Solid Faith

He labored alone on most days, hunched over enormous boulders of porous rock.

During the months to follow last year, Ngo Tran’s inner vision slowly began taking shape as he patiently hammered and chiseled away on the bulbous warp of stone. By the time he was done, his masterpiece towered over him.

The huge, elaborately sculpted rock shrine--peopled with miniature kings and wise men, pagodas and waterfalls--now stands on the grounds of the Bat Nha Buddhist Temple in Santa Ana.

“When people come see it, they hear the sound of water. They look at the intricate details. Their heart finds peace,” said Tran, 60, of Westminster. And that, said the Vietnamese immigrant, is why he volunteers his time and talent sculpting shrines for the temple.

Depicting a holy mountain in China, the stone shrine serves as a resting place for a statue of Quan Am, also known as Kwan Yin, the deity of compassion and mercy in Buddhism.

Tran’s vision has drawn visitors from as far away as France, Germany and Australia to the humble grounds of the small temple, said the Rev. Thich Nguyen Tri.

“When you look at his work, you feel a serenity inside,” he said.

A wizened sprite of a man just under 5 feet tall, Tran resembles the ancient sages that crowd his fantastic carvings. He learned the craft of rock carving as a child growing up in the town of Phan Rang, Vietnam. The skills had been passed down from father to son since his great-grandfather’s era.

But as a young man, Tran abandoned his teachings.

“I didn’t want this as a career. I didn’t think I could make my living doing this,” he recalled.

Instead, he ended up joining the South Vietnamese army and fighting in the war. He arrived in the U.S. alone in 1975, leaving behind one daughter in Vietnam. He spent the next 22 years in Oklahoma City working for an air-conditioning company.

But he never forgot those lessons from childhood and started carving again in secret, keeping it from his wife and other family members.

“I didn’t want anyone to know because I hadn’t mastered it yet. If I said I was a carver, who would believe me?” he said.

He moved out to California a year ago with his wife, hoping to start a business growing flowers. That venture was unsuccessful, but he ended up finding Bat Nha Temple and its resident monk, Tri.

A devout Buddhist, Tran said he was impressed with Tri and promised to build him a shrine in the ancient style.

During a recent interview at the kitchen table of his temple, Tri chuckled, remembering the offer. “At the time, I had no idea that he could create something so beautiful, but I accepted his offer because I knew that his heart and his intentions were good,” he said.

And so began Tran’s months-long effort. Getting up at 5:30 in the morning, fueled by a cup of black coffee, Tran would work into the early evening hours, smashing big blocks of stone into smaller and smaller pieces. Then he would painstakingly shape them with hammer and chisel before piecing them together with cement.

Laboring eight to 10 hours a day, seven days a week, he spent four months and a week on the first shrine, he said. It stands more than 15 feet tall, complete with a lotus pond and kumquat trees.

“Windy or stormy, hot or cold, I’m out here,” he said. “Only when it rained did I take the day off.”

Tran’s dedication was absolute, the monk said. “Even on very cold mornings, I would get up and open the door, and he would be there already,” Tri said.

The temple got donations of more than $10,000 to cover the cost of buying the special kind of lava rock, ordered from Utah, that Tran needed.

Inspired by his love for the country he left behind and his religion, Tran enthusiastically crafts the shrines for free. Were he doing this for profit, he estimates that he could charge up to $70,000 for such a work. His motivation is personal, Tran said, adding that he’s taking on a couple of students for the new year, because he wants “to leave this behind for our children and the next generation.”

Tran recently completed his second shrine, also four months in the making, on the grounds of the temple. The public is invited for a formal showing Jan. 30 at 2 p.m., Tri said. The temple is at 803 S. Sullivan St.

For Tran, the payoff comes from seeing the pleasure people take in viewing his work. As he stood showing a visitor the intricate details of the shrine, he explained how he worked to make his art come alive.

“My father told me I have to make sure the rock is awake and not asleep. When it’s awake, that means that people will linger over it, and even if they walk away, they will come back to look some more,” he said.

Gently laying a hand on the gray stone, he stated, “This is my heart and soul inside.”