Real money plasters pagoda statues



Cash offerings find their way into every crevice at the Temple of the Hung Kings in Phu Tho ProvinceParticularly in northern Vietnam, it’s odd to go inside a pagoda without a thick wad of small notes; odd because almost everyone who steps into the hallowed hall is packing a pocketful of money, and with good reason.
Mia Pagoda in Hanoi has the most statues of any temple in the land, which is why the moneychangers outside the temple are so busy.
Of course every temple has a box for donations in a prominent position but many people, students in particular, prefer to throw their monetary donation in a statue’s face.
Because there are 287 statues, and the visitor needs quite a few notes per figure.
The moneychangers are at their busiest for the first three months of the new lunar year, and the few days leading up to Tet since that’s when the crowds descend on the pagodas.
Changing a VND100,000 (US$5.73) note gets you VND70,000-80,000 in denominations from VND200 to VND1,000.
To ease the pain, there are signs saying things like “use the money of this world to ask the gods for gifts from the other side to make you rich.”
Judging by the long queues, the advertising seems to work.
All the statues are plastered with money, from the Ruler of Heaven to the Thunder God, Bodhisattva and Arhats, one of which has a straight posture and anxious face and is considered a masterpiece of ancient Vietnamese sculpture.
The flying notes from the visitors end up on the palms, between the toes, under the armpits and on the thighs of the statues.
At Ba Chua Kho Temple in Bac Ninh Province, the throwing of money at statues has been likened to an epidemic.
Outside the temple are rows and rows of signs telling visitors to change their big notes for small ones.
The famous Temple of the Hung Kings in Phu Tho Province is no exception to the practice either, for any visitor who walks past the moneychangers without stopping is bound to get a hostile look.
Recently, a group of praying children were taken aback when they opened their eyes and saw the statue in front of them was holding several notes.
Artist Phan Cam Thuong, who resides at But Thap Pagoda in Bac Ninh as a scholar and caretaker, is embarrassed every time he sees such a sight.
Money is even placed around old trees and large incense-burners outdoors.
The practice was annoying visitors from beyond Bac Ninh so they complained to the monks, who then had to run around collecting the notes and take them to the moneychangers to swap for bigger notes, which went into the pagoda’s cash box.
Sometimes, the monks beg visitors to stop donating money in that manner but the habit is hard to change.
“A holy place must be clean and quiet,” Le Trung Vu from the Institute of Religious Studies at the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences told VietnamNet in a recent interview.
At Do Temple in Bac Ninh, statues of military leaders stand two meters tall but the plates of small notes in front of them make the heroes of old look like beggars.
Disrespecting a nation’s money
Money flying through the air and landing on statues is what a farmer in the central region remembers most from his pilgrimage to Bac Le Temple in Lang Son Province.
In a recent letter to his local newspaper, the farmer expressed his amazement at seeing “notes flying everywhere and landing in piles. It was real money, all of it.”
Back in his hometown, people at the markets still use VND200 and VND500 notes for most of their transactions.
The practice also astonished the monks from Zen master Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village Monastery in France when they visited Bo De Pagoda in Hanoi in early 2005 and saw a number of moneychangers outside the temple.
Throwing money only in the hope of heavenly reward is hardly in keeping with the words printed on the nation’s first currency notes back in 1396: “Once the government has issued notes, citizens must use them,” not in spirit anyway.