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Vạn Hạnh

Vạn Hạnh

938 CE–1018 CE · Lục Tổ Pagoda, Tiên Du (Bắc Ninh)

c. 938–1018 CE (traditional)

Vạn Hạnh (c. 938–1018 CE) was a Vietnamese Thiền (Zen) master of the Vinītaruci line, remembered above all as the teacher and political mentor of Lý Công Uẩn, who became Lý Thái Tổ, founding emperor of the Lý dynasty (1009). In the tradition he is the model of the scholar-monk closely bound to the early Vietnamese state, advising at court and helping legitimate the new dynasty that moved the capital to Thăng Long (modern Hanoi). He is treated here as historical in outline; his precise dates and birthplace, and the prophetic episodes attributed to him, rest largely on later tradition.

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Lục Tổ Pagoda, Tiên Du (Bắc Ninh)

What they did here

TRADITION: a senior monk of the Vinītaruci Thiền line; he taught at this pagoda and mentored the young Lý Công Uẩn.

About Lục Tổ Pagoda, Tiên Du (Bắc Ninh)

Lục Tổ Pagoda, in the Tiên Du district of Bắc Ninh province in northern Vietnam, was an important temple of early Vietnamese Buddhism. It was associated with the monk Vạn Hạnh, the tenth–eleventh-century master and royal adviser who helped Lý Công Uẩn found the Lý dynasty.

See other sages who lived in Lục Tổ Pagoda, Tiên Du (Bắc Ninh)→

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers, teachers, and rulers whose lives overlapped with Vạn Hạnh’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works

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