Truc Lam Tay Thien Zen Monastery

If the name Yên Tử means something to you, you already hold one thread. Thiền viện Trúc Lâm Tây Thiên — a "thiền viện" is a Zen monastery — belongs to the Trúc Lâm Yên Tử school of Vietnamese Zen, and the Nhà Tổ (Patriarchs' Hall) behind the main hall honours the school's three patriarchs: Trần Nhân Tông, Pháp Loa and Huyền Quang. The words "Tây Thiên" come straight from Buddhist scripture, where they name India. The monastery sits halfway up the mountain, with forest behind it and the plains below in front; seen from the foot of the mountain, it drifts in and out of the clouds.

A new temple on Trần-dynasty stones

The idea came from Zen master Thích Thanh Từ, head of Trúc Lâm Zen Monastery in Đà Lạt, after local authorities travelled all the way to Đà Lạt to ask for a monastery at Tây Thiên, in the hope of reviving the Zen tradition of the Trần dynasty. The person who surveyed the site, chose the foundation and ran the construction was Thích Kiến Nguyệt. As the builders tell it, the first survey found no trace of the old temple, so the team planned to build on low, flat ground; the master insisted that restoring an ancestral seat meant building on the old temple's foundation. On a later trip, guided by local people, the team cleared the undergrowth and crossed a dry stream bed before they found the foundation of Thiên Ân Thiền Tự, its stone embankment still there. On the day the first stone was laid in 2004, local Buddhists carried water up from the foot of the mountain, two buckets at a time, to cook for guests — the grounds then had only an old dry well and a small spring. Later, the monastery piped water from the head of a stream, across three mountains.

So what makes a temple inaugurated in late 2005 part of a heritage? The answer lies beneath it. Archaeology at the Đền Thõng area identified traces of Buddhist architecture from the Trần dynasty, with artefacts reaching into the Nguyễn dynasty, Vietnam's last. The old temple may have fallen into ruin as early as the Early Lê period, been rebuilt smaller, rebuilt again, and finally left as ruins. In the view of the project's initiator, Tây Thiên is where Buddhism arrived early in Vietnam; researchers say this has not been proven, and what is certain is that from the Trần dynasty onward it was a major Buddhist centre of Đại Việt, the old name of the Vietnamese state. The surrounding Tây Thiên – Tam Đảo historic site was ranked a Special National Monument in 2015; the monastery itself is a new building.

Its builders wanted it to carry the mark of its own era rather than copy 16th–17th-century temples, while keeping the character of a traditional Vietnamese pagoda. Climb the many stone steps to the tam quan, the three-entrance temple gate, and you meet a pair of parallel verses made by stonemasons from Ninh Bình: "Tây Thiên tổ ấn khơi nguồn Phật; Vĩnh Phúc thiền tông thắp sáng tâm" — roughly, the patriarchs' seal at Tây Thiên opens the source of the Buddha, and the Zen school of Vĩnh Phúc lights up the mind. The main hall, Đại Hùng Bửu Điện, rises 17 m in the centre on four great pillars, with a bell tower and a drum tower on either side. The statues of the Buddha, bodhisattvas and patriarchs are carved from sandstone — a deliberate contrast with Yên Tử, where the statues are bronze. The great bell weighs 2 tonnes and was cast in Huế; the drum body was made from a single log of jackfruit wood from the forests of Gia Lai. Wood carvers from Hà Tây and Đồng Kỵ, stonemasons from Ninh Bình and Thanh Hoá, and roofers from Hà Nội, Nam Định and Bắc Ninh all had a hand in it. Not everyone finds it harmonious: an article in Kiến trúc (Architecture) magazine in 2005 remarked that, seen from below, the monastery is massive — it looms ("án") rather than hides ("ẩn") in nature the way traditional Vietnamese pagodas do. But this is not only a place to look at: it is a centre of practice, and many families from Hà Nội send their children up for retreat courses.

Enough to decide whether to go

What it is

A Zen monastery of the Trúc Lâm Yên Tử school, and a centre of practice

Where

On the slopes of Tam Đảo mountain, Đại Đình commune, Phú Thọ province

Built

First stone laid in 2004, inaugurated in late 2005, on the foundation of Thiên Ân Thiền Tự

Oldest layer

Traces of Trần-dynasty Buddhist architecture

Worth seeing

Sandstone statues, the great bell cast in Huế, the jackfruit-wood drum from Gia Lai, the Patriarchs' Hall

Part of

The Tây Thiên – Tam Đảo historic site, Special National Monument (2015)