Vietnamese Wish Buddha a Happy 2,544th Birthday

Amid a backdrop of food booths, South Vietnamese flags and altars, more than 5,000 Vietnamese gathered Sunday to hear religious leaders and celebrate the 2,544th anniversary of Buddha’s birth.

For Dat Quach, an engineer from San Diego, it marked an opportunity to travel to Santa Ana College with his two young sons and have them embrace the celebration as part of their introduction to the Buddhist faith.

“I brought them here because it gives them an idea of what the Buddhist religion is all about,” Quach said as sons Henry, 6, and William, 4, sipped sodas. “We don’t want to make it mandatory that they become Buddhists, but my theory is that it’s best if you introduce it to them early.”

The celebration also was one of the largest in Southern California. More than 100 Buddhist monks and nuns from as far away as Canada attended the rite, now in its sixth year at the college.

The occasion marks the birth of Gautama Buddha, a prince born in northeast India, near the Nepalese border, whose philosophy and teachings are as influential to Buddhists as Jesus Christ’s are to Christians.

Buddha, a title that means “enlightened one,” did not consider himself a god, but rather a teacher whose beliefs are now followed by more than 300 million people worldwide.

The Venerable Thich Van Dam of Virginia, who gave the keynote speech, reminded followers of Buddha’s three tenets: compassion, wisdom and encouragement.

Even now, the religion’s philosophy offers followers inner peace in a society filled with stress and technology, the monk said.

“His philosophy is still meaningful even now in the 21st century,” he said.

Huynh Tan Le of Tustin, one of the organizers, said a high point of the day was when a monk shared the words of Thich Huyen Quang, the aging patriarch of the independent Buddhist church in Vietnam and a leading dissenter in that nation.

Quang, who is weak and ill after being imprisoned, is still kept in a cell-like setting that is closely guarded, Le said.

Le said friends recently visited Quang and jotted down his words as he spoke, which were then repeated by telephone to monks in the U.S.

The celebration also stressed religious freedom for others such as Quang.

In 1995, the monitoring group Human Rights Watch/Asia said at least two dozen Buddhist leaders had been arrested since 1991 in Vietnam. Hanoi still exerts tight control over dissent and worship, according to the State Department’s 1995 Human Rights Report.