Grandmaster Nguyên Minh (1884-1998)

Brief biographical survey written by Grandmaster Nam Anh, 1999

Born in 1884 in Foshan, Hoang Hoa Bao’s grandson became a vegetarian at the tender age of six after a long pilgrimage with his mother at the Temple of the Diamond. Her son’s precarious health worried her tremendously for he vomited every bit of meat he ate. She seeked the counsel of a divinatory master renowned throughout the region. Their meeting was long and its contents kept secret.

Upon her return, she decided without hesitation she would confide the boy at the temple. Venerable Vien Hanh (Yuan Hsin) took him under his tutelage and bestowed him the name of “Nguyen Minh” or “The Primeval Enlightened”.

When the old master died, six years later, he was summoned to be in the service of Supreme Monk Giac Hai of the Temple of the Diamond, thanks to the boy’s parental link with Grand Master Hoang Hoa Bao. Alongside Nguyen Trung and Nguyen Te, later known as Te Cong, he completed his advanced martial arts training.

After eighteen years of strict and traditionnal training, on a fall morning in 1908, the Supreme Monk said to him:

-My son! The day has come for you to rejoin Society, for at this time the country is in a state akin to boiling oil and burning fire. Soon, the Ching dynasty will be no more and China will enter a chaotic period as it had never before witnessed. Consequently, Mother China will need all her beloved children. Follow your Karma and accomplish with pride your duty as a man in times of war. And most importantly, never forget that to straighten oneself enables to better support one’s familly and therefore to properly lead one’s country. Such is the Way of the Heart¹. Hesitate no more my son, the people of the “Yellow River” will soon need you.

In 1912, a year after the fall of the Ching, like all patriotic young men at the time, he volunteered in the military.

From 1937 to 1945, he was a General and took part in the Common Front against the Japanese incursion, for the liberation of the country. Also, during this period, he was put in charge of the rescue operations of the Yellow River (Hoang Ha) floods, thanks to which hundreds of thousands of lives were spared.

In September of 1945, at the head of the 8^th army of General Loo-Han, he walked upon Vietnam to disarm the remnants of the defeated japanese army, putting an end to a bloody war in south-east Asia.

All along his 38 years as a military officer, he remained a good leader, reknowned for his humanism and his exceptionnal intelligence. In 1949, he left the army, settled in South Vietnam and was known under the new name of Hoang Tuong Fong (The Good Yellow Wind).

In 1985, at the age of 101, he left Vietnam for Taiwan, where he lived religiously in a temple near the region of lake Sun-Moon. He passed away in 1998, at the age of 114.

Way of the Heart: Way of indulgence and of Buddha’s great compassion