Xá Lợi Pagoda

IThe temple names and the sacred relic

This site carries three names at once. Xá Lợi Tự is the Sino-Vietnamese literary name, chosen after the sacred relic enshrined inside. Chùa Xá Lợi is the popular vernacular name, which Most Venerable Thích Khánh Anh, Supreme Patriarch of the Southern Vietnam Sangha and Spiritual Advisor to the Southern Vietnam Buddhist Studies Association, formally confirmed at the inauguration on May 2, 1958 in keeping with how local devotees called the temple of the relic. Chùa Phật học Xá Lợi (Xá Lợi Buddhist Studies Pagoda) is the name the temple uses in its own publications, and the added words Phật học (Buddhist studies) are not decorative but state the exact mission the temple assumed from its founding day. The Chinese characters 舍利寺 at the top of this entry represent the Sino-Vietnamese title recorded by the library according to standard scriptural usage rather than copied from a specific horizontal plaque inside the hall.

IIFrom a single relic to a city pagoda

Compared with most temples documented in the Places section of the library, Xá Lợi Pagoda is a young institution. From the initial proposal to the completion of its present architectural form took barely half a century, and every milestone is backed by archival records rather than oral legend.

• 1950Founding of the Southern Vietnam Buddhist Studies Association
  A lay Buddhist association in southern Vietnam was established under a decree dated September 19, 1950 with the study and teaching of the Dharma as its primary work, initially headquartered at Phước Hòa Pagoda in the Bàn Cờ area. Some sources record 1951.
• 1953Reception of the Buddha relic
  In June 1953, Most Venerable Narada Maha Thera from Sri Lanka presented a sacred relic of the Buddha to the Southern Vietnam Buddhist Studies Association, which temporarily enshrined it at Phước Hòa Pagoda while awaiting a permanent temple.
• 1956Groundbreaking on symbolically transferred land
  The Indochina Club transferred a plot of over 2,500 square meters at the corner of Bà Huyện Thanh Quan and Lê Văn Thạnh (now Sư Thiện Chiếu) Streets for a symbolic price of 1 Vietnamese piastre. Construction began on August 5, 1956 from blueprints by architects Trần Văn Đường and Đỗ Bá Vinh, supervised by engineers Dư Ngọc Ánh and Hồ Tố Thuận.
• 1958Inauguration and statue consecration
  The Śākyamuni Buddha statue crafted by the Biên Hòa School of Applied Arts was consecrated on the twenty-fourth day of the twelfth lunar month of the Đinh Dậu year (February 12, 1958). The inauguration ceremony took place from May 2 to May 4, 1958 alongside the fifteen relief panels lining the main hall walls.
• 1961Construction of the seven-story bell tower
  The 32-meter bell tower broke ground on December 15, 1960 and was inaugurated on the sixteenth day of the eleventh lunar month of the Tân Sửu year (December 23, 1961). A two-ton great bronze bell cast at Dương Biều village in Huế was hoisted into the tower on December 17, 1961.
• 1969Gilding of the main hall statue
  The pink stone-powder Buddha statue in the upper worship hall was completely gilded in gold leaf while retaining its original form and dimensions.
• 1999Comprehensive restoration
  A major restoration carried out from May 1999 to May 2001 renewed the facilities while preserving the exact original architectural form.
• 2005City-level heritage ranking
  Ranked as a City-level Historical and Cultural Heritage Site under Decision No. 116/2005/QĐ-UB dated July 12, 2005 by the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee.

One institutional feature deserves special note, as this pagoda was built by a lay Buddhist association rather than founded by a monastic lineage or a founding patriarch. Most major Vietnamese temples began when a monk planted his staff on a site and passed the abbacy down through generations of disciples. Xá Lợi Pagoda followed another path, where householders raised funds, commissioned architects, built the complex, and then invited eminent monks to serve as abbots, including Most Venerables Thích Thiện Hoa, Thích Quảng Liên, Thích Thiện Hòa, Thích Trí Tịnh, Thích Hiển Pháp, and Thích Đồng Bổn. In the institutional history of Vietnamese Buddhism, the pagoda served in 1963 as the headquarters of the Inter-Sect Committee for the Defense of Buddhism during the movement for religious equality, and from 1981 to May 1993 housed Office II of the Central Vietnam Buddhist Sangha as well as the Executive Board of the Ho Chi Minh City Buddhist Sangha.

IIIArchitecture, the bell tower, and the fifteen life-of-Buddha panels

The most noteworthy architectural feature of Xá Lợi Pagoda lies not in its surface ornament but in its vertical section. It was among the earliest multi-story pagodas in the city, built on the formula of worship hall above, lecture hall below. Traditional Vietnamese pagodas unfold horizontally on a single ground level, moving through a triple gate, across a courtyard, and through the front hall, incense hall, and upper sanctuary, whereas here the architects stacked those functions vertically. A broad front staircase ascending to the main sanctuary replaces the long approach courtyard of an ancient temple, while the entire ground floor is dedicated to Dharma lectures, classes, and lay assemblies, activities for which older temples usually had to borrow the patriarch hall or guest quarters.

Reading the fifteen relief panels

Visitors coming to offer incense often walk past the wall panels quickly, yet they reward the longest pause. Rather than fifteen isolated scenes, the panels form a continuous visual narrative running from the birth of Prince Siddhārtha, through his four encounters outside the palace gates with old age, sickness, death, and an ascetic, across his midnight renunciation and six years of austerity, to his awakening beneath the Bodhi tree and his final entry into parinirvāṇa in the śāla grove.

Placing such a narrative cycle inside the main sanctuary was a deliberate pedagogical choice. Traditional northern Vietnamese temples often fill the sanctuary with multiple tiered rows of statues that newcomers find difficult to read. Here, the designers reduced the altar to a single central image and used the surrounding walls to tell a clear story, allowing anyone standing in the hall to read the life of the figure venerated before them.

In its overall exterior appearance, the pagoda dispenses with almost all familiar motifs of older temples, having no soaring upturned eaves, no twin dragons flanking the moon along the roof ridge, and no carved wooden trusswork. Its structural material is reinforced concrete with clean, straight lines. Even so, the roof retains clay tiles and the characteristic pitch of a Vietnamese temple roof, keeping the spirit of traditional architecture while paring away historical ornament.

IVThe lie of the land and orientation

This section presents the library's reading through the lens of traditional Vietnamese geomancy (phong thủy), not material recorded in the heritage dossier or temple publications. For an urban pagoda built from blueprints by modern-trained architects, such a reading requires particular caution.

VAnnual observances and Buddhist study

Because the pagoda follows Mahāyāna (Northern) Buddhism, its annual ritual calendar follows the standard lunar observances of that tradition. Beyond seasonal festivals, the distinctive life of Xá Lợi Pagoda lies in its doctrinal classes and its library, two institutions present from the very beginning and still active today.

The Buddhist library and scripture translation

To leave out the library and publishing work would be to miss half the story of Xá Lợi Pagoda. Even before the Southern Vietnam Buddhist Studies Association had its own temple building, it launched the journal Từ Quang, which ran continuously for nearly twenty-four years. Its editor-in-chief and principal contributor was the lay scholar Chánh Trí Mai Thọ Truyền, who also spearheaded the construction of the pagoda and served as president of the Association from 1955 until his passing in 1973. He left behind a substantial body of translations and Buddhist studies works, including Tâm và Tánh (Mind and Nature, 1950), Ý nghĩa Niết Bàn (The Meaning of Nirvāṇa, 1962), Tâm kinh Việt giải (Vietnamese Exposition of the Heart Sutra, 1962), and Pháp Hoa huyền nghĩa (Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra, 1964). This work exemplified the twentieth-century Buddhist revival movement in Vietnam, translating scriptures previously accessible only in Literary Chinese into romanized Vietnamese (quốc ngữ) with clear commentary so laypeople could study them directly.

That scholarly tradition continues today. The pagoda houses the Center for Vietnamese Buddhist Studies and continues to publish the Từ Quang Buddhist Studies Book Series (Tùng thư Phật học Từ Quang), which had reached more than twenty-six volumes by 2018. General introductions note that the library holds more than three thousand titles, a figure drawn from popular temple overviews rather than a published catalog. Downstairs, the lecture hall hosts regular doctrinal classes for lay practitioners as well as calligraphy courses, and in 1964 the earliest classes of the Saigon College of Buddhist Studies, the forerunner of Vạn Hạnh University, were also held in this hall.

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