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The History of Tu Hieu Temple
Phap Van Temple in Upper Hamlet is preparing for the 21-day Spring Retreat, using the Vietnamese translation of the Zen Monastic Chanting Book (2000) – exactly 100 years after the Chinese version (1897) engraved at Tu Hieu Temple during the Thanh Thai era. The work of our ancestral teachers is continued through the traditional woodblock printing method, each block containing two pages, about 90 blocks carved and published by the monastic community.
Tu Hieu Temple was originally An Duong Hermitage, established by Venerable Tanh Thien in 1843. After his passing (1847), his disciple Hai Thieu Cuong Ky, together with court officials, built it into a temple. King Tu Duc bestowed the name Tu Hieu Temple as a gesture of filial piety. At the end of the 19th century, the Abbot restored the temple and chose to print four essential sutras for body and mind, as well as for the temple’s name:
- Repaying the Kindness of Parents
- Zen Monastic Chanting Book
- The Dharma Jewel Platform Sutra (Sixth Patriarch Hui Neng)
- The Universal Virtue Conduct and Vows
Currently, the temple preserves these four precious sutras, and there is a plan to bring one set to France for the Plum Village sangha and to build a stupa to house them at Phap Van. The role of Dharma propagation—the practitioner—is the key to bringing the Dharma door of meditation from Hue to Plum Village and throughout the world, with the overseas sangha numbering 800–900 members, including 100 monastics and 200 lay practitioners who returned to Tu Hieu at the beginning of 2005.