Thích Tịnh Khiết

Thích Tịnh Khiết (釋淨潔, 1890–1973) was the first Supreme Patriarch of the Unified Buddhist Sangha of Vietnam (Giáo Hội Phật Giáo Việt Nam Thống Nhất) and the unifying ecclesiastical figure of twentieth-century Vietnamese Buddhism^[1]. Ordained in 1905 at Tường Vân Pagoda in Huế, he rose through the Lâm Tế-derived Liễu Quán lineage and became, by the 1930s, the senior Buddhist authority in central Vietnam^[1]. His public profile crystallised during the 1963 Buddhist crisis: as nominal head of the Vietnamese Sangha he was placed under house arrest by the Diệm regime in May 1963, an act that catalysed the international protests culminating in Thích Quảng Đức's self-immolation that June. After Diệm's fall, Thích Tịnh Khiết presided over the founding of the Unified Buddhist Sangha in January 1964 and held the office of Supreme Patriarch until his death — symbolising, for a war-fractured Vietnamese Buddhism, an institutional centre that survived both colonial and Cold War political assault^[2].