Tam Thai Pagoda

Stone steps climb the slope of Thủy Sơn. Beyond the three-entrance gate, an old pagoda sits among huge limestone boulders. Its roof of interlocking yin and yang tiles is green with moss, and ancient trees spread their shade against the sun. Below lies the whole of Da Nang: the blue sea, the river and the city.

This is Tam Thai Pagoda, the main pagoda on Thủy Sơn and the oldest one there. It was also a national pagoda, a title it held under the Nguyễn dynasty. That was Vietnam's last royal dynasty, which reigned from 1802 to 1945.

The story of the pagoda begins around 1630. Central Vietnam then belonged to the Nguyễn lords, and Buddhism was encouraged to spread, with new pagodas going up. A small pagoda went up on the southern slope of Thủy Sơn. Then, at the end of the 18th century, the Tây Sơn wars reached the mountain. The Tây Sơn were three brothers who led an uprising from 1771 and for a time ruled Vietnam. The pagoda was destroyed completely.

Then, in 1825, when the old pagoda was only a ruin, a visitor came here and changed everything. He was Emperor Minh Mạng.

On a royal tour south of the capital, the emperor stopped at Ngũ Hành Sơn, the Marble Mountains. He looked at five limestone mountains standing tall beside the sea. He decided to name each one after the five elements: metal, wood, water, fire and earth. He had characters carved into the rock face. And he ordered the old pagoda, ruined by war, to be rebuilt.

In 1826, the emperor had a bronze bell and bronze statues cast and gave them to the pagoda. The bell, engraved with the name of Emperor Minh Mạng, is still kept here today, nearly two hundred years later.

And the emperor named the pagoda Tam Thai Tự.

The name comes from old Eastern astronomy. Near the Big Dipper lie three groups of stars. The first is Thượng Thai, the upper one. Then come Trung Thai and Hạ Thai, the middle and the lower. Thủy Sơn itself has three peaks at three different heights, and they carry the same three names, like the three Tam Thai stars. The pagoda rests against the slopes of those peaks. The choice shows an emperor who understood astronomy, Buddhism and Eastern thought.

As a national pagoda, Tam Thai had the emperor as its direct patron, and he granted it property. And it stood far from the capital at Hue, which showed the care the Nguyễn court gave to Buddhism even in distant lands.

In the main hall stand the Tây Phương Tam Thánh, the Three Holy Ones of the Western Paradise. Amitabha Buddha is at the center. Two bodhisattvas stand on either side of him. One is Quan Thế Âm, the bodhisattva of compassion. The other is Đại Thế Chí. This arrangement is common in Mahayana Buddhism.

After the main hall, the path leads on to the two viewing terraces of Thủy Sơn. Vọng Giang Đài lies near Tam Thai Pagoda. Vọng Hải Đài lies to the east, near the Linh Ứng Pagoda of Ngũ Hành Sơn.

Vọng Hải Đài means the terrace for watching the sea. Looking east from here, the sea spreads wide, and the white sand of Mỹ Khê Beach stretches far along the shore. The Sơn Trà Peninsula juts out into the sea. On a clear day, a white statue of Quan Âm can be seen in the distance, standing against the green of the mountain. It belongs to Linh Ứng Pagoda on Sơn Trà.

Vọng Giang Đài means the terrace for watching the river. To the west lie the Cổ Cò River and, farther off, the center of Da Nang with its bridges. The two terraces face opposite ways, the sea to the east and the river to the west. People like to call this spot a meeting point between earth and sky, between sea and mountain.

At Vọng Giang Đài, a stone stele from the reign of Emperor Minh Mạng still bears the terrace's name in three Chinese characters. The two terraces are the finest viewpoints in all of Ngũ Hành Sơn.

The pagoda was restored in 1907 and again in 1925. Later restorations came in 1956 and 1995. Through them all, it kept the royal Buddhist style of the Nguyễn court. At the end of 2018, the Prime Minister raised Ngũ Hành Sơn to the rank of Special National Monument, and Tam Thai Pagoda is part of it.

A story has been handed down that a younger sister of Emperor Minh Mạng came here to live as a nun and meditate for a time, after the pagoda was built. The story has not been confirmed in official historical records. So it is told here as something people say, not as history.

Emperor Minh Mạng also gave the pagoda a board inscribed with the words Ngự chế Tam Thai Tự, and a diamond-shaped bronze plaque with his handwriting on both sides. Those brush strokes belong to the moment an emperor looked up at five mountains by the sea and gave them their names.

On Vọng Hải Đài, the sea wind blows up from Mỹ Khê Beach, and the distant sound of the waves echoes against the rock. This place has lasted nearly four hundred years, through war, through storms and floods, through the rise and fall of dynasties. And it is still here, still looking out to the sea every morning.