Thich Quang Thanh calls himself “a jack of all trades.”
That may be putting it mildly.
The Buddhist leader is not just the abbot at the Chua Bao Quang temple. The 60-year-old monk is also the maker and the keeper of the 2-acre temple campus on Newhope Street in Santa Ana.
He plants and waters its gardens. He decorates the altar. He beats the ritual drum. He creates bonsai sculptures that adorn the temple grounds. He is a painter, singer, songwriter, photographer and cook.
And over the past decade, he has been building this temple brick by brick. Chua Bao Quang has more than 1,000 congregants. But the temple has sprung from one man’s artistic vision.
Bang Van Pham, a longtime congregant, said Thanh even built the temple’s two-story office building. He poured the concrete, laid the bricks, installed wood paneling on walls and fashioned granite pillars, she said.
“He has saved the congregation thousands of dollars in labor costs because he does it all himself,” Pham said.
Quang Thanh doesn’t plan what goes where, Pham said.
“He puts a sculpture here, a few plants there,” she said. “But it all works together beautifully.”
On a recent afternoon, Quang Thanh, clad in flowing yellow robes, stood in the middle of the sprawling campus, surveying his handiwork.
“Oh!” he exclaims. “It’s unbelievable.”
Unbelievable not that he could do it. But, unbelievable, because he is even standing here – alive, breathing, smiling.
‘It was my destiny’
He was born Tung Thanh Duong in Bihn Thuan province in the south central coast of Vietnam, not far from Saigon.
Starting at age 5, Tung was drawn to the Pho Hien temple, where he went every day with his older sister. When he turned 10, he started learning the sutras, Buddhist scriptures.
“I fell in love,” he said.
The youngest of five children, Tung told his mother he wanted to become a monk when he was 13. His mother wept, but let go when she sensed her son’s resolve.
“It was my destiny,” he said.
The young monk lived in the temple, helping with daily prayers and services. The temple sent him to Saigon to study Eastern medicine and acupuncture. The temple expected him to become a doctor and treat people in underserved areas.
After graduating from college in Saigon and working there for a Buddhist institution, he returned to Binh Thuan. Shortly afterward, Saigon was taken over by the Communist regime. Life changed.
TEACHING BANNED
“If you want to live a normal life under the communists, you cannot be a monk.”
Quang Thanh and 80 other monks who lived in the monastery atop a hill learned that very quickly. They were interviewed by government officials every week. With every question Quang Thanh felt the pressure mounting.
“You are so young, why do you want to be a monk?”
“Does the Buddha give you food to eat?”
They’d storm into the temple in the middle of the night for inspections. Teaching was banned at the monastery, which is how the temple earned revenue. Without that, the monks had no money to buy food.
“When the most revered and senior monks answered their twisted questions honestly, officials threw them in prison,” Quang Thanh said.
There were days when he disguised himself to head out into the town to buy food, walking 5 miles up and down the hill.
He couldn’t recite the sutras. He couldn’t practice his art, sing or pray.
“Every day was like torture,” he said. “I felt stifled.”
That’s when Quang Thanh decided to flee Vietnam. But it wasn’t easy. Three times he tried to get on a fishing boat and was turned down because he didn’t have enough money. The fourth time, his family gave him three gold bars to aid his escape.
This time, he got on the boat.
“But communists shot rockets at us,” he said.
Quang Thanh jumped in the water, hung on to an empty barrel and swam ashore. He took a bus back into the city.
“That day, I stared death in the face,” he said.
His next attempt, in April 1984, was his last one. Quang Thanh, then 27, was able to escape on a fishing boat. This time, the waters were calm. There was food on the boat. He made it to a refugee camp in Indonesia and from there to the United States in June 1986.
TROVE OF ARTIFACTS
“As soon as I came to America, I felt like the artist in me had been unleashed.”
He studied flower arranging, bonsai, painting, photography and construction.
“Every subject has some basic rules,” he said. “It’s up to you to develop and grow.”
He served as a monk at Chua Vin Nghiem in Pomona. In 1990, he started his own congregation in Orange County. It was a home on a 10,000-square-foot lot on Magnolia Avenue in Buena Park.
In 2002, he had a large enough following that he decided to move to the property on Newhope Street. Quang Thanh estimates that he has built about one-fourth of the property by hand.
He has also collected hundreds of Buddhist artifacts for the temple’s museum. Quang Thanh says he spends all the money he makes from doing construction projects for congregants on these artifacts.
His “museum” is a treasure trove of artifacts – furniture, statuettes, vases, musical instruments – made of wood, metal, marble, ivory, jade, porcelain, bronze and amber.
A number of congregants also donate money so he can buy items for the temple’s museum, Quang Thanh said.
The monk says he has never been back to Vietnam, although he remains in touch with his family members.
“I will not go back there until the communist regime is gone,” he says.
But, in his art and his freedom to express, he finds peace.
“Religions can come together in peace through art,” he says. “Art is the way to open hearts. It’s the solution for mankind to achieve peace and harmony.”
Contact the writer: 714-796-7909 or dbharath@ocregister.com
