The Brown Robe Journeying South

The wind from the north blew along the long road heading south, gently stirring the robe of a monk walking with a staff. Behind him followed only disciples in simple clothing, moving in quiet steps, without a single sword, without a single bow, without the sound of hooves or the banners of an army. That small company was heading toward the capital of Champa, where King Chế Mân had long lived in anxious dread of the day Đại Việt would march down to hold him accountable.

That fear was not without cause. During the war against the Mongol forces, Champa had allowed the invaders to pass through its territory to attack Đại Việt from the south. Once the foreign invaders had been driven back and the country of Đại Việt gradually stabilized, the Cham people understood that the northern court could well send an army down to punish them. The price of lending that aid could have been crumbling citadels, a scattered people, and blood spilled once more upon a land already shaken by turmoil.

Inside the royal palace, every piece of news arriving from the north tightened the atmosphere. King Chế Mân waited for what he believed was unavoidable: vast armies and the thunder of hooves marching down.

"Đại Việt has ended its wars. Perhaps they are about to hold us accountable."

"What if their army comes?" someone beside him asked cautiously.

King Chế Mân fell silent, then answered: "The most frightening thing is that we cannot say they have no reason."

In the north, King Trần Nhân Tông viewed the matter from a different angle. After the years of war, he understood that both Đại Việt and Champa were small nations. If they continued to hold grudges, allowing larger powers to take advantage and then turn them against each other, the ones who would suffer in the end were the people of both sides. Punishment might satisfy anger for a moment, but hatred would be passed down through many generations.

After stepping down from the throne and living the monastic life, Điều Ngự Giác Hoàng Trần Nhân Tông decided to visit Champa. Before setting out, he sent a messenger to make it clear that this journey would be accompanied by no army.

"Please tell King Chế Mân that I come in a spirit of friendship and goodwill."

The one receiving the order still had doubts: "Venerable sir, truly without an escort of soldiers?"

He replied calmly: "I come to close the chapter of enmity, not to open another war."

The news reached Champa, but it could not dispel all suspicion. King Chế Mân remained uneasy. He did not know whether behind that advance notice lay some hidden scheme. The days of waiting passed slowly, until sentries watching from afar reported that the visitors from the north had appeared.

"How many troops are with them?" King Chế Mân asked at once.

"There are no troops, Your Majesty."

"Not a single person carrying a sword?"

"Only a monk in a thin robe, leaning on a staff, with a few gentle disciples."

That was the turning point King Chế Mân never expected. At the gates of the royal palace there were no cavalry columns raising clouds of dust, but the figure of a king who had once led Đại Việt through war, now appearing in the guise of a monk of austere and humble practice. No clashing of weapons, no gleam of cold steel, only calm footsteps entering a place that had lived in fear of retaliation.

King Chế Mân looked at the guest before him, deeply moved. Đại Việt had every reason to seek retribution, yet Trần Nhân Tông did not use force to crush Champa. He answered wrongdoing with virtue, choosing friendship in place of weapons. That calmness dissolved the defensiveness in King Chế Mân's heart, and at the same time made him feel all the more keenly his country's fault in having allowed the Mongol army passage.

King Chế Mân said: "I have been waiting for the hooves of Đại Việt's army to come down and hold us to account."

Trần Nhân Tông replied gently: "Our two nations have already suffered too much. If we fight again, it is only the people who will bear further calamity."

"Do you hold no resentment that Champa once allowed the Mongol army passage?"

"Acknowledging fault so that we may change together is more precious than answering hatred with hatred. Our two nations need to understand each other and live in harmony."

It was precisely this magnanimity that changed the course of events. Wishing both to express his remorse and filled with admiration for Trần Nhân Tông's virtue, King Chế Mân decided to offer the two provinces of Ô and Lý to Đại Việt. That was not a gift born of military coercion, but a response to the heart of a king who had answered wrongdoing with virtue, a king who had become a monastic.

Trần Nhân Tông received the two provinces but also thought of how to reciprocate. Đại Việt had just endured many wars, and gold and silver were not abundant. Land could not be given as a gift either, for Champa had just ceded territory to Đại Việt. After much consideration, he decided to give Princess Huyền Trân in marriage to King Chế Mân. That marriage became an answer in return, and at the same time wove another thread of friendship between the two nations.

Later, some people of Champa did not fully understand the origins of these events. They saw only the outcome: after the marriage, their country had lost two provinces, a vast stretch of land running from Quảng Bình and Quảng Trị to Quảng Nam. Unaware of the fear, the remorse, and the admiration King Chế Mân had felt when facing the virtue of Trần Nhân Tông, they grew resentful. From Đồ Bàn, spies were sent into the former territories, stirring up ethnic differences and inciting rebellion.

The court sent Trương Hán Siêu to the Huế region to investigate. He did not rush to look only at the outward resistance, but had people probe into the deeper causes. In the end, he recognized that the instability stemmed from two things: the spy network from Đồ Bàn, and hatred being nurtured by discrimination between the Cham people and the Vietnamese people.

"If we only suppress the rebels, the resentment will remain," Trương Hán Siêu said.

Someone beside him asked: "Then how can this land truly be at peace?"

He answered: "Cut off the incitement coming from outside, and at the same time gradually erase the ethnic divisions. When everyone is a citizen of one nation, others will find it hard to use differences to sow hatred."

He dismantled the spy network coming out of Đồ Bàn, and at the same time gradually removed the boundaries that made the two communities see each other as strangers. Because of this, the enmity between the Cham and the Vietnamese did not grow into a lasting wound. Trương Hán Siêu's achievement lay not only in keeping a region at peace, but in his understanding that to end conflict for the long term, one must remove the very reasons for people to hate one another.

As the years passed, the story left behind an unforgettable image: at the moment when a kingdom trembled awaiting a retaliatory army, from the north came a monk in a thin robe, staff in hand, carrying no weapons. It was magnanimity that replaced a possible war with friendship; it was respect that opened the way for two peoples to draw closer to one another. Even when differences could not vanish at once, people could still choose not to turn difference into hatred.

The Meaning of the Story

Tolerance is not weakness, but the strength that ends the cycle of answering hatred with hatred. However different our ethnicity or circumstances, we must still know how to respect and support one another, and never nurture a heart of enmity.

Compiled from a dharma talk by Venerable Thích Chân Quang