On our itinerary from the tour plans, we weren’t supposed to see this pagoda until the next day, but I didn’t have the itinerary in front of us when we stopped in. Pagodas in Viet Nam are working Buddhist monasteries. This pagoda is very famous. The monk who built the pagoda placed it on a promontory just above the Perfume River. This knob that sticks out above the river is supposedly the head of a dragon bowing its mouth into the river for a drink.The seven stories of the pagoda represent the seven levels of spirituality
that Sidartha Gitama attained as he became the Buddha, the enlightened one. This pagoda is much like any other. As you walk through the gates of the pagoda there are two guardians at each side of the door. They guard the entrance of the pagoda just as the angels guard the gate of the Garden of Eden. Just within the gates are the thieves or disciples that followed Buddha in his teaching.In the back of the pagoda, the grounds are park like. Our guide made a point to show us the Bodhi tree. The Bodhi tree is the tree where Sidartha sat in meditation for 49 days facing the temptations of the earth. In his vision he faced the devil, storms and desires in the forms of the daughters of the gods. Once he overcame these temptations, he attained enlightenment, becoming the Buddha.
As Binh pointed out the activities of the monastery, several novices walked by. They wore their robes with their hair cut close to the scalp. The boys were in their early teens. Binh said that the novices lived at the Pagoda and had given up their names and former lives. Boys have the opportunity to join a
Pagoda. When they do so they no longer are considered part of their family. They have new names and entirely new lives. When their mothers and fathers come to visit them, they call the boys by the boys new Buddhist name. Then our guide led us to the dormitory where the novices sleep and showed us a relic of this monastery. It is an old Martin.
A car borrowed by one of the monks of this monastery to drive to Saigon to protest the treatment of Buddhist during the early 1960s. In the early 1960s the dictatorship of South Vietnam began to strictly curb Buddhist activities. The Buddhists were sympathetic with the Viet Minh, a political league under the direction of communists, and the monks support of the Viet Minh threatened the stability of the Saigon. Oppression was horrendous under the French and the American backed dictator. In Northern Vietnam they last used the guillotine in the 1930s. In the south it was last used in 1961. Prisons may have been worse than death. Prisoners were often tortured. Americans experienced some of this during their internment during the war.
As a protest in June 1963, one of the monks went to Saigon, sat in the middle of the street in meditation and lit himself on fire. He was not the only monk to do this. Many monks gave their lives to show what brutality they lived under in the south. President Kennedy took notice and gave the ok for the CIA to assassinate the dictator of south Vietnam. A month later, Kennedy was assassinated. The car, the Martin now sleeps in the room next to the novices. Buddhism holds a special place in the religions of Viet Nam. The Buddhists reflected the feelings of the people. While America supported and deposed successive dictators, the communists built a broad alliance of political parties with support of the people.
The more I read the history of this era, the more I realize that the US lost the war in Vietnam long before Johnson committed troops in 1964. Johnson, a Democrat, sought to battle ideas with bullets, a mistake that many American Presidents before him made and continue to make, still.
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