Meeting the head monk at Long Son Pagoda

Today was a wonderful day. I had the chance to do a city tour of Nga Trang city on motorbike with my guide, Huy. The young man scootered me around the city to visit locations such as the Cham temple towers, the old french Cathedral and Long Son Pagoda.

Since I've been on a spiritual mission, I've been looking for the largest temple to visit and pray, so there's no better place than Long Son Pagoda, which I almost missed seeing because Huy thought I was not a Buddhist...and therefore thought I would not be interested in visiting. Thank goodness, I mentioned that this was the purpose of my city tour.

Long Son Pagoda has a beautiful white Buddha, 79 ft tall that sat at the foot of Trai Thuy mountain and it is the main attraction of this pagoda. It was set up in 1963 in tribute to the nuns and monks who died while protesting against the Diem government. It is definitely one of the top 3 places to visit if you are in Nga Trang. Luckily, today was Tuesday, so there was hardly anyone there and I got a chance to meet and chat with the head Monk at this temple, Thích Chí Tín.

I had initially headed up to the giant Buddha, lighted incense and did my prayers at several alters, after I finished praying at the main shrine, I passed a smaller shrine next to it. In comtemplating on whether to go in and pray, my guide, Huy says I should go in, so I followed him in. There, sitting to the side was an elder monk name Teacher Chí Tín . Huy and I greeted him, we sat down and chatted. Turns out that this was Huy's temple and he often visited Teacher Chí Tín. The monk gave Huy a bracelet made of bodhi nuts. I looked at it with adoring eyes. How honourable it was to receive a bodhi bracelet, since it was very symbolic. Note that Buddha sat under a Bodhi tree when he mediated way back when. Teacher Chí Tín turned to me and gave me several book on the teaching of Buddha. Unfortunately, I do not read Vietnamese, so I was planning in my head on who I was going to woo into reading these to me. Teacher Chí Tín then gave me a bodhi bracelet and a green crystal bracelet. I thank him and made my donations, lighted an incense and bid him good bye.

Later on, I found out that Chi Tin was the head of the monastery and one of the book he have me was written by him. That really made my day and my spiritual mission.