Pháp Loa

Pháp Loa (法螺, 1284–1330) was the second patriarch of the Trúc Lâm school and the master to whom Trần Nhân Tông personally transmitted the dharma in 1308 in front of the assembled monastic community^[1]. Where the founder had been an emperor turned hermit, Pháp Loa was the institutional builder who consolidated the new school: he supervised the carving of a complete Vietnamese-edition Buddhist canon, ordained more than fifteen thousand monastics over his patriarchate, and oversaw the construction and reform of monasteries across the Trần realm^[1]. The disciplined, scholastic Trúc Lâm that survives in Vietnamese Buddhist memory — as much as the more famous founder — is in large part his work^[2].