Hoi An — The Offering to the Dragon at the Heart

We arrived in Hoi An directly from the quiet valley of My Son Sanctuary, where the

Ancient Cham towers rise from the jungle in a bowl of mountain silence.

After that stillness, Hoi An felt like another world.

The town was overflowing — lanterns blazing everywhere, streets packed with

people, boats crowding the banks of the Thu Bon River as hundreds of floating lights

drifted across the muddy water. It was overwhelming, almost surreal, and for a

moment, I wondered if we had stepped completely off the dragon spine.

Yet the deeper movement had begun earlier.

On the summit of Ba Den Mountain, we encountered the towering pillars carved

with the Heart Sutra. I had known the teaching before, but there it felt different — like

an echo sounding quietly within the heart.

Then at My Son, something ignited. Among the fiery Cham temples dedicated to

Shiva, a current of energy stirred in the solar plexus, rising upward through the spine

like a beam of light carried from the dragon of that valley.

When we reached Hoi An, the current moved through the waters of the river and

into the heart.

At first, I could not see it. The city was too busy, too noisy. But that night, I dreamed of

a child connected to a painful relationship from my past. In the dream, the child

entered my home quietly, as though something long held in the heart had returned

to be acknowledged.

The next day, we found ourselves beside the lantern river. Hundreds of small

flames drifted across the dark water each evening, moving slowly through the

current.

Looking back now, it feels as though an ancient dragon lies beneath that muddy

river, breathing light upward through the lanterns.

The day before leaving the city, we met a young Vietnamese woman preserving

traditional crafts and stories of her people. Among her treasures were ancient rings

and bracelets made from metal associated with lightning striking the earth.

Anna and I bought a bracelet — dragons at each end, a river flowing between them,

and the symbol of the third eye. The following morning, it was gone. Somewhere in

the streets of Hoi An, it slipped away, returning quietly to the land that had given birth to it.

Only later did we realise we had left a token after all.

And it was here, in the heart of this lantern

River City, that the teaching of the Heart Sutra

finally revealed itself more deeply.

Its mantra began to echo within me:

Gate Gate

Paragate

Parasamgate

Bodhi Svaha.

Gone, gone, gone beyond.

Gone completely beyond.

Standing beside the river, watching the

lanterns drift across the water, it felt as though each flame carried the same prayer

— a quiet act of letting go.

And somewhere beneath them, the dragon of the river kept watch.