Non Nuoc Pagoda

Deep inside a mountain of stone, a rare story of two cultures meeting lies hidden in the rock. It belongs to a pagoda with a plain, everyday name, Non Nước Pagoda. Behind that simple name lie four centuries of history and four names. Three Nguyễn emperors each gave it a new one.

First, the name. Non Nước Pagoda is only the folk name. The full official name is Chùa Linh Ứng Non Nước Ngũ Hành Sơn. Non Nước means mountains and water. It is what people have long called Ngũ Hành Sơn, the Marble Mountains near Da Nang. The place has mountains of rock, and it lies close to the sea. This is the second old pagoda on the mountain called Thủy Sơn, after Tam Thai Pagoda. It is not the Linh Ứng Pagoda at Bãi Bụt. That one stands on the Sơn Trà Peninsula and has a 67-meter statue of Quan Âm, the bodhisattva of compassion. Da Nang has three different pagodas named Linh Ứng. One is this pagoda on Thủy Sơn. Another is at Bãi Bụt, and the third is on Bà Nà mountain.

Now for the story of this pagoda's four names.

Early in the 17th century, the Venerable Quang Chánh came up to Thủy Sơn to meditate. His Buddhist name was Bửu Đài, and he came from the nearby village of Khái Đông. He chose a natural stone cave, later known as Động Tàng Chơn. There he set up a simple hermitage for meditation and called it Dương Chơn Am. The name means the hermitage of the light of truth. This was the seed of the whole pagoda.

Then, in 1802, the Nguyễn dynasty unified the country. It was Vietnam's last royal dynasty, which reigned until 1945. On a royal tour of central Vietnam, a visitor came to Ngũ Hành Sơn. He was Emperor Gia Long, the founder of the Nguyễn dynasty. He found Dương Chơn Am already there, but still small. He ordered it enlarged and renamed it Ngự chế Ứng Chơn Tự. Ngự chế means composed by the emperor himself.

In 1825, Emperor Minh Mạng came here. It was the same royal tour on which he named the five mountains after the five elements and rebuilt Tam Thai Pagoda. He rebuilt this pagoda too, in brick and tile instead of the old wood and bamboo, and on a larger scale. He renamed it Ứng Chơn Tự and made it a national pagoda, of the same rank as Tam Thai.

The emperor also named the stone cave behind the pagoda. He called it Động Tàng Chơn, which means the treasure house of truth. The name fits well. Inside the cave are many stone steles carved with Chinese characters. There are old altars, and relics from many centuries. It really is a treasure house, in the literal sense.

Then, in 1891, in the reign of Emperor Thành Thái, there was a problem. The word Chơn in the pagoda's name broke a naming taboo. It matched the name of an earlier Nguyễn emperor, or a name connected to one. In imperial times, the real names of emperors and royal ancestors were forbidden in everyday use. Any word that matched had to be changed. So the emperor renamed it Linh Ứng Tự, the pagoda of answered prayers. That name is still used today, more than 130 years later.

On March 22, 1990, the Ministry of Culture recognized the pagoda as a National Historical and Cultural Monument. At the end of 2018, together with all of Ngũ Hành Sơn, it was raised to the rank of Special National Monument.

Today the pagoda is laid out in the shape of the character Nhất, a single horizontal stroke. The plan is simple, and it sits in harmony with the rocky mountains around it. The eye goes first to a white statue of Amitabha Buddha, 10 meters tall. It stands with its back against the rock face, bright against the green of the forest.

In 1997, the pagoda added a new building, Tháp Xá Lợi, the Relic Tower. It rises 28 meters, in seven stories. Inside, about 200 small statues of Buddhas and bodhisattvas stand on its floors. Relics of the Buddha rest on the top floor. This is the most modern building at the pagoda, not an old one. But it was designed to fit in with the landscape around it.

Behind the pagoda lies Động Tàng Chơn.

This is the natural stone cave that Emperor Minh Mạng named the treasure house of truth. Walking through its chambers, you can see why he chose that name.

One chamber honors Amitabha Buddha. Another holds the seated Buddha. Another holds the reclining Buddha, at the moment of entering Nirvana. Another honors the bodhisattva Quan Thế Âm.

And then there is a very special chamber. It honors Bà Champa, also called Po Yang Inu Nagar. She was the most important goddess in the old beliefs of Champa, an ancient kingdom on the central and southern coast of what is now Vietnam. Beside it is a chamber for Shiva, a god of Hinduism whom the Cham people of old worshipped.

Here is what happened. The Cham people worshipped their gods in the caves of Ngũ Hành Sơn many centuries ago. Today, inside the same cave, altars to the Buddha stand near altars to Cham gods. It is a gentle trace of how Vietnamese and Cham cultures met and mixed over the centuries.

In the middle of Động Tàng Chơn, four centuries have gone by, and nothing has faded. Light slips through cracks in the rock. Incense smoke drifts faintly in the air. And on the stone walls, lines of Chinese characters carved in the time of the Nguyễn emperors are still there, quietly keeping their truth.