Vietnamese Buddhists make mountain pagoda pilgrimage

THUONG YEN CONG COMMUNE, Vietnam, Feb 19 (Reuters) Buddhists across Vietnam and abroad gave money, offered prayers and walked hours up and over hills for the renovation of the country's only bronze pagoda.

It was an impressive demonstration of faith in a country where for decades the communist authorities curbed religious activities and then re-organised them under state supervision.

The lotus-shaped Dong (Bronze) Pagoda was unveiled in late January with the removal of a huge red silk cover in a daytime hilltop ceremony in northeastern Vietnam by monks and followers chanting prayers, burning incense and gently ringing bells.

''I felt very happy to see Buddha's site,'' said Le Thi Su, 78, one of many devotees -- thin, hardy, wrinkled people who walked two hours or longer up a stone path to the pagoda, cradle of a 700 year-old Vietnamese Zen Buddhist sect called Truc Lam.

The sect is one of three Zen Buddhist sects in Vietnam and it is special because it was founded by Vietnamese Zen Masters while the other two were founded by Indian and Chinese monks.

Thousands more Buddhists will visit the pagoda in the Yen Tu mountains about 130 km northeast of the capital Hanoi -- especially in late February and early March after the start of the Lunar New Year, called Tet in Vietnam.

The pagoda is among many visited by Vietnamese Buddhists whose Communist Party government officially respects citizens rights ''to belief or non-belief'' and promotes state-supervised religious activity.

Buddhists in the Southeast Asian country have been organised by the state since 1981 under the Vietnam Buddhist Church.

Another Buddhist group, the United Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV) to this day refuses state supervision and it is outlawed.

Movement of its two principal monks are monitored and restricted.

''The fact that Vietnam's Communist leaders are organising highly publicised, state-sanctioned celebrations, renovating Buddhist sites and making a great show of Buddhism today is very revealing, for it reflects the total failure of Hanoi's policies to suppress religions in Vietnam,'' Vo Van Ai, Paris-based spokesman for the UBCV wrote in an email to Reuters.

RELIGION, COMMUNISM Most of Vietnam's 84 million people are Buddhist followers and believers and the bronze pagoda that sits 1,068 metres above sea level has become a popular site for Buddhists and non-Buddhist tourists in recent years.

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