Loan is brought to court for accidently stabbing her abusive husband while he was trying to hit her with a copper vase. The prosecutor, who, of course, was working for the colonial government, argues that by disrupting the hierarchical Confucian family system Loan has threatened the stability of colonial society. Confucianism and Revolution Though counter revolutionaries could adopt Confucianism for their purposes, it also offered some advantages to revolutionaries, particularly to Marxists. Non-communist nationalists were less successful than Marxists in coming up with an ideology that encouraged loyalty to communities larger than the family. The compiler is a well-known Zen master, poet, and peace activist who now lives in the U. S. Buddhist themes appear in some of these stories, but the tales are not explicitly Buddhist.
Several stories reveal the influence of India on early Vietnamese culture.
Lotus in a Sea of Fire . Summarizes the history of Vietnamese Buddhism and argues for the establishment of a government not aligned with either the Americans or the Communists. Adapted version reprinted in We the Vietnamese , ed. Woodside, Alexander B. Community and Revolution in Modern Vietnam . Houghton Mifflin, 1976.