MORGAN HILL — As dawn cracked the morning sky, the first light of Wednesday found hundreds of sick, disabled and desperate pilgrims lined up outside the Tam Tu Buddhist Temple, hoping to be healed. Many of them had been there all night.
An enormous army of misery — old, middle-aged and very young — gathered to seek what they consider the mystical touch of Vo Hoang Yen, a monk from Vietnam.
For nine years, the holy man, who eschews robes for a dress shirt and slacks, has traveled the world being mobbed by people who believe that he performs “miracles.”
They are certain that by laying his small but powerful hands, on sick people and physically maneuvering their bodies, Yen can bring some measure of relief to stroke victims and to those suffering maladies such as deafness, minor tumors and migraines, paralysis, crippling muscular pain and muteness.
“My doctor told me the only way my hearing would improve is through major surgery,” said Tony Nguyen, who drove up Tuesday from San Diego. He and his wife were still buzzing because a few minutes before, the monk had aggressively manipulated his 74-year-old ear canals with his thumbs. And then, in front of a huge, gasping, iPhone-taping crowd, the former college professor demonstrated he could hear out of both ears.
“Even though it’s not a hundred percent, there is definite improvement,” said Nguyen who got the idea to visit the monk from a relative in Houston who said she had an out-of-control blinking eye for years — until the monk massaged the throbbing to a halt.
But does this kind of healing really work? Skeptics outside of the temple abound. The American Cancer Society notes on its website that “when a person believes strongly that a healer can create a cure, a ‘placebo effect’ can occur. … Faith healing may promote peace of mind, reduce stress, relieve pain and anxiety, and strengthen the will to live.”
Yen doesn’t charge his legion of followers, and the temple even feeds those who come to be treated. With overwhelming crowds of people circling the temple and filling the room where Yen and his students worked on up to six people at a time, far more people were not treated. Some make appointments through the temple, but many others came in hope they’d catch Yen’s attention.
That’s what happened with Huy Tran, 46, whose mom said he was a deaf/mute since birth. Pulled out of the audience, Tran endured a firm yanking on his tongue and manipulation of his ear canals with Yen’s thumbs.
Then, he first demonstrated that he could hear clapping and talking behind his back. After that, he spoke words in a gurgly, high-pitched voice, which indicated he had no concept of volume or tone control.
Still, when Yen was done, Tran put his hands together, bowed and said to Yen and to the golden Buddha statue in the room, “a di da phat amitadudoha,” an honored thank you.
More applause and cheers went up as the unlikely looking monk — a head of thick, black hair and mustache to match — helped Ho Huong, a 57-year-old, nonwalking stroke victim.
After reportedly not moving on her own for two years, his firm and showy massage and manipulation of Huong’s legs with Kwong Loon Oil led her to stand up under her own power and walk around the room for the first time in two years.
He got the same movement out of stroke victims, Tri Dao, 65 from Milpitas and Yen Quach, 83, from Fremont. And in massaging, slapping, pressing muscles, necks, foreheads, hands and legs, the monk appeared to get a manic, autistic girl to calm down and a mentally challenged 2-year-old to sit up by himself for the first time. He also rubbed away under-skin facial and throat tumors in a few minutes.
On various benches around the 40-by-40 foot room, crowded with onlookers, Yen’s “students” and “assistants” worked on people with severe back pain and other muscular problems employing what looks like a mixture of acupressure, chiropractic and vigorous massage.
Tuan Nguyen, a San Jose dentist, brought his autistic daughter for a second session with Yen — which the monk allows for particularly difficult cases. “Very quickly,” said the excited father, “she stopped doing the repetitious behavior, over and over, she has been doing for years. It’s amazing.” Through an interpreter, Yen said he was born in 1975 to a very poor family in the Ca Mau province of Vietnam. When he was 16, he was sent to a Buddhist Temple where he spent years learning the healing arts from the monks there.
When he started traveling the world doing his healing sessions he vowed never to charge and asks temples and meditation centers that host him to provide free meals for the many pilgrims who seek out his smiling, easygoing bedside manner.
“Sometimes what I do is painful,” he said through an interpreter, “so I use humor and put them at ease, to heal the pain with laughter.”
Yen is back at the Morgan Hill temple on Thursday, taking on anyone who shows up, before flying back to Vietnam.
Contact David E. Early at 408-920-5836
