Project MUSE – Quan Am and Mary: Vietnamese Religious, Cultural, and Spiritual Phenomena
Marian devotion among Vietnamese Catholics and worship of the Goddess of Mercy, Quan Am or Guanyin (Chinese),1 among Vietnamese Buddhists, are two dominant forms of religious practice in Vietnam.2 Popular devotion to these female deities formed a special type of religiosity that has helped sustain the institutional religions and nurture the ethical and spiritual life of the followers. While Marian devotion helps Catholics sustain their faith in the difficult times as well as survive religious persecutions,3 devotion to Quan Am helps Vietnamese Buddhists cope with trying situations in their lives.4 Moreover, while devotion to Mary motivates Catholics to live out their ethical lives in a relationship with God and other human fellows, devotion to Quan Am helps Buddhists attain ethical and spiritual values, such as compassion, patience, mercy, and harmony.5 Similarly, Catholics look to Mary as an exemplar of compassion, humility, patience, peace, and charity.6 From a cultural perspective, devotion to Quan Am and Mary has been also strengthened by the indigenous Cult of the Mother Goddess interweaved with Vietnamese feminine cultural characteristics.7
Although some have mentioned cultural interactions between the Vietnamese indigenous Cult of the Mother Goddess and Buddhist and Catholic popular piety, little research has investigated the spiritual and ethical dimensions between the two traditions comprehensively. On the contrary, many works on Vietnamese Buddhism and Catholicism seemed to have overemphasized the differences between the two traditions.8 While acknowledging the differences is important, searching for common ground on spirituality and ethics would open the door for further comparative studies.
Given the significantly shared characteristics between Marian devotion and worship of Quan Am, this article attempts (1) to present the common patterns in the way in which Vietnamese Buddhists and Catholics approach Mary and Quan Am; (2) to discuss the interactions between Vietnamese indigenous cult of Mother-Goddess (Ðạo Mẫu) and Marian devotion and worship of Quan Am, through which popular piety has strongly taken root, developed, and continued to thrive in the midst of cultural and religious challenges;9 and (3) to examine the spiritual and ethical domains through which personal and collective transformation manifests. The research hopes to shed light on religions in Vietnam and aims to offer a fresh view of Buddhism and Catholicism that has been distorted by religious and political ideologies.10 [End Page 191]
