I am a Vietnamese person born in Indiana, a child of the working class, and a product of the love of many people. 

Practicing Buddhism with others, making it easy for others to practice without trouble, studying teaching, and caring for my elderly, disabled mother are important to me. My life is organized around these works. I also practice Chinese and Vietnamese calligraphy, nurture my plant and animal siblings, and live not-online as much as possible.

My Buddhism began with my mother. Mom grew up in Long Phú village in the culturally and religiously plural Mekong Delta, survived French, Japanese, and American invasion, and arrived in the United States in 1975. She taught me rituals and prayers that she learned from her bà nội (paternal grandmother) and gifted me Buddhism woven into Vietnamese language and customs. From 1989 to 1993, the monk Thích Đúc Niệm and other monastics at Chùa Quang Minh in Chicago introduced me to the Heart Sutra, precepts, chanting, the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, and the practical, cooperative aspects of temple life. I listened alongside my mother while she studied to take lay precepts. Thích Đúc Niệm also taught me about meditation and its location in the story of Śākyamuni Buddha’s enlightenment. These seeds took two decades to germinate. 

I began a sincere, daily personal meditation practice in 2013, which grew from a daily yoga asana practice that began in 2009, and study of Hindu Vedanta. What I learned there moved me to return to my Buddhist roots and to practice meditation with other people as much as possible. I practiced zen meditation weekly at Chùa An Lạc in Indianapolis from 2015 - 2018, led by Việt Lê. From 2018 until the COVID lockdown in March 2020, I practiced four mornings a week at the Indianapolis Zen Center, led by Linc Rhodes. In these spaces, I learned the meditation practice forms we use at Little Forest today and came to understand their fine details.

Making it easy for people to practice meditation with one another has been something I have been working towards since 2017. From 2017 - 2019, I organized a meditation program at Eli Lilly. In 2018, I incorporated silent meditation into a Saturday yoga practice I led, the practice that would become Indy Community Yoga, which I founded in 2019 so that more people could practice yoga and meditation for free in beautiful spaces around Indianapolis. In March 2020, we began leading twice daily zen meditation on Zoom so that people could practice together safely during the early COVID pandemic. These practices plus our Sunday Practice evolved into Little Forest Zen Sangha in 2026.

I hope we get to practice together soon!