Tu Hieu Pagoda

A monk gave up a high post to come and live beside his aging mother. Small graves hold people who left no descendants. And a Zen master traveled the world, then came back to the very place where he began.

All three stories lie within one pagoda in the pine forests of Hue: Từ Hiếu, known as a root pagoda.

The pagoda was founded in 1843 by the Zen master Nhất Định. At the time, he held the title of Tăng Cang at Giác Hoàng Quốc Tự. That made him one of the highest-ranking monks at the Nguyễn court. The Nguyễn dynasty was Vietnam's last royal dynasty, which reigned from 1802 to 1945. The Zen master gave up that post. He came to Dương Xuân Thượng hill, in the middle of a pine forest, and built a small thatched hermitage. The reason was simple. His mother had grown old and frail, and he wanted to be by her side to care for her.

And from here, the story begins.

People in Hue say that his mother fell sick, and no medicine could cure her. Someone advised that she eat fish or meat to build up her strength. But her son was a monk, and the Buddhist precepts allow neither meat nor fish. Many people would say that keeping the precepts matters more. The Zen master Nhất Định did not see it that way. He was willing to set the precepts aside and to bear the mockery of others. Staff in hand, he walked more than five kilometers through the forest to the market to buy fish. Back home, he cooked fish porridge for his mother with his own hands.

Then the story reached Emperor Tự Đức. Among the Nguyễn emperors, he was famous as a devoted son. He loved and revered his own mother, Empress Dowager Từ Dụ, with all his heart. When he heard about the Zen master, the emperor was deeply moved. Here was a monk ready to set aside his vows to cook porridge for his mother. That was worth even more than keeping the vows. So the emperor granted money to build the pagoda and named it Từ Hiếu Tự.

Written in Chinese characters, Từ Hiếu means compassion and filial love. The pagoda carries both values in its name.

But that is only part of the story. Từ Hiếu has something that no other pagoda in Vietnam has.

Out in the garden, more than 20 small graves lie in the shade of the trees. This is the cemetery of the eunuchs who served the Nguyễn court.

Eunuchs were the people who served in the inner palace of the Imperial City. They could never have a family or children. They gave their whole lives to the court. In old age, they lived in a residence set aside for them, north of the Imperial City. When they died, they had no descendants to burn incense for them.

The eunuchs pooled money and land to restore and enlarge Từ Hiếu. They hoped to be buried here after death, with incense burned in their memory. Emperor Tự Đức approved their wish. And just as they had hoped, the pagoda still burns incense for them to this day.

The story of these graves is a story of compassion. Buddhism does not abandon the people that society shuns. The pagoda became a family for people who had no family.

Then the history of Từ Hiếu entered the 20th century with another story, a far larger one.

The Zen master Thích Nhất Hạnh was born in 1926 in the province of Thừa Thiên Hue. He became a monk at this very pagoda in 1942. He was 16 years old. This is where his path of study and practice began.

In the years that followed, he taught Buddhist studies and founded a Buddhist university. Above all, he built the Engaged Buddhism movement, which joined spiritual practice with social work and peace. During the Vietnam War, he called for a ceasefire and for reconciliation. In 1967, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. King wrote that he knew of no one more worthy of the prize than this gentle monk from Vietnam.

But because of that work, he was forced to leave Vietnam. He lived in exile for decades, most of that time in France. There, in 1982, he founded Plum Village, called Làng Mai in Vietnamese. It became a renowned international meditation center. He wrote more than 100 books on mindfulness meditation and on peace, and they sold millions of copies around the globe. He was one of the people who carried the Buddhist idea of mindfulness into popular Western culture.

In October 2018, the Zen master Thích Nhất Hạnh came back to Từ Hiếu. He was 92 years old, and he had come home to spend his final years here. He came back to where he had begun, the pagoda from which he had once stepped out into the world.

In the early hours of January 22, 2022, the Zen master Thích Nhất Hạnh passed away at Từ Hiếu. He was 95 years old.

He declined the stupa that tradition would have built for him. His relics rest at this very pagoda.

The pine forest around the pagoda is a fitting place to practice walking meditation. Walking meditation means walking very slowly, aware of each step on the ground, breathing in for five steps and out for five. That is what the Zen master Thích Nhất Hạnh taught to millions of people all over the world.

Từ Hiếu holds three stories: a story of filial love, a story of compassion and a story of peace. The three come together here, in a single pagoda among the pines.