To Be Expressed During the Great Requiem Ceremonies to Untie the Knots of Great Injustice

By Thich Nhat Hanh

Dear ones who have passed from this life,

You are our fathers and mothers, our aunts and uncles, our husbands and wives, our sisters and brothers, our sons and daughters, who have died during the war. When our country was on fire with all the fighting, you left us tragically, suddenly, forced to abandon your precious body. We have lost you, dear ones. We know that you fought courageously for our nation without regret for your precious body and we are proud of you. But you lost your body under very tragic circumstances, and the injustice could never be expressed.You died deep in a distant jungle or were lost at sea or in a dark prison cell. You may have died because of bullets or bombs, or from starvation or sheer exhaustion. You may have been raped and then killed with no way to resist. How many of you have died in despair, in injustice, the remains of your body lost somewhere in the ocean or the jungle where we who love you could not get hold of them. To fight for our independence and freedom, our country has had to bear great tragedy and injustice, and it is you who have shouldered the burden of the whole nation in your death.

We your relatives, your fellow countrymen and countrywomen, we come here — some of us are before our own altars at home — and among us there are  those  who still continue to suffer from injustice. Fortunately the nightmare has ended, the country is now at peace, and we have the chance to rebuild the country, to heal the remaining wounds. Thanks to the merits and good deeds of our ancestors, we have a chance to come together and offer prayers together to the Three Gems.

With the support of the powerful Dharma, we request you to come back all together to reunite with each other, embracing each other, loving each other like sisters and brothers in one family. We will not distinguish between North or South, women or men, adults or children, by race, religion, party, or ideology. We are all fellow countrywomen and countrymen, but because of past bad fortune, we have been pushed to fight each other in our drive for independence, for freedom. Thanks to the merits of our ancestors we can now come back together, recognizing each other as siblings of a single family, to promise each other that we will not forget this painful lesson of the past now engraved on our hearts:

We vow that from now on we will not let the country be separated again, not even one more time. From now on, when there are internal difficulties, we will not request the help of any foreign power to intervene with weapons and troops in our country. From now on, we will not start a war for any ideology. From now on, we will not use foreign weapons to kill each other. From now on, we will use our best efforts to build a society with real democracy, to resolve all kinds of disagreements by peaceful democratic methods. We will not resort to violence against fellow countrymen and countrywomen.

Respected Blood Ancestors, Respected Spiritual Ancestors, please bear witness to our profound sincerity. We respectfully make these deep vows before you. And we know that once we have sincerely expressed ourselves in this way, all the knots of injustice can be untied, and the deep wounds in each of us will start to be healed.

Today this Great Chanting Ceremony to untie all injustices equally without any discrimination starts here; but at the same time, countless Vietnamese and friends of Vietnamese throughout the world are setting altars in front of their houses, too, to pray for you all. We touch the earth deeply to request the grace of the Three Jewels to carry to the other shore of liberation all of you dear deceased ones, so that, dear ones, you can be carried by the strength of the Dharma to understand, to transform, to transcend, and to know you are free.

We your descendants, we promise to continue your aspiration. We vow to carry you in our hearts, to build brotherhood and sisterhood, to practice mutual love of fellow countrymen and countrywomen. We will remember that pumpkin vines and squash vines can share a single frame, that chickens from a same mother will never fight each other. This insight from our Ancestors will shine out its light for us now and forever.

Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh read this statement several times during the Great Ceremonies held in Saigon, Hue, and Hanoi in early 2007.