Phuoc An Hoi Quan Pagoda

Phuoc An Hoi Quan Pagoda is one of the Chinese clan temples (belonging to the Fujianese) in District 5, Ho Chi Minh City's Chinatown. District 5 is the old Cholon, once one of the most tremendous Chinese cities in the world - to read about it in its heyday you can't do better than Gontran de Poncins' wonderful book From A Chinese City. If you are lucky enough to travel to Ho Chi Minh City, you should really put aside a morning or afternoon to visit the colourful temples of Cholon.
The Phuoc An Hoi Quan is just two minutes walk from the Quan Am pagoda (that's not counting the ten minutes you will spend drumming up the courage to cross the truly terrifying Hung Vuong Rd.), so you should really plan to do both at once. Both temples are shown on maps in any of the guide books to Ho Chi Minh City.
There are reasonably concealed benches in the temple courtyard so it makes a nice place to sit and people watch without being hassled. Bring a fan.




The statue of Kwan Yin to the left of the courtyard as you enter is a very popular and lucky statue in this part of town.




And interestingly the robes for Kwan Yin that are donated by people who have had their prayers answered are embroidered with the names of the donors or the people they want blessed.




This is the first time I have seen this. I wonder if it's new or old?





There is also a lucky horse to your left as you enter the temple - it is meant to be lucky for travellers to stroke its mane.

Details:

Phuoc An Hoi Quan Pagoda is at 184 D. Hung Vuong, District 5, Ho Chi Minh City.
It is meant to stay open till 6pm, but they normally won't let you in after 5.30.
It's a 10-15 minute taxi ride from downtown Saigon.
Photography is allowed, and you don't have to take your shoes off to enter this temple.
You can purchase incense and offerings inside the temple, where you will be charged the true local price.

Monastery Gardens - Ho Chi Minh City - Chua Giac Lam

One of the suburban temples in Ho Chi Minh City that is well and truly on the tourist beat is Chua Giac Lam.
It is said to be one of the area's earliest extant Mahayana temples (there are, naturally, some much older Theravada temples in the vicinity, including Wat Bodhiwong, a Khmer temple), and there are graves in the temple cemetery dating back 300 years. Despite the occasional crowd of tourists, I quite like Giac Lam. It is spread out, and in the afternoons it is a hangout for students from the neighbourhood who come here to study in the quiet - and do quite a bit of flirting with each other. When I spent a lot of time in Vietnam in 1999 I used to come here quite often to conduct an informal English class with a young monk I knew, and we were allowed special access to a closed-off garden at the side of the temple which grows special medicinal herbs for the monks' use. Unfortunately I have no pics from that time.
The front courtyard boasts a very big and very healthy Bodhi tree.
As it is situated on quite a large parcel of land, the temple has, over the years, established a number of different outdoor shrines on a grand scale.



This shrine to Kwan Yin is a great favourite of elderly Chinese men, who sit in front of it all morning shouting to each other in Teo Chew dialect, smoking and scratching their bare bellies.

Monastery Gardens - Quy Nhon - Chua Hien Nam

Chua Hien Nam is a 300 year-old temple in Quy Nhon City, Binh Dinh province.
Like many temples in Vietnam, it is hemmed in all around by houses and shops, so the only way to reach the temple is by going down an alley. This has happened because over the years the temple has subdivided and sold off its lands, leaving itself stranded in the middle of urban density.
The grounds are still reasonably spacious, and the forecourt garden contains a large shrine to Kwan Yin.




This outdoor shrine is above a water garden, growing some rather fine lotuses.




The area is paved so that it can be used as an extension of worship or other congregational space. It is used all day by people from the surrounding neighbourhood - in this case to release a cage full of birds as an act of good karma.




Looking out from the Abbott's room you can see his prize collection of bonsai in pots. The cultivation of bonsai - along with the cultivation of orchids - is seen as a monkish pasttime in Vietnam.




And though they provide an interesting focal point in front of the main prayer hall, they hardly provide any shade, which is much needed in Quy Nhon's hot climate.

What is a Bodhisattva?

One of the requests I hear a lot is: "Please explain what a Bodhisattva is."

Now, I have moved in Buddhist circles for many years, so perhaps have a strange view of the world.

It would seem to me that "Bodhisattva" is one of those words that has well and truly made the progression into common English usage, but I think I am quite wrong. Just a casual survey of friends and acquaintances results in puzzled looks. No-one, it seems, knows what the hell a Bodhisattva is.

My common understanding is that a Bodhisattva is a perfect, enlightened being who has renounced the benefits of nirvana and chosen to be re-born into the world in order to continue to help and enlighten human beings. It is the Bodhisattvas who so enliven the Mahayana Buddhist pantheon, and whose statues so clutter up the average Buddhist temple.

The most famous Bodhisattva is of course Kwan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion.

She is almost universally revered throughout East Asia, and her statue can be seen everywhere.


Indeed, the popularity of her cult often seems to eclipse the supreme status of the Buddhas themselves.



Other commonly seen Bodhisattvas include Jizo (the Lord of the Underworld), Zhuan Di (the multi-armed manifestation of Kwan Yin) and Manjusri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom.
While the Buddhas might serve as exemplars of behaviour, in general it is seen as poor form to ask them directly for supernatural favours.


One merely respects the Buddha and studies his path. But the Bodhisattvas are much more approachable, and are seen as intercessory beings who will carry your prayers to the proper places. This is why their shrines are so important in the popular religion of Buddhist Asia.

Kwan Yin

Kwan Yin is much loved in Vietnam, where she is known as Quan The Am. Temples always feature a little shrine to her somewhere on the premises, and some temples outdo themselves to create elaborate shrines to the Gentle Mother. Such statues often attract a cult following, and particular statues are thought to possess particular lucky energies. One could create a map of Ho Chi Minh City based on the various shrines to the Goddess of Mercy and what they are meant to bestow upon the sincere worshipper.