CHAPTER III:   Appearance as A Layman

14. Moans Become Hatred Exhaling into The Blue Sky, And Lord Maitreya Started Complete Salvation

Any Vietnamese citizen who lives in the city or countryside, accustomed to the traditional life that was passed down from their father and grandfather, will be extremely frightened to hear that they must leave their native land and go to a place in a dark forest, mountain, and with poisonous water!

Everyone hearing of the new economic policy the North applied to the people of the South has so far been scared of it. Indeed, the economic situation and life of Southern Vietnam were stable before 1975. Many years after the invasion of the North, Communists, fulfilling the proletariat policy of the USSR, rapidly degenerated and exhausted Southern Vietnam. Suddenly, there was a strange dreariness and sadness everywhere, from family to society.

The people were forced to go to new economic zones where forests had not yet been cleared and roads had not yet been open or had been built, but only with clay, making transportation very difficult in the rainy season and limiting the vehicles’ traveling. The climate was toxic, water was contaminated, and every family coming to a new economic zone had member(s) diseased from malaria. This dangerous disease became incurable in underdeveloped countries like Vietnam due to lack of medicine. Domestic remedies did not treat it efficiently. Almost everyone infected with this disease in the new economic zones was bound to die.

CHAPTER III:   Appearance as A Layman

According to the classification of Communist authorities, the following categories were useless to them: families in which members were soldiers or civil servants of the former regime; families of large or small trading activities—the South had numerous families belonging to this category; families belonging to the middle and upper class; and intellectual families. All these categories had to go to new economic zones under coercive orders.

The Communist government at that time planned to bring the Northern cadres’ families to fill the vacant houses in the South in order to build big industrial cities, following the USSR’s trajectory. For families forced to go to new economic zones, after only one to two years of living there, cultivation failed; being starved, they ran away to return to the cities. Because they no longer had houses, they had to live wandering the cities’ sidewalks in all provinces of the South.

The Lord was touched by the lamentations of the people. Among them were those who had the capability to cross the sea. The others, without resources, were forced to go to new economic zones. A common psychology of that time was that being forced to go to new economic zones was a great misfortune. They would rather die crossing the sea than accept going to new economic zones, which would be their last shift. For those who did not succeed in crossing the border and unfortunately were caught, after being released from prison, their house and property were confiscated, and the only remaining road for them was being forced to go to new economic zones.

Once again, one day, a family of true disciples of the Dharma Constitution, having followed the Lord to practice before 1975, ran to ask for His help. They respectfully told Reverend Tịnh Vương that the police and local guerillas had taken down the houses of nearly 100 families in the hamlet at Tân Trang Street on the side of the Đầm Market, Nha Trang. These families were compulsorily carried by vehicles to new economic zones. Tomorrow, the police would demolish His true disciple's house. The Lord then sat half cross-legged, in the position of True Contemplation in His residence at 42 Hồng Bàng Street, Nha Trang.

The next morning, the police and local guerillas came again and prepared to continue the demolition of the houses. Suddenly, Mr. Lê Duẫn, the number one leader of the Vietnamese Communist Party, came from Hanoi to visit the city of Nha Trang. As he passed by Đầm market, he saw the furniture in disorder and the people sitting and weeping. Mr. Lê Duẫn asked them, “Why are you weeping?” After hearing what they reported, he turned to blame the provincial commissioner:

“Your way of working is very strange! The houses are not yet built; nothing is prepared, and you are sending them to go there to die?” After scolding, he then said: “Now, stop sending people to new economic zones in this manner.”

The people then shouted with joy and excitement. They ran to rebuild their houses and were free from going to new economic zones. The Lord’s disciple’s house was safe, too. After this turn of events, the Lord followed to see whether the authorities would change their plan, but Southerners generally continued to be forced to go to new economic zones afterwards.

The Lord then entered the True Contemplation to ask the Devas to save the Southern people, after that He relaxed from the True Contemplation. In that year of 1977, the whole country of Vietnam suffered from drought. Crops were greatly damaged by lack of water, but whenever there was sufficient water, they were also gravely damaged by insects. The food reserves were almost empty, too. The drought lasted until 1978 and people throughout the country were starving. People of new economic zones had to eat banana bulbs to live day after day, and when the banana bulbs ran out, they had to eat tree leaves. Desperately starving, they ran into government offices in new economic zones to ask the cadres to give them some rice to live on for the time being, but they also had no more rice, corn, nor potatoes.

The Communist partisans, then, could no longer govern and control the people. All of them ran away from the new economic zones and flocked back to the cities, living densely on the sidewalks and wandering in their tattered dress. Every province was full of new economic zone people, who ran for their lives due to starvation, living on the sidewalks. [Houses of people forced to go to new economic zones were sold at the cheapest prices, like they were offered to cadres—who needed only 3.75 or 7.5 grams of gold to buy a house. In some cases, the people removed only metal roofing sheets and wood from their houses for their new house in the economic zone and left the whole house. The cadres had only to ask the ward or hamlet committee to get them easily.]

The lamentations of the people were heard everywhere, and they ran in great numbers to the temples to pray and worship the Buddha like before. In the impossible position of forcing the people to go to new economic zones, the Communist authorities had to order the cessation of the program. The number of people crossing the sea also decreased. Today, the people in the South can live peacefully in the cities, and not be forced to go to new economic zones. All of this is caused by the Lord’s great compassion for living beings. Reverend Tịnh Vương, incarnating Lord Maitreya, has set out about doing the salvation of Tao and Life.

If the Devas and Dragon Deity Dharma Protectors did not show their ability and waited until millions of people died in the dark forests with contaminated water, how could the government see its error and correct it? How many people could survive after that? Taking the evident example of Siberia in the USSR, where millions of people were abandoned to die, with families separated and suffering, how could it be named a revolution without sympathy?