Hương Hải

Hương Hải (香海, 1628–1715) is the central figure of the seventeenth-century Vietnamese Thiền revival^[1]. Born in the southern Đàng Trong region during the long Trịnh-Nguyễn split, he served briefly as a court mandarin before ordaining and travelling north to study under the Chinese Lâm Tế (Linji) master Trí Giáo Nhất Cú at Phật Tích temple^[1]. He returned south, established a hermitage on Mount Tiêu Dao, and from there reformed Vietnamese Thiền practice along the lines of Ming-dynasty Linji discipline — a recovery, after centuries of decline, of the rigorous training that had defined the Trúc Lâm period. He authored more than thirty works in chữ Nôm and classical Chinese, including *Sự Lý Dung Thông* on the unity of phenomena and principle and the *Giải Tâm Kinh* commentary on the Heart Sūtra; his death-verse, 'The mountains are mountains, the waters are waters — what use is there in seeking?', is preserved in every Vietnamese Buddhist anthology^[2].