Tuyen Linh Pagoda

Tuyên Linh Pagoda stands right beside the Tân Hương creek, on the road from Cái Bần to Phú Khánh. Some pagodas are only places of worship. Some are crossroads of history. Tuyên Linh is both.

Tourism sources in Bến Tre currently give its address as Minh Đức commune. That is in Mỏ Cày Nam, in the old Bến Tre province, now part of Vĩnh Long. The pagoda was built in 1861, the year of Tân Dậu, in the fourteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tự Đức. MyBenTre records its first name as Tiên Linh bản tự, while the Vĩnh Long source gives Tiên Linh tự.

The first abbot was the Venerable Khánh Phong. In 1907, a young monk named Lê Khánh Hòa came to lead the pagoda. He was from Phú Lễ commune in Ba Tri, and he was known in religion as Thích Như Trí. From then on, Tiên Linh began a new chapter.

The Venerable Lê Khánh Hòa did more than teach the sutras. He widened the teaching of Buddhist doctrine and trained students. Little by little he became one of the pioneers of the movement to revive Buddhism in the south in the early 20th century. He founded two Buddhist study associations, Nam Kỳ Phật học hội and Lưỡng Xuyên Phật học hội. He was also chief editor of the magazine Từ bi âm and director of a book series, Phật học tùng thư. These were not ceremonial posts. They were organizations and publications with a real role in renewing and spreading Buddhism in Nam Kỳ. Nam Kỳ was the name then used for southern Vietnam.

In 1930, when the pagoda was restored, the abbot changed its name from Tiên Linh tự to Tuyên Linh tự. It is the name that people in Bến Tre still use today.

Earlier, toward the end of 1926, two guests arrived. Around the end of that year, the elder Nguyễn Sinh Sắc stopped here together with a senior monk of Từ Đàm Pagoda in Hue. Nguyễn Sinh Sắc was a phó bảng degree holder. Phó bảng was a degree just below doctoral laureate in the royal examinations. The two men stayed at Tuyên Linh for a while. More exactly, from late in the year of Bính Dần, 1926, to early in the year of Đinh Mão, 1927, the elder came to the pagoda to meet the Venerable Lê Khánh Hòa.

Nguyễn Sinh Sắc was the father of President Hồ Chí Minh. He was a Confucian scholar who had left the path of an official and traveled all over Nam Kỳ in the last years of his life. He carried knowledge of traditional medicine, to treat ordinary people, and he carried a love of his country, at a time when the country was under colonial rule. During his stay at Tuyên Linh, he was sheltered by the Venerable Lê Khánh Hòa. Nguyễn Sinh Sắc opened a class, took pulses and prepared medicine for people in the area.

That meeting was a small crossroads of history, but a memorable one. Two educated men, each on a different road, both troubled over their country, met at a pagoda beside the Tân Hương creek.

The mark Nguyễn Sinh Sắc left at the pagoda has been recognized with a new structure. On December 15, 2020, a memorial area for Nguyễn Sinh Sắc was inaugurated at the national relic of Tuyên Linh Pagoda. The complex covers more than 9,000 square meters.

Tuyên Linh also carries a layer of history from the resistance war. During the resistance against the French, the pagoda was a base that sheltered revolutionary cadres. In the years before the Đồng Khởi uprising, the Tân Hương and Minh Đức area still had a strong movement. The offices of the Mỏ Cày district Party committee and the Bến Tre provincial Party committee were once based here.

In 1994, the Ministry of Culture and Information officially recognized Tuyên Linh Pagoda as a national historical and cultural relic.

Standing in the grounds today, a visitor can picture a mossy pagoda roof beside the Tân Hương creek. This is the place where an old Confucian scholar once sat taking pulses and preparing medicine. It is the place where a young monk once started a magazine to wake a whole generation. History does not live only in books. Sometimes it sits quietly under the eaves of a small pagoda in Bến Tre.