Lien Phai Pagoda

Lien Phai Pagoda The pagoda, with the literary name “Lien Phai Tu”, is located at the end of Lien Phai Pagoda Alley, Bach Mai Street, Bach Mai Ward, Hanoi City. According to the pagoda’s stone stele: “When it was first built (1726), the pagoda was named Lien Hoa Pagoda. In 1733, it was renamed Lien Tong. In 1840, during the reign of King Thieu Tri, because the king’s taboo name (Nguyen Mien Tong) had to be avoided, it was changed to Lien Phai Pagoda.” The pagoda was built and presided over by Lan Giac Thuong Si, whose real name was Trinh Thap, a younger brother of Lord Trinh Cuong. Lien Phai Pagoda is the ancestral pagoda of the Lien Tong sect, one of the Zen lineages of Buddhism that appeared in our country under the Later Le dynasty (17th–18th centuries). It was also the largest woodblock printing center for Buddhist scriptures in Vietnamese Buddhism. The pagoda has a large architectural scale and spacious landscape, including: the three-entrance gate, the 11-tier Lien Hoa stupa, the four-roofed stele house, the main pagoda, the Mother Goddess hall, the Ancestor hall, the stupa garden, the memorial house, and other structures. Currently, the pagoda still preserves a rich system of relics such as: Buddha statues, a system of stone steles, incense tables, scrolls, altar curtains, wooden paintings, poems in Han characters, horizontal lacquered boards, wooden couplets, a bell “Lien Tong tuc dien” (The Lien Tong lineage continues radiantly) from the Le Trung Hung period, and a large wooden plaque engraved with three quatrain poems written in the first year of Khai Dinh (1919). Particularly notable is the statue of Nguyen Dang Giai, commonly called Thuong Giai - the person who undertook the construction of Lien Tri Pagoda beside Hoan Kiem Lake, of which only the Hoa Phong stupa remains today; when that pagoda was destroyed, his statue was brought to Lien Phai Pagoda and placed in the pagoda’s front hall. With its outstanding values in history, culture, science, architecture, art, etc., Lien Phai Pagoda was ranked as a National Historical - Architectural and Artistic Relic on April 28, 1962.