Ten Thousand Buddhas Pagoda

There seems to be a temple everywhere you look in Vietnam, but as we were leaving the Museum of Traditional Medicine, one particular pagoda caught our eyes from a distance.

The towering pagoda of the Việt Nam Quốc Tự, or National Pagoda of Vietnam soars above the surrounding neighborhood and can be seen for quite a distance around.

The pagoda is open for visitors on the 1st and 15th of each month, but we weren't there on the right days. It was quiet, save for the few brown-robed Mahayana monks who were going about their business on the monastery grounds.

After a short walk, we came to Chùa Vạn Phật, or the Temple of Ten Thousand Buddhas. We really had no idea what to expect. The name had sounded interesting, so we had followed a map down a narrow alleyway to a very nondescript-looking building at the end.

It looked like a temple, but we really weren't sure that we were in the right spot. However, an old man sitting outside gestured that we could go inside and walk up, and so we did so.

The temple is a narrow building several stories tall, each one home to a shrine. It was a very popular place as well, and we passed families praying, lighting candles and incense, and leaving offerings at small family shrines off of the main hall.

Every floor was different, and as we climbed higher up the dark stairs, the shrines became more and more elaborate.

We finally arrived at the top to discover exactly how the temple got its name! The walls of the upper shrine hall are filled with tiny niches, each one containing a small golden Buddha.

Built in 1959 by two important Vietnamese Buddhist monks named Thich Dieu Hoa and Tang Duc Bon, the temple is not only a place of worship, but also somewhere that local Buddhists can come to listen to teachings, study Buddhist theory and theology, and participate in the temple's charity organization.

I was amazed by the impressive design of the temple! I had never seen anywhere like this before.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves! I just wish I had had a better camera with me to do this place justice!