Sacred images in Hòa Hảo Buddhism

IWorshipping the Buddha without making more images

Hòa Hảo Buddhism was founded by the Prophet Huỳnh Phú Sổ, known as Đức Huỳnh Giáo Chủ and respectfully called Đức Thầy by his followers, on the 18th day of the 5th lunar month of the year Kỷ Mão (1939) in the village of Hòa Hảo, now in An Giang province. It is a religion of lay people who practise at home. A book by the Government Committee for Religious Affairs puts it briefly: Hòa Hảo Buddhism worships the Buddha but does not worship statues or pictures, and the religion's symbol is a cloth of the colour dà called the Trần Dà cloth, in the spirit of "the Buddha is in the mind, the mind is the Buddha".

The original teaching is found in the section on Worship of the text Cách Tu Hiền Và Sự Ăn Ở Của Một Người Bổn Đạo (How a follower should practise and live). The Founder wrote that temples had already made far too many images and that no more should be made now. Lay people at home should worship simply, so that their faith returns to the heart rather than resting on outward show.

The library has not yet found an openly licensed photo of a Trần Dà altar in a follower's home or of a Thông Thiên altar in a front yard. This page therefore has only photos of An Hòa Tự and of temples in the Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương lineage, where the red Trần Điều cloth came before the brown one. The three home altars are shown in a text diagram.

IIThe Trần Dà cloth on the Three Jewels altar

There is no statue on a follower's Three Jewels altar. There is only a plain cloth of the colour dà, called the Trần Dà cloth. The English-language book on hoahao.org states that no decoration or display of images is permitted on the altar.

The Founder explained its origin. In the past, followers worshipped with the Trần Điều cloth, a legacy of the Buddha Master of Tây An. Recently, however, many people also worshipped with the Trần Điều cloth, claiming to belong to the same school while acting against its rules. For this reason everyone in the religion changed to the colour dà.

On its meaning, the Founder wrote that monks have always used the colour dà to express their renunciation of the world. That colour is also the blending of all other colours, so it can stand for the harmony of humankind, without distinction of race or individual.

The two photos below show the red Trần Điều cloth at Thới Sơn temple, a Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương temple. To picture a Hòa Hảo altar, replace the red cloth with a plain cloth of the colour dà and take away most of the decoration.

IIIThe three altars in a follower's home

The book Để Hiểu Phật Giáo Hòa Hảo (Understanding Hòa Hảo Buddhism) describes three altars in a follower's home. Inside the house, the lower level is for the Cửu Huyền Thất Tổ ancestors and the upper level is the Three Jewels altar. In front of the house stands a Thông Thiên altar.

IVWhat is offered and to whom one bows

On offerings to the Buddha, the Founder taught that only plain water, flowers and incense should be offered. Nothing else at all should be offered.

The ancestral altar is different, and any offering may be made there. At every meal, even if it is only rice with fish sauce and salt, the follower silently invites the ancestors of nine generations and departed grandparents and parents to come and eat, as a sign of filial devotion. On offering days, whatever the family has is offered.

On bowing, the section on Rites teaches that one bows in worship only to the Buddha, to the ancestors, to grandparents and parents while they are alive, and to the heroes who saved the country. To other living people one should stop bowing altogether, even to one's own teacher. The section on Worship also advises that apart from the Buddha, ancestors, grandparents, parents and the heroes of the country, one should not worship "any other evil spirit whose origin one does not know".

The book Hoahao Buddhism In The Course Of Vietnam's History on hoahao.org adds that no bells or gongs are displayed on the altar. The Vietnamese text of the section on Worship does not contain this sentence. The book Lịch Sử An Hòa Tự says instead that during worship, whether at the temple or at home, practitioners only recite silently in the heart, with no wooden fish and no bell. The main hall of An Hòa Tự still has a bell stand.

VAn Hòa Tự, the main temple of the religion

An Hòa Tự, which followers usually call Chùa Thầy, is the main temple of Hòa Hảo Buddhism and the seat of the Central Executive Committee of the Hòa Hảo Buddhist Church. According to the book Lịch Sử An Hòa Tự, the site began as a thatched hermitage with bamboo posts built by Phạm Miên in 1850. The temple with wooden columns, lime-washed walls and a tiled roof was built with contributions from the people of Hòa Hảo village and completed in 1936, three years before the religion was founded. Its name combines two place names, An Lạc and Hòa Hảo. In 1945 the village gave the temple to the Founder, and on the 29th day of the 5th lunar month of the year Ất Dậu (1945) he carried the censer from the Tổ đình, the family home of his father, and installed it in the main hall of An Hòa Tự.

The temple faces south. In front are two gates, the East Gate (Đông Môn) and the West Gate (Tây Môn), each bearing the temple's name and a pair of parallel sentences in Chinese characters. Between the two gates, inside the fence, stands a small octagonal tower with a statue of a Dharma protector (Hộ Pháp).

The other nine altars include those of Maitreya Buddha (Di Lặc), Bodhidharma (Đạt Ma Tổ Sư), Guanyin of the Southern Sea (Quan Âm Nam Hải), the Dharma protector (this statue has since been moved out to the front yard), the Cửu Huyền Thất Tổ ancestors and several others. Altar no. 5 is dedicated to the Buddha Master of Tây An: in the middle is a large Trần Dà cloth, above it a horizontal board with the four Chinese characters Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương, and in front of it a carved wooden spirit tablet.

VIRoots: Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương and the Trần Điều cloth

The Founder described the Trần Điều cloth as a legacy of the Buddha Master of Tây An. The Buddha Master's real name was Đoàn Minh Huyên (1807 to 1856), and he founded Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương in 1849. According to Wikipedia, followers of this religion do not need Buddha statues, and on the Three Jewels altar they need only a red Trần Điều cloth, with flowers and plain water as offerings. The English-language book on hoahao.org also notes that Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương did not require lavish temples or huge statues, and that offerings consisted only of cold water, incense sticks and flowers.

The Buddha Master led his followers and poor people to clear new land and found villages, setting up farming settlements and placing a Three Jewels altar inside each settlement. Thới Sơn temple in An Giang grew out of one such settlement. According to Wikipedia, the temple has a main hall for the Three Jewels and a rear hall for the Buddha Master, and neither altar has any image, only a large red Trần Điều cloth. In the front yard are three small shrines, also without images, in the "shrines in front, temple behind" layout.

Tây An temple at the foot of Sam mountain is different. It is a Buddhist temple built in 1847 by the provincial governor Doãn Uẩn, and it holds many statues. The Buddha Master came to practise there in the 1850s, which is why people called him the Buddha Master of Tây An. His tomb lies behind the temple, without a burial mound, as he had asked. The temple was listed as a national architectural and artistic monument in 1980.

VIIThree religions from the same land

Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương, Tứ Ân Hiếu Nghĩa and Hòa Hảo Buddhism were all born in the southwestern Mekong Delta, all take Buddhism as their root and all teach the Four Debts of Gratitude. According to the sources cited, each of the three has places where a cloth takes the place of a statue, the red Trần Điều cloth in Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương and at Phi Lai temple of Tứ Ân Hiếu Nghĩa, and the Trần Dà cloth in Hòa Hảo Buddhism. The library places the three side by side to help readers recognize them, without ranking one above another.

Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương

Founded by the Buddha Master of Tây An in 1849. The Three Jewels altar holds a red Trần Điều cloth. Temples follow the "shrines in front, temple behind" layout, as at Thới Sơn temple.

Source: Wikipedia (Vietnamese), Đạo Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương. Wikipedia (Vietnamese), Chùa Thới Sơn (Thới Sơn temple).

Tứ Ân Hiếu Nghĩa

Founded by Ngô Lợi, whom followers call Đức Bổn Sư, in 1867. The book by the Government Committee for Religious Affairs places the founding at Cù lao Ba (now in An Phú), while Wikipedia gives Ba Chúc, where the religion later established its village. According to the book by the Government Committee for Religious Affairs, it now has about 78,000 followers. Phi Lai temple was built in 1877 and Tam Bửu temple in 1882. Wikipedia quotes the writer Sơn Nam: Phi Lai temple worships the highest being, represented by a red cloth with no image, called the Trần Điều cloth. New followers are also given a Trần Điều cloth to worship.

Source: Wikipedia (Vietnamese), Phật giáo Tứ Ân Hiếu Nghĩa. Wikipedia (Vietnamese), Chùa Phi Lai (Phi Lai temple). Wikipedia (Vietnamese), Chùa Tam Bửu (Tam Bửu temple). Government Committee for Religious Affairs, Tôn giáo và chính sách tôn giáo ở Việt Nam (Religion and Religious Policy in Vietnam), Hanoi 2022.

Hòa Hảo Buddhism

Founded by Đức Huỳnh Giáo Chủ in 1939. According to the book by the Government Committee for Religious Affairs, it now has more than 1.5 million followers. The red Trần Điều cloth was replaced by the Trần Dà cloth. Inside the house are the Three Jewels altar and the Cửu Huyền Thất Tổ ancestral altar, and in front of the house is the Thông Thiên altar. The Central Executive Committee has its seat at An Hòa Tự.

Source: Government Committee for Religious Affairs, Tôn giáo và chính sách tôn giáo ở Việt Nam (Religion and Religious Policy in Vietnam), Hanoi 2022. hoahao.org, Đức Huỳnh Giáo Chủ, Cách Tu Hiền Và Sự Ăn Ở Của Một Người Bổn Đạo (How a follower should practise and live), section 1, Worship. hoahao.org, the book Để Hiểu Phật Giáo Hòa Hảo (Understanding Hòa Hảo Buddhism), chapter 3, Rites of practice.

VIIIWhat the library is not sure of

IXPhotos and licences

Every photo on this page comes from Wikimedia Commons, under Public domain, CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA licences. Authors and licences are given exactly as on the original file pages, read on 07/10/2026. The photos have only been reduced in size, with no change to their content. Click the name of a photo to go to its original file page. If you are an author and see an incorrect credit, please let the library know so it can be corrected.

XSources

The pages above were read in October 2026. If a page has changed its address, please let the library know so it can be updated.

?Quick Questions

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