A straw hut of Buddha Shakyamuni: History and everyday life of a Vietnamese Buddhist temple in Moscow

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the Vietnamese Buddhist temple “Thatched Hut”, built in the Moscow region (the Vietnamese name of the temple is Thảo Đường). The founder of the Vietnamese Buddhist community is the Russian scientist and teacher of Vietnamese language in higher education Inna Anatolyevna Malkhanova (1939–2019). Her husband, Vietnamese Nguyên Minh Cẫ n (1928–2016) made a great contribution to the creation of ̀ this community in Moscow. Both of them are revered in the “Thatched Hut” as its founders, and rituals are performed in their honor in front of a special altar. Currently, four nuns live in the temple, moreover lay people come regularly. The temple is not only a place of Buddhist practices, but also a community center for Vietnamese living in Moscow (mostly women).

The temple has not been previously studied by researchers and has not been described in scientific publications. We regularly visit the temple with RSUH students as part of their educational practice (once or twice a semester, starting from 2022). This allowed us to collect material on the history and current state of the temple. Of particular significance is the material that one of the authors, Kamila Soboleva, who managed to collect in the autumn of 2024 during two months living in the monastery as a Buddhist nun and was able to describe the monastery’s way of life using the participant observation method.