Am Pagoda

Halfway up Am Mountain, in the Đức Thọ area of Hà Tĩnh, stands a pagoda that people remember not for gold and lacquer or for sheer size. They remember Chùa Am for the story of a woman who staked her whole fortune on an uprising whose outcome no one could yet foresee.

The formal name of Chùa Am is Diên Quang tự, which means the pagoda of distant light. It sits on the southern slope of that mountain, its back against a rock face. In front it looks out over a valley and the Ngàn Sâu River. Farther off rises the range that people of the area call Giăng Màn. On every side, deep green mountains wrap around the old pagoda, about 600 years old.

The whole country has recognized this pagoda on the mountain. On February 13, 1995, the Ministry of Culture and Information ranked Chùa Am a national heritage site. That rank is given to places whose historical, cultural or architectural value deserves to be known and protected across the whole country. For the people of Đức Thọ, though, the pagoda is first of all a place to remember one person.

People of Đức Thọ say the woman's real name was Trần Thị Ngọc Hào. She was a consort of Emperor Trần Duệ Tông, and folk tradition honors her as Empress Bạch Ngọc. Her husband belonged to the Trần dynasty, which ruled Vietnam from 1225 to 1400. Her home was Hương Bình, in what is now Hà Tĩnh. After the dynasty fell, she returned to her home region. There she cleared wild land around Đức Thọ, founded villages and organized daily life for the people.

Then came the year 1424. As local people tell it, she decided to give her wealth to the Lam Sơn army. It was fighting to take the country back from the army of the Ming, the dynasty then ruling China. Lê Lợi, who founded the Lê dynasty, still faced much hardship in his uprising. No one could be sure how it would end. She decided anyway. It was no small decision.

After the resistance was won, the villagers say, she built Diên Quang pagoda, to live there as a nun and to give thanks to the Buddha. Most of the life of Empress Bạch Ngọc lives on in local tales and legendary history, not in the official chronicles. It is the cultural memory of the people of Đức Thọ. This is how a community keeps its gratitude to those who opened the land and those who dared to sacrifice.

However much of the old story is legend, the pagoda itself has stood on the mountainside for 600 years. Its roof tiles and wooden columns are things you can touch.

Inside the grounds, the path passes through the three-entrance gate and climbs a flight of steps to the main hall. The way up passes burial towers, a small shrine to the earth god and resting courtyards. Step by step, the village falls behind, the forest closes in, and the space of worship opens up.

The main hall is the most remarkable part. Its wooden frame has seven main bays and two end bays. It stands on 60 wooden columns. The roof of yin and yang tiles is built in stacked tiers, 12 roof sections in all. This plan is called a chữ Công layout. Its overall shape resembles the character Công in Chinese script. Then there is the line of the whole roof. Đại đức Thích Nhẫn Nguyện, the monk in charge of the pagoda, explains that the roof imitates the boat of Bát Nhã. In the symbols of Mahayana Buddhism, it is the boat of wisdom that carries people across the sea of suffering.

That is how the pagoda reads its own roof, and it fits what the eye sees. Seen from below, the roofs rise one over another like waves lifting the boat toward the sky.

Inside the main hall, the pagoda honors a set of Tam Thế Buddha statues. They stand for the Buddhas of the three times, past, present and future. Also honored in the hall are Quan Âm, the bodhisattva of compassion, and other bodhisattvas. The altar of Empress Bạch Ngọc has a place of honor of its own. People come there to burn incense in memory of the woman who opened up this land.

Around the grounds stand the burial towers of the founding monks. There are also natural rocks that people of the area call Bái Phật tảng, or Bái Phật Lạy Tăng. The names mean rocks kneeling to the Buddha. They are ordinary rocks of the mountain. Their shapes simply made people think of worshippers bowing low, and so the folk name was born. The naming shows how the people here drew the landscape around them into the spiritual life of the pagoda.

Chùa Am is busiest on its great festival days. One is the 22nd day of the sixth lunar month, the death anniversary of Empress Bạch Ngọc. Others are the full moons of the seventh and the first lunar months. On those days people come from far and wide to burn incense for her. She chose to stay with this land and did not turn away in its hardest years.

Toward evening, seen from the valley below, Chùa Am is only a few small tiers of roof tucked into the mountainside, like the boat of Bát Nhã moored among the trees. For 600 years that boat has carried a story that is not small. It is the story of a woman who understood that keeping the land and its people mattered more than keeping her wealth. It is also the story of a community that has kept and restored the pagoda to remember her, rather than let her be forgotten.