Looking up from the river landing, you see a main hall with curving East Asian eaves and a Western-influenced facade standing in a grove of old trees, facing the broad river known locally as the Ba Sắc (Bassac) River. Walk around past the main hall and you enter an unusual garden where hundreds of blue-gray stone slabs stand in rows radiating outward like a Bodhi leaf, each slab engraved with scripture verses in Vietnamese script.
This is Phước Hậu Pagoda, founded in 1894 as the village temple of Đông Hậu and later developed into a center of monastic study by senior monks who came south from Quảng Ngãi to the Mekong Delta. This entry examines the Dharma lineage attributed to the pagoda, notes where documentary evidence remains incomplete, and describes its main hall, reliquary stupa and stone sutra garden.
IThe Dharma lineage and where sources remain incomplete
Phước Hậu began as a village pagoda, not a monastery founded by a Zen master. Before 1894 only a small thatched hermitage stood on this spot. In 1894, the village elder (Hương cả) of Đông Hậu, Lê Văn Gồng, together with his daughter Lê Thị Huỳnh, rallied the villagers to build a timber-framed, tile-roofed temple initially named Đông Hậu Pagoda after the village. Regarding the founder's name, Giác Ngộ newspaper and Vĩnh Long Radio and Television record Lê Văn Gồng, whereas Phật tử Việt Nam and phatgiao.org.vn give his formal name as Lê Ngọc Đán, popularly called Cả Gồng, two ways of referring to the same person.
In 1910, his daughter and the lay congregation invited Most Venerable Hoằng Chỉnh from Thiên Ấn Pagoda in Quảng Ngãi to serve as abbot. It was he who renamed the temple Phước Hậu. From that point the village pagoda acquired a continuous succession of monastic abbots and grew into an ancestral temple (tổ đình).
Regarding sectarian affiliation, the library notes clearly that placing Phước Hậu in the Lâm Tế Chúc Thánh lineage rests on a single documentary thread. That thread is the pagoda's brief chronicle, repeated in nearly identical wording by Giác Ngộ newspaper, Phật tử Việt Nam and Vĩnh Long Radio and Television, stating that the temple's Dharma line traveled from Hội An to Quảng Ngãi and then into Trà Ôn. The library has not yet been able to cross-check this claim against the full ordination names of the successive abbots or stele inscriptions at the pagoda. Another article on phatgiao.org.vn describes the temple as following Southern (Theravada) Buddhism, which contradicts both the architecture and the worship arrangement of the pagoda and is almost certainly a slip.
What makes the Chúc Thánh account plausible is the origin of the early abbots. The first abbots of Phước Hậu all came from Quảng Ngãi, a province where the Chúc Thánh lineage flourished. When a senior monk from Thiên Ấn Pagoda comes to serve as abbot, it is natural for the temple's Dharma line to follow his own lineage. Yet plausibility is not the same as documentary proof, so the library states the matter at that exact level of certainty.
The Chúc Thánh branch is a sub-lineage of the Linji (Lâm Tế) Zen school, founded at Chúc Thánh Pagoda in Hội An before spreading across central and southern Vietnam. The branch uses its own generational transmission poem opening with the line Minh thật pháp toàn chương, in which each generation takes the next character in the verse as the first word of a monk's Dharma name. The full text and history of this lineage can be read in the entry on Chúc Thánh Ancestral Pagoda. Because the full Dharma names of Phước Hậu's abbots have not yet been verified, the library does not assign generational numbers to them here.
Many travel articles describe Phước Hậu as a monastery founded in 1894 by a Zen master. That is imprecise. The year 1894 was when the villagers built their temple under the leadership of a lay village elder, not a monk. The first recorded monastic abbot was Most Venerable Hoằng Chỉnh, who arrived in 1910. The pagoda became an ancestral temple through its later generations of abbots rather than at its initial founding.
IIFrom a village pagoda to a center of monastic study
At the start of the 20th century, the Mekong Delta had few structured centers of monastic education. The senior monks who came from Quảng Ngãi brought with them the rigorous training discipline of the central Vietnamese ancestral temples, turning Phước Hậu into a major training ground for monks along the Hậu River. Most Venerable Thích Thiện Hoa, born Trần Thiện Hoa with the monastic title Hoàn Tuyên, who lived from 1918 to 1973, entered Phước Hậu Pagoda as a novice at age seven according to his biography in Giác Ngộ newspaper, studying under Most Venerable Khánh Anh before continuing his education at major Buddhist institutes.
- 1894Villagers build the templeVillage elder Lê Văn Gồng, formal name Lê Ngọc Đán, rallied the residents of Đông Hậu Village to build a timber-framed, tile-roofed temple called Đông Hậu Pagoda.
- 1910Most Venerable Hoằng Chỉnh becomes abbotArriving from Thiên Ấn Pagoda in Quảng Ngãi, he renamed the temple Phước Hậu and served as abbot until 1939.
- 1942Most Venerable Khánh Anh becomes abbotMoving from Long An Pagoda in Đồng Đế, Trà Ôn, he served as abbot of Phước Hậu until 1961.
- 1961Tenure of Most Venerable Thiện HoaMost Venerable Thiện Hoa assumed the abbacy and appointed Most Venerable Hoàn Phú as prior to oversee new construction.
- 1962New main hallThe main hall was rebuilt in modern materials blending Eastern and Western styles on a mountain-character (sơn) ground plan.
- 1966Đa Bảo StupaThe three-story Đa Bảo Stupa was erected to enshrine relics of Shakyamuni Buddha.
- 1994National heritage siteRanked as a national historical heritage site under Decision 152-QĐ/BT dated January 25, 1994.
- 2014Stone sutra garden begunAn Giang newspaper records that the Dhammapada stone sutra garden broke ground on March 25, 2014, while phatgiao.org.vn gives the year 2012.
The library records only the names of the abbots and their work at the temple. In recent years the current abbot, Venerable Thích Phước Cẩn, initiated the construction of the stone sutra garden, the project that has made the pagoda widely known across the region.
IIIThe mountain-plan main hall, Đa Bảo Stupa and the stone sutra garden
The compound comprises the main hall, middle hall, patriarchs' hall, scripture repository, reliquary stupas and the stone sutra garden set among ancient trees. Built in 1962 of reinforced concrete, brick, tile and timber in the East-West hybrid style popular among Mekong Delta pagodas of that era, the main hall features a two-tiered pavilion facade crowned at the center by a seven-story stupa model. In plan, the linked building blocks form the Chinese character sơn (mountain), three parallel vertical wings joined by a connecting bar, facing out toward the river.
Inside the main hall, the central altar enshrines Shakyamuni Buddha meditating beneath the Bodhi tree, with the infant Prince Siddhartha and the Western Pure Land Trinity of Amitabha Buddha, Avalokiteshvara (Quán Thế Âm) and Mahasthamaprapta (Đại Thế Chí) on the lower tier. The side altars preserve many wooden statues and glazed ceramic statues from the Cây Mai kilns of Chợ Lớn dating back to the 1894 temple, including Tiêu Diện Đại Sĩ, Weituo (Hộ Pháp Vi Đà), Ksitigarbha (Địa Tạng), Cundi (Chuẩn Đề) and the Sixteen Arhats, alongside Chinese horizontal plaques and parallel couplets. The Chinese characters at the top of this page represent the temple's name in the sense of abundant blessings, and as the library has not inspected the original name plaque in person, it does not assert which variant character for Hậu is inscribed on the temple board.
A three-story stupa built in 1966 under the supervision of Most Venerable Hoàn Phú, enshrining relics of Shakyamuni Buddha and former patriarchs.
Blue stone slabs engraved on both sides with the Vietnamese translation of the Dhammapada from Pali by the late Most Venerable Thích Minh Châu, arranged in eight radiating rows like a Bodhi leaf to represent the Noble Eightfold Path.
Thirty-one stone slabs engraved with the Amitabha Sutra in six-eight (lục bát) verse along an S-shaped lotus pond evoking the map of Vietnam, accompanied by rockeries representing Mount Yên Tử, the Thất Sơn range and the islands of Hoàng Sa, Trường Sa and Phú Quốc.
Fifteen large stone blocks and pillars engraved in bold script with selected passages from Northern Buddhist scriptures, completed in 2016.
An artificial grotto enshrining a statue of the ascetic Buddha alongside relief carvings depicting the history of the pagoda and the life of Most Venerable Thiện Hoa.
The stone sutra garden and discrepancies in the figures
The stone sutra garden was created by the abbot Venerable Thích Phước Cẩn after a trip to Myanmar, where he saw monasteries preserving scriptures carved on stone. Engraving scriptures on stone has a long history across the Buddhist world but is rare in Vietnamese pagodas, making this garden a signature feature of Phước Hậu.
Published sources give different numbers for the slabs. An Giang newspaper records that the Dhammapada garden consists of 213 slabs engraved with 423 verses from the translation by the late Most Venerable Thích Minh Châu, begun in 2014. The article on phatgiao.org.vn records 237 slabs engraved with 473 verses, begun in 2012, each slab measuring 40 by 60 centimeters, while the Northern Buddhist scripture stones measure 90 by 120 centimeters. Because the Pali Dhammapada contains exactly 423 verses divided into 26 chapters, the figure of 423 verses in An Giang newspaper matches the canonical text. The library records both figures for the number of slabs and the starting year.
IVThe lie of the land and orientation
This section presents the library's reading through the lens of traditional feng shui, not something recorded in temple documents or stele inscriptions. The sources note only that the main hall was built on a mountain-character (sơn) plan facing the Ba Sắc River, without mentioning site selection by feng shui. The library states this clearly so that readers can distinguish documentary record from interpretive reading.
The dominant feature at Phước Hậu is the river. The stretch of the Hậu River passing Trà Ôn is wide and full, known in earlier times as the Ba Sắc or Bassac River. In lowland site reading, water in front of a site is the most prized feature, called water paying court to the hall (thủy triều đường). A pagoda looking straight out across such a major river enjoys the fullest water-facing (hướng thủy) position that the Mekong Delta can offer.
Behind the pagoda there are no natural hills. To compensate, the sơn (mountain) layout of the halls creates an architectural mountain form of its own. The character sơn means mountain, with three vertical strokes rising like three peaks and the middle stroke highest. Arranging the halls in that shape on a flat alluvial plain uses architectural form to stand in for a backing mountain, a way of supplying rear support that the library encounters at several southern Vietnamese temples. The Đa Bảo Stupa and the grove of old trees behind the hall reinforce that backing.
Finally, there is the stone sutra garden. Natural stone is scarce on a silt delta. Bringing hundreds of stone slabs to set up a garden radiating in eight directions like a Bodhi leaf acts, in traditional site reading, as placing heavy, enduring anchoring points (trấn) into soft alluvial ground. In the intention of the garden's maker, stone was chosen so that the scriptures would endure far longer than paper or wood. The two readings point to the same wish for permanence.
VAnnual observances
Phước Hậu follows the lunar ritual calendar of a Northern Buddhist ancestral temple in the Mekong Delta. Because the sources consulted by the library do not list the specific memorial dates of individual abbots, the table below lists the main annual observances alongside the general patriarchal memorial days.
| Lunar date | Observance | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Full moon of the 1st lunar month | First Full Moon (Thượng nguyên) | New Year prayer for peace, drawing large crowds from along the Hậu River |
| Full moon of the 4th lunar month | Buddha's Birthday (Phật Đản) | Celebration of the birth of Shakyamuni Buddha |
| Full moon of the 7th lunar month | Vu Lan (Ullambana) | Filial piety and requiem observance marking the end of the monastic rainy-season retreat |
| Memorial days of former abbots | Patriarchs' Memorials (Giỗ tổ) | Commemoration of the successive abbots beginning with Most Venerable Hoằng Chỉnh |
Outside major festival days, many visitors come to Phước Hậu simply to walk through the stone sutra garden and read the Dhammapada verses on the slabs. Reading slowly from one stone to the next has become a quiet way of chanting scripture unique to this place.
VILocation And How To Get There
- Address
- Ấp Đông Hậu, bên sông Hậu đối diện Trà Ôn, xã Ngãi Tứ (xã Ngãi Tứ cũ, huyện Tam Bình cũ), tỉnh Vĩnh Long
- Getting there
- The pagoda stands in Đông Hậu Hamlet, Ngãi Tứ Commune, on the territory of former Tam Bình District, Vĩnh Long Province, on the bank of the Hậu River opposite the former town of Trà Ôn. Visitors can cross the river by ferry from Trà Ôn or travel by road through former Tam Bình.
- Coordinates
- 9.9701, 105.9137
Phước Hậu is an active ancestral temple where monks reside and study, so visitors should observe temple rules. Dress modestly and walk and speak quietly inside the main hall. The stone sutra garden consists of sacred scriptures rather than decorative rocks, so please do not sit on the stone slabs, climb onto the stone pillars, or write or paste anything on the engraved surfaces. Ask temple staff before taking photographs inside the main hall.
Nearby places in the library
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?Quick Questions
Which Buddhist lineage does Phước Hậu Pagoda belong to
According to the pagoda's brief chronicle, Phước Hậu belongs to the Chúc Thánh branch of the Linji (Lâm Tế) Zen school, transmitted from Hội An to Quảng Ngãi and then to Trà Ôn. This rests on a single documentary thread repeated across several press articles, which the library has not yet cross-checked against the full ordination names of the abbots or stele inscriptions.
Who founded Phước Hậu Pagoda
In 1894 the village elder of Đông Hậu, Lê Văn Gồng, together with his daughter Lê Thị Huỳnh, rallied the villagers to build the temple, initially called Đông Hậu Pagoda. Some sources record his formal name as Lê Ngọc Đán, popularly called Cả Gồng. In 1910 Most Venerable Hoằng Chỉnh arrived from Thiên Ấn Pagoda to serve as abbot and renamed it Phước Hậu.
What is in the stone sutra garden at Phước Hậu Pagoda
It includes the Dhammapada stone garden engraved with the Vietnamese translation by the late Most Venerable Thích Minh Châu on more than two hundred blue stone slabs arranged in eight directions like a Bodhi leaf, the Amitabha Sutra garden of 31 slabs beside an S-shaped lotus pond, and the Northern Buddhist anthology garden of 15 large stone blocks completed in 2016. Sources give either 213 or 237 for the number of Dhammapada slabs.
Where is Phước Hậu Pagoda located
It stands in Đông Hậu Hamlet, Ngãi Tứ Commune, Vĩnh Long Province, in former Tam Bình District, on the bank of the Hậu River opposite Trà Ôn. Locals often call it Phước Hậu Pagoda of Trà Ôn because it looks directly across the river toward that town.
Is Phước Hậu Pagoda a national heritage site
Yes. The pagoda was ranked a national historical heritage site under Decision 152-QĐ/BT dated January 25, 1994. Beyond its heritage status, it is known for the 1966 Đa Bảo Stupa and the stone sutra garden created under the current abbot, Venerable Thích Phước Cẩn.