of ecstasy descends.
11:33 AM Feb 18th

shout out to @flyYOW. never had a better time at #yow, and the free wifi makes a big difference.
10:32 PM Feb 19th

in #Toronto now, waiting for flight to #Tokyo. it’s going to be a looong day. but only 24 hrs now till I get to #Vietnam :)
10:45 PM Feb 19th

Big thanks to everyone who came out last night to celebrate with us, and who sent their best wishes by email/fb/etc. We loved it ^_^
10:47 PM Feb 19th

Glad to see that Narita airport has upgraded its wifi capabilities lately. Now if only I could find an ATM that takes Western cards -_-
3:08 PM Feb 20th

flight from Tokyo to Ho Chi Minh City is delayed, so I’m skyping my em yeu to pass the time. yay for being on the same side of the planet ^^
3:56 PM Feb 20th