Truc Lam: Zen Buddhism

Keep a daily practice with the Main Hall, meditation, 96 books, on-device search, the lunar calendar and widgets. Free, ad-free and available offline.

Coming home from the temple, most of us want to keep a little of that life going: knowing when the full moon falls, chanting in the evening, reading a few pages from the old teachers. Truc Lam was made for that, following the Truc Lam Zen school of Vietnam. Free forever, no ads, and nothing you have to pay for before you can use it. The app works with no internet. The readings, the books and the chanting are in Vietnamese. Article titles and summaries also read in English, and the menus follow your device language.

THE LUNAR CALENDAR AND THE SPECIAL DAYS • Open the calendar and today is there, with the days left until the next special day. • Add your own dates, mark the ones you want to come back every year, and get a reminder one or two days ahead. • A widget puts today's lunar date and the next special day on your Home Screen.

CHANTING WITH THE TEMPLE • Two full chanting services led by Venerable Thich Tue Phuc, shared with this app by Truc Lam Yen Tu Monastery. • Repentance of the Six Senses, about 50 minutes. Repentance of the Three Karmas, about 39 minutes. • Press play and chant along, keeping the temple's own hours at home.

BOOKS AND STORIES • The books of Master Thich Thanh Tu, gathered from several sources, on nine shelves: his talks on the sutras, his talks on the classic Buddhist essays, the basics of Zen, Chinese Zen, Japanese and Korean Zen, Vietnamese Zen, the lives of the Zen teachers, his own writing, and advice for monks and nuns. • Search all 96 books on your device. On devices with Apple Intelligence, the app understands natural-language questions; every result still opens the exact passage in the original book. • A Start Here row for newcomers: First Steps in Buddhism, Practice Is Changing Karma, Where Is True Happiness, The Duties of a Lay Buddhist, Buddhism for Young People. • Articles on the Truc Lam school: Tran Nhan Tong, the emperor who became a monk; Phap Loa, who led the school after him; Huyen Quang, who led it next; Tue Trung Thuong Si, who never became a monk; the old poem Cu tran lac dao phu; the spring festival at Yen Tu. • What Master Thich Thanh Tu taught: see the wandering thought and do not follow it, meet the world without adding anything to it, how he taught people to sit, and the ten pictures of the ox. • Picture stories for children: the life of the Buddha, the emperor who became a monk, Rahula and the mirror, the seven days of rain at the Mucalinda tree, and more. • Every special day on the calendar has an article behind it. More Zen reading is added over time.

SITTING AND LISTENING • A full screen timer for sitting, with one bell to start and one to close. • Dharma talks from the temple to listen to, or just a bell and a wooden fish.

SMALL THINGS THAT HELP • 18 vegetarian recipes with what to buy and what to do, handy on full moon days. • The Sorrowless Flower garden: every day you practise opens one more flower in a garden that is only yours, with 68 quiz questions. Flowers come from reading, sitting and chanting, and they open further the more you find inside the app. • The whole app is painted in the style of Vietnamese lacquer painting, with its own artwork for light and for dark.

WHO THIS IS FOR • Someone new to Truc Lam Zen who wants to read the old texts. • A Buddhist who chants every day. • A working person who needs ten quiet minutes. • A Vietnamese family living abroad, still keeping the lunar dates together.

Truc Lam is free forever, has no ads, and nothing inside it has to be bought. If you want to help, there are optional support purchases; they keep an independent developer working on the app, and they are not offerings to a temple. This app is independent and is not run by any temple or Buddhist group.

May your body and mind be at ease.