The Sấm Giảng: Scriptures of Hòa Hảo Buddhism

The written heart of Hòa Hảo Buddhism is the body of teaching left by its founder, known collectively as the Sấm Giảng Thi Văn — the "oracles, sermons, poems and prose." Composed in the space of a few years, these verses became, after the founder's death, the tradition's enduring authority.

What the Sấm Giảng is

The term Sấm Giảng combines the sense of prophetic oracle (sấm) with that of sermon or exposition (giảng). During his short teaching career, Huỳnh Phú Sổ is credited with composing six principal books of these oracles and sermons, together with hundreds of shorter poems, essays, and folk litanies. Collected editions are usually titled the Sấm Giảng Thi Văn Toàn Bộ — the "complete oracles and writings."

Written for ordinary people

What distinguished these writings in their own time was their form. Rather than classical scriptural Chinese or dense doctrinal prose, the founder wrote in vernacular Vietnamese folk verse — chiefly the lục bát (six-eight) metre and related popular forms that delta farmers already knew from song and story. The language is plain and rhythmic, easy to memorise and recite. This made the teaching portable: an unlettered farmer could carry the essentials of the faith in memory and pass them on aloud. It is a large part of why the movement spread so quickly.

What the writings teach

The themes of the Sấm Giảng are consistent with the tradition's teachings. They exhort readers to abandon vice and return to virtue, to honour the Four Debts of Gratitude, to practise Buddhism sincerely at home, and to cultivate the self through moral effort and contemplation. In keeping with their prophetic register, some passages warn of coming upheaval and suffering and call for moral renewal in response — a note that resonated powerfully in the turbulent Vietnam of the 1940s.

Authority after the founder's disappearance

When Huỳnh Phú Sổ disappeared in 1947, he left no acknowledged successor. In the absence of a living leader, the Sấm Giảng became the tradition's central authority. Practice came to consist largely of reading, reciting, and living by these writings, and their memorisation is itself an act of devotion. In this respect Hòa Hảo Buddhism is a strongly text-centred tradition: the founder's own words, rather than an institution or clergy, hold it together.

Verse as a vehicle for faith

The decision to teach in verse was itself a form of religious reform. In early twentieth-century Vietnam, literacy was uneven and formal religious learning was the preserve of a relatively small number of monks and scholars. By casting the teaching in the popular metres of folk song and oral storytelling, the founder placed the essentials of the faith within reach of anyone who could listen and remember. Verse could be chanted at the household altar, sung while working in the fields, and taught to children by heart. In this way the form of the Sấm Giảng carried the tradition's message as surely as its content: that religion belongs to ordinary people and to everyday life, not to an educated elite or a distant institution.

Reading the Sấm Giảng today

The writings remain in wide circulation among adherents and are studied both devotionally and by scholars of Vietnamese religion and literature. Because they are poetry rooted in a specific dialect and moment, they reward careful reading and resist easy translation; English renderings can convey the meaning but rarely the music. For readers approaching the tradition from outside, the Sấm Giảng is the best window into how Hòa Hảo Buddhism understands itself — and a notable work of twentieth-century Vietnamese religious literature in its own right.