Monivongsa Bopharam Pagoda

In the middle of Cà Mau city, on Đinh Tiên Hoàng Street, stands a pagoda that makes a visitor feel at once the presence of a distinct culture.

It is a Theravada Buddhist pagoda of the Khmer people in Cà Mau. Theravada is believed to be the oldest form of Buddhism, and it is dominant today in Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. The pagoda was built in 1964, after the Venerable Thạch Kên called on monks and Buddhist followers to contribute. More than sixty years have passed, and it is still a place of religious life and belief for the Khmer community and for the people of the province.

The first thing to notice is the main gate. It faces east, and above it stand three towers that represent the Three Realms or the Three Jewels. Many Khmer Theravada buildings choose the east, a direction tied to a philosophy of light and to the path of practice. The patterns on the gate are bright, in the style typical of Khmer architecture in southern Vietnam.

Past the gate, the grounds open out, ringed by rows of trees. They hold a main hall and a sala, which is also called Phước Xá. They also hold living quarters for the monks, towers where ashes are kept, a small shrine and a lotus pond. Each space has its own part to play in the religious and community life of the Khmer.

The sala is worth pausing at, because it is more than a meeting room. It is the hall of the monks and the faithful, and it is where they prepare before going up to the main hall to worship. Inside are an altar to the Buddha, seats, and murals on the walls and the ceiling. It is the space that joins ordinary life to spiritual life.

One part of the grounds matters in a special way, the towers that keep ashes. For the Khmer, the pagoda is where a family places the ashes of a person who has died. So the towers around the main hall are not just a detail of architecture. They hold the memory of families, and they are the most deeply spiritual part of the community.

Life at the pagoda is not only the quiet of ordinary days. Many of the community's great festivals of the year take place here. Chol Chnam Thmay is the Khmer New Year, usually around April on the solar calendar. Sene Dolta is a festival of filial gratitude, giving thanks to ancestors. Ok Om Bok is the moon offering, thanking heaven and earth for the harvest.

And there is Kathina, the offering of monastic robes to the monks. It is held every year from September 16 to the full moon of the tenth lunar month, and each pagoda holds it once a year. At Monivongsa Bopharam it usually lasts two days, with chanting, a procession around the village and the main hall, and offerings of flowers and robes.

For the Khmer community, the pagoda is more than a place of worship. It is also a place to learn to read and write, to learn singing and dancing, to gather as a community, and to pass the Buddhist teachings to the young. Children can enter the pagoda to study and practice, to learn the Khmer script and the teachings.

Cà Mau has seven Khmer Theravada pagodas and ten salatel. Right in the center of the city, Monivongsa Bopharam is the most familiar and the easiest to reach among them.

Cà Mau is more than its mangrove forests and the land of the Cape. It is also a place where cultures live side by side, and the Khmer pagoda in the middle of its city is a part of that picture that could not be missing.