Master Minh Dang Quang

One morning at a country market in the Mekong Delta, a monk in a yellow robe walks barefoot, very slowly, between the stalls. His hands hold nothing but one round bowl. Whatever people give him, he accepts in silence, then bows his head in thanks. A small child tugs at a grandmother's hand and stares after him. The child looks up and asks why he is out on the road and not in a pagoda. The grandmother smiles and strokes the child's hair.

The first man to walk this way in the south began his life in Vĩnh Long, a land of rivers and water.

In 1923, a boy named Nguyễn Thành Đạt was born in the village of Phú Hậu. It lies in Tam Bình, in Vĩnh Long. This is the Mekong Delta, a land of canals, small boats and markets held right on the water. He grew up to the sound of oars beating the waves. Early on, a great question rose in the boy's heart. What do people live for, and how can they be free of suffering?

To look for an answer, the young man made his way to Cambodia. There he visited the Khmer pagodas, studied the scriptures in Pali, and learned the Theravada tradition. Pali is the language in which the oldest surviving recorded sayings of the Buddha were set down. Theravada is believed to be the oldest form of Buddhism, and it is dominant today in Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. He worked to earn his living while quietly studying the way. Then he came home and studied the Mahayana tradition of the Vietnamese as well. In the young man a very special dream slowly took shape.

In the spring of 1944, when he was only 21, the dream shone clear. He wanted a path of practice that belonged to the Vietnamese, one that gathered the best of both great branches of Buddhism. From the Theravada came the plain practice of begging for food, carrying a bowl as the Buddha did long ago. From the Mahayana came a wide heart of compassion for all living beings. He took the monastic name Minh Đăng Quang, which means a bright lamp. He is remembered as the Founding Master.

This path of practice is called Khất Sĩ. The two words mean a person who begs for food in order to practice. A Khất Sĩ monk wears a yellow robe and has no fixed pagoda to live in. Each morning he carries his alms bowl barefoot from place to place, stopping at every hamlet. Anyone with a kind heart may share a little rice or a few vegetables. The monk takes just enough for the day, then walks on. Before the Founding Master, few people in the south had seen such a sight. Yet this simple picture touched the hearts of country people.

When a monk steps out onto the road, religion and daily life are no longer far apart. The one who gives the rice and the one who receives it plant the same good seed together. The people of the southern region loved this plain, honest way of practice, and more and more of them followed it. From Vĩnh Long the Khất Sĩ way spread across the Mekong Delta. It passed through Sa Đéc and Cần Thơ. Then came Mỹ Tho and countless other river landings.

His teachings were gathered into a precious collection called Chơn Lý, which means Truth. It holds 69 teachings, written in the Vietnamese alphabet so that everyone could read them. In it he set down the best of both traditions in plain, familiar words. The collection is still the foundation of the whole order.

Then, in 1954, while the order was growing strong, something sad happened. On the road from Sa Đéc to Cần Thơ, the Founding Master was suddenly absent, and no one has had news of him from that day to this. Tens of thousands of followers were shaken, and they have missed him ever since. People have quietly waited, year after year, the way one waits for a relative who has gone far away and not yet come home.

But the seeds he planted were never lost. The lamp he lit still burns. Tens of thousands of disciples, one after another, have kept their teacher's way and built hundreds of monasteries. Today the Khất Sĩ order is one of the orders recognized within the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha, with more than 500 monasteries, most of them in the southern region. The yellow robe and the alms bowl are still there, just as the Founding Master once hoped.

The old picture has not grown old. Early this morning, somewhere in a country market of the Mekong Delta, a monk in a yellow robe quietly walks by with an alms bowl in his hands. A faint streak of yellow drifts between the noisy stalls. And perhaps a small child is tugging a grandmother's hand, gazing after him, and softly asking a question, clear and simple, just as the Founding Master always dreamed.