Buddhism in Vietnam

• 1. Introduction

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  Buddhism in Vietnam arrived long before any nation called Vietnam existed, and its roots reach back to a crossroads city where Indian monks paused on their way to China. By the end of the 2nd century CE, a settlement called Luy Lâu, in what is now Bắc Ninh Province northeast of Hanoi, had grown into a major regional hub of Mahayana Buddhism. Ships carrying traders from the Indian subcontinent docked nearby, and missionaries traveled the same sea routes. Sacred texts were translated there into Classical Chinese, including the Sutra of Forty-two Chapters. A Buddhist figure named Kang Senghui, of Sogdian origin, was born in that same city.

  Nearly two thousand years later, somewhere between 10 million and 14 million people in Vietnam identify as Buddhists. Those two figures come from different sources and different years, a gap that itself tells a story about how difficult it is to count faith. The Vietnamese government's 2019 census counted roughly 4.6 million Buddhists, about 4.8 percent of the population. But the U.S. Department of State's 2023 report on international religious freedom cited Vietnam's own White Book, which recorded nearly 14 million Buddhists in 2021, or 13.3 percent of the population. And yet other observers suggest the true number is higher still, because many Vietnamese declare themselves atheists while continuing to participate actively in Buddhist ceremonies.

  How did a tradition that arrived on merchant ships become so deeply woven into the fabric of a country that even a Communist government treats it as a symbol of national identity? That question takes us through royal courts that made Buddhism their official religion, through a monk who set himself on fire in a Saigon street, and through a refugee diaspora that built temples across North America.

• 2. The First Arrivals

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  Two Indian monks named Mahajivaka and Kalacarya arrived together in Luy Lâu toward the end of the reign of Han dynasty Emperor Lingdi, whose reign ran from 168 to 189 AD. Luy Lâu was then the headquarters of a governor known as Shishee, or Si Nhiep. The monks had come through a network of maritime trade, following the route Indian merchants used between the subcontinent and China. Kalacarya stayed in the region called Giao Chau, while Mahajivaka pressed on to China. The name Kalacarya may derive from a Sanskrit phrase meaning "black sage," suggesting he was possibly a Dravidian from Southern India.

  A Chinese scholar named Mouzi arrived in Giao Chau around the same period, fleeing turmoil in China after Emperor Lingdi's death. Despite being offered a senior post by Governor Shishee, Mouzi declined, preferring study. After his mother died, he turned fully to Buddhism and Taoism. He wrote the Li Huo Lun, a Buddhist primer, partly to defend Buddhism against critics who saw it as a betrayal of Confucian values. His life in Giao Chau offers a glimpse of the region in that era: cosmopolitan, multilingual, and home to a significant number of Indian monks.

  A letter written in 207 AD from Vien Huy to Tuan Huc confirms that Indian monks were present in Giao Chau in considerable numbers, accompanying Governor Si Nhiep. The city of Luy Lâu was not simply a waystation. It was actively producing Buddhist scholarship, and the translations made there circulated into the broader Chinese Buddhist world. Kang Senghui, born there of Sogdian descent, would later become a significant Buddhist missionary in his own right.

• 3. Dynasties and the State Religion

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  During the Đinh dynasty, which ruled from 968 to 980, Mahayana Buddhism received official recognition as a state religion around 971. It was the first time a Vietnamese government had granted Buddhism that formal status, and it reflected how thoroughly Buddhist faith had become bound up with Vietnamese royal identity. The Early Le dynasty that followed, ruling from 980 to 1009, extended the same recognition.

  Vietnamese Buddhism reached what historians describe as its zenith under the Ly dynasty, which ran from 1009 to 1225. The dynasty's founder, Ly Thai To, had been raised in a Buddhist temple. Every emperor of the Ly line professed Buddhism and made it the religion of the state. Buddhist belief in benevolence shaped royal policy; Buddhist festivals became major public events; and the state funded the construction of pagodas and towers. Local communities built their own smaller temples in parallel.

  The Tran dynasty, from 1225 to 1400, inherited this Buddhist tradition but had to share political space with a rising Confucian intellectual class. Emperor Tran Thai Tong, who reigned from 1226 to 1258, was himself a Buddhist writer of some depth. His collected works, Khoa Hu Luc, or Instructions on Emptiness, included discussions of repentance and monastic precepts. His views on meditation diverged from those of the Chinese Chan patriarch Huineng, favoring a graduated path to enlightenment over the concept of simultaneous awakening.

  A major institutional development under the Tran was the founding of the Truc Lam school of Zen. Emperor Tran Nhan Tong left his royal family in 1299 to become the school's first ancestor. Monk Phap Loa and Monk Huyen Quang followed as its second and third ancestors. The school created a distinctly Vietnamese form of Zen, separate from the Chinese lineages that had originally brought Zen practice to Vietnam.

• 4. Reform, Resistance, and Revival

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  A Buddhist revival movement known as Chan hung Phat giao emerged in the 1920s, driven by concern that institutional Buddhism had lost ground to Christianity and other faiths during the period of French colonial rule. Reformers used the Vietnamese vernacular rather than classical Chinese texts, publishing ideas in newspapers and magazines. Two of the first Buddhist periodicals printed in modern Vietnamese, Phap Am and Phat Hoa Tan Thanh Nien, came out of Saigon, which was more exposed than other cities to international currents of thought.

  A monk named Thien Chieu published Phat Hoc Tong Yeu, a General Summary of Buddhism, in 1929. The work introduced ideas that were new to the Vietnamese Buddhist landscape and took a critical stance against unthinking adherence to convention. It touched off debates in newspapers across the country. Between 1930 and 1933, four Buddhist research associations were established in the South, including the Hoi Nam Ky Nghien Cuu Phat Hoc in Saigon, led by figures including Khanh Hoa, Hue Quang, and Tri Thien. These groups published magazines, collected texts, and opened schools.

  The French colonial administration was wary of an independent Buddhist movement. Officials placed key figures such as Tran Nguyen Chan and Nguyen Nang Quoc in leadership roles under French supervision, a way of managing rather than suppressing the revival. Regional associations in northern and central Vietnam also formed and grew rapidly, though a nationwide association was blocked.

  Buddhist monks did not confine themselves to doctrinal debate during the colonial period. Vuong Quoc Chinh, described as both a Confucian scholar and a Buddhist devotee, led an attack on Hanoi in 1898, mobilizing patriotic forces under religious cover. Vo Tru organized resistance between 1893 and 1894. The 1916 revolt saw Nguyen Huu Tri and Cao Van Long active in separate actions. These monk-soldiers expressed what the source calls an engaged Buddhist tendency, a proactive commitment to solving sociopolitical problems despite Buddhism's traditional emphasis on withdrawal from worldly affairs.

• 5. Crisis, Fire, and Political Power

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  In May 1963, the city of Hue became the center of a confrontation that would ultimately topple a government. South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem had pursued policies that many Buddhists saw as discriminatory. Diem himself was Catholic, and his elder brother, Ngo Dinh Thuc, served as Hue's archbishop. When authorities prohibited Buddhists from displaying flags during the Vesak celebration while allowing Catholics to fly religious flags at a ceremony honoring the newly seated archbishop just days earlier, the inconsistency was impossible to ignore. Troops were sent in when protests began, and nine civilians were killed.

  Mass rallies followed across South Vietnam. The country's Buddhist majority, estimated at the time at roughly 70 to 80 percent of the population, had been watching Diem's pro-Catholic policies accumulate. The confrontations came to be called the Buddhist crisis. Then, in a Saigon street, a monk named Thich Quang Duc sat down, was doused with fuel, and set himself on fire in protest. The act was witnessed and photographed, and the images circulated internationally.

  Diem's younger brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, pushed for a forceful response. Army of the Republic of Vietnam Special Forces raided the Xa Loi Pagoda and others across the country, killing an estimated several hundred people. The public outrage that followed prompted the United States government to withdraw its support for the Diem regime. Diem was deposed and killed in a coup in 1963.

  In the years that followed, Buddhist political influence expanded. Different schools and orders came together to form the Unified Buddhist Sangha of Vietnam. The Sangha's leader, Thich Tri Quang, wielded considerable influence in national politics, at times openly challenging the government of South Vietnam.

• 6. After Reunification

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  With the fall of Saigon in 1975, unified Communist rule brought a sharp change for religious institutions. The Unified Buddhist Sangha of Vietnam, which had openly challenged the new government, found its leadership arrested and imprisoned. Its properties were seized and the organization itself was outlawed. In its place, the state created a new body called the Buddhist Sangha of Vietnam, formally established on the 7th of November 1981, designed as the single legal home for all Buddhist practice in the country, operating under full government control, with its headquarters in Hanoi.

  The period of Doi Moi reforms, which began in 1986, eased restrictions on religious practice. Buddhists could worship with relatively little interference, though no organized sangha was permitted to operate independently of the state. Pure Land Buddhism, the most widespread form of Buddhist practice in Vietnam, waited until 2007 to receive official government recognition as a religion.

  Thich Quang Do, the Patriarch of the outlawed Unified Buddhist Sangha, remained under surveillance and travel restrictions until his death. His case was a persistent reminder that the legal tolerance extended to the official Buddhist Sangha did not extend to organizations outside state control.

  The Communist Party of Vietnam officially promotes atheism but has generally aligned itself with Buddhism in practice, treating it as a marker of Vietnamese historical identity. Buddhist festivals receive government promotion. The contrast with the treatment of Christian, Muslim, and other religious communities is noted in the source. One concrete example of Buddhist growth in previously non-Buddhist areas comes from Kon Tum province, where the Buddhist population has grown to 30,000 since arrivals began in the 1930s, including 4,000 members from ethnic minority communities. The province today has 27 pagodas and 6 viharas with 90 active monastics.

• 7. Thiền, Pure Land, and Living Practice

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  Thich Nhat Hanh founded the Plum Village Monastery in France alongside his colleague, bhiksuni and Zen Master Chan Khong, building what became the best-known Vietnamese Buddhist institution in the Western world. He authored dozens of books and attracted a large international following. Scholars Anthony Nguyen and Alexander Soucy, writing in 2007, argued that Thich Nhat Hanh's style of engaged Buddhism and his form of Thien has no deep foundation in traditional Vietnamese Buddhist practice. Elise Anne DeVido countered this, examining his teachings in light of their Vietnamese origins and noting that Thich Nhat Hanh himself recounts his early Thien practice in Vietnam in his Dharma talks.

  The debate reflects a tension running through Vietnamese Buddhism more broadly. The tradition has always been eclectic, drawing on Tiantai, Huayan, Chan, and Pure Land at the same time. Charles Prebish noted that many English-language sources misrepresent Vietnamese Buddhism by overstating the distinctness of its schools. As he wrote, none of the theories about incompatibility between schools "reflects realities in Vietnam (or China) past or present" and followers have no difficulty practicing multiple teachings simultaneously.

  In everyday temple life, three services are held daily at dawn, noon, and dusk. Services include sutra reading, recitation of the Buddha's name, dhārani chanting, and walking meditation. The Lotus Sutra and the Amitabha Sutra are the most commonly used texts. Most sutras are recited in a literary Chinese form with Sino-Xenic pronunciations, meaning that for most practitioners the words are devotional sounds rather than understood meaning.

  The Vietnamese Theravada Buddhist Sangha Congregation was formally established and recognized by the government in 1957, with Venerable Ho Tong as its first elected president. Theravadin practice had been introduced to ethnic Vietnamese Buddhists by a veterinary doctor named Le Van Giang, who encountered the tradition while working in Phnom Penh and returned to Vietnam to help establish the first Theravadin temple for Vietnamese Buddhists at Go Dua, Thu Duc, in 1940. That temple, Buu Quang, was destroyed by French troops in 1947 and rebuilt in 1951. Today there are 529 Theravadin Buddhist temples across the country.