Towards an Alternative Buddhist Modernity: Hòa Hảo Charity Healing and Herbal Medicine in the Mekong Delta

Abstract

This article examines the role of Hòa Hảo Buddhism in providing alternative healthcare, through traditional medicine and charity clinics, in the Mekong Delta. Based on participant observation and interviews with Hòa Hảo Buddhists, herb doctors, herbal healers, and other health professionals, it outlines the various motivations and interests behind Hòa Hảo’s large-scale charitable efforts, linking these to broader discussions of Buddhist modernity and biopolitics in Vietnam. This article argues that Hòa Hảo leaders and healers have turned common herbs and volunteer labour into tactical resources that provide meaning, generate value, and reshape religious and political identities for followers. With the emergence of new medical science and the market economy in recent decades, the rural Vietnamese populations have experienced insufficient healthcare. Hòa Hảo practitioners have offered alternatives to public healthcare services and responded to a lack of trained doctors and other medical staff by remploying medical knowledge that originates from the teachings of their religious founder and pioneers. This new focus on healing practices has reshaped social relations within Hòa Hảo communities. It also constitutes an alternative trajectory towards a Buddhist modernity, providing religious devotees with new ways to reconnect their Buddhist cosmology with everyday needs in a changing society.