Master Tang Hoi

Master Tang Hoi presents an overview of the life, work and thought of Tang Hoi, the earliest known Buddhist meditation master of Vietnam. Tang Hoi was born in the region that is now Vietnam, three hundred years before the well-known Indian monk Bodhidharma went to China. His is revered by Vietnamese Buddhists as the first patriarch of the Vietnamese Meditation school, and his life and work tell tell us much about the roots of Buddhism in Vietnam and southern China.

The history of Buddhism in Vietnam spans two thousand years – nearly as long as Buddhism itself has been in existence. As the life of Mater Tang Hoi shows, Vietnam was the fertile soil for a unique form of Buddhism that blends the teachings of both the early Buddhist Theravadin tradition and the later Mahayana.