“Looking deeply into your tea, you see that you are drinking fragrant plants that are the gift of Mother Earth. You see the labor of the tea pickers; you see the luscious tea fields and plantations in Sri Lanka, China, and Vietnam. You know that you are drinking a cloud; you are drinking the rain. The tea contains the whole universe.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Eat, Parallax Press, 2014
In Hue, Vietnam, the day begins before sunrise. Monks awaken for meditation at Tu Hieu Temple, a 19th-century pagoda set among pine trees on the edge of the city. Incense rises from the altar. Beyond the temple walls, the former imperial capital sits quietly in its landscape, palaces, garden houses and the wide bend of the Perfume River.
Inside Tu Hieu, time is marked by the rhythm of daily practices:
—Meditation practice morning, noon and night
—Chanting sessions throughout the day
—Walking meditation on the temple grounds
—Daily work is approached as a meditative practice
—Study of Buddhist scriptures and the Dharma teachings.
Thich Nhat Hanh recalled that during his own novice years at Tu Hieu, daily life included manual labor, from tending cows and carrying water to pounding rice, all approached as practice in presence.
Guests on Terra & Tu’s Vietnam Cultural Journey witness the connections between tea and Zen Buddhism in Vietnam, sharing tea in Hue with a monk who studied under Thich Nhat Hanh and carries the tradition forward.
What Role Does Buddhism Play in Vietnamese Daily Life?
Historians differ on when and how Buddhism came to Vietnam; some say it arrived via China around the 1st or 2nd centuries AD, while others argue it arrived via the Indian subcontinent as early as the 3rd or 2nd centuries BC.
Either way, modern Buddhism threads through Vietnamese life formally and in the everyday: in the incense at household shrines, in the pagodas that anchor communities, in the rhythms of the lunar calendar that mark planting and harvest, birth and death. And tea features prominently in each of those.
A 2024 Pew Research Center study of East Asia’s religious landscape found that 38% of Vietnamese adults identify as Buddhist, one of the highest rates in the region. Vietnam’s government formally reports that registered Buddhists account for around 13% of the population, with over 26.5 million believers across all officially recognized religions combined. The gap between those figures reflects the extent to which Buddhist practices and worldviews are culturally embedded: many Vietnamese practice Buddhism through household altars, temple visits and seasonal festivals, without formal, state-sanctioned institutional affiliation.
What is the Role of Tea in Vietnamese Culture?
Tea plays both an important cultural and economic role in Vietnam. A long, narrow, S-shaped country stretching 1,025 miles along the eastern edge of the Indochinese Peninsula on the South China Sea, Vietnam borders China to the north, Laos and Cambodia to the west.
Vietnam’s mountainous and hilly topography and tropical monsoon climate make it prime tea-growing territory. Tea has been cultivated here for more than 2,000 years; wild plants grew naturally across the northern highland provinces long before commercial tea production began.
Today, Vietnam ranks sixth in global tea production and fifth in exports, with an average annual output of:
—Tea Production: around 180,000 metric tons of processed tea and cultivation spanning 34 provinces.
—Tea Exports: In 2023, tea exports generated nearly $120 million USD. But statistics tell only part of the story.
In Vietnam, tea, like Buddhism, is woven into the fabric of daily life: A fresh pot signals welcome. Serving tea to elders at a wedding conveys respect. Placing tea on an ancestral altar is an act of devotion.
What Are the Links Between Zen Buddhism and Tea in Vietnam?
Tea and Buddhist contemplation have been linked across Asia since at least the 9th century AD, when Chan monks in Chinese monasteries cultivated and drank tea to sustain long hours of meditation.
That connection traveled with Buddhism into Vietnam, where it found its own expression: thiền trà, or tea meditation, a practice that treats the deliberate preparation and sharing of tea as a form of mindfulness, demanding the same quality of attention as sitting in meditation.
Rooted in Zen, tea meditation treats every step of the tea-making process as an opportunity for full presence:
—Tea preparation is a practice. Boiling the water, warming the cup, measuring the leaves: each action is performed slowly and with complete attention, not as a means to an end but as the practice itself.
—All the senses are engaged. The sound of boiling water, the fragrance rising from the pot, the warmth of the cup in both hands: participants are invited to notice each sensation without judgment.
—Nothing is rushed. Sips are taken slowly, with pauses between them. Silence is intentional.
—Tea meditation is still practiced today. Monks in pagodas across Vietnam hold quiet tea sessions after morning prayers. Thich Nhat Hanh made thiền trà a cornerstone of his practice communities from his earliest experiments in Vietnamese Buddhist renewal in the 1950s.
As Thich Nhat Hanh wrote: “The tea contains the whole universe.”
Who was Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh?
No figure more powerfully connects Vietnam’s monastic traditions to the wider world than Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay). Born in Hue, he lived and studied at the Tu Hieu Monastery from age 16 and returned there in his final years.
Thich Nhat Hanh’s key teaching was clear: through mindfulness, we can learn to live fully in the present, the only place where peace, for oneself or the world, is possible.
He was often referred to as the Father of the Mindfulness Movement. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who nominated Thay for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967, called him “an Apostle of peace and nonviolence.”
Thich Nhat Hanh founded the Order of Interbeing, established Plum Village monastery in France (now the West’s largest Buddhist monastery, with more than 200 residents), and published more than 100 books on mindfulness and engaged Buddhism. His books have sold more than 5 million copies in the United States alone.
Thich Nhat Hanh spent nearly four decades in exile, barred from his homeland for anti-war activism. In 2018, he returned to Tu Hieu Temple to spend his final years. He died there in January 2022, at the age of 95.
“The Buddhist knowledge and wisdom I learned from Tu Hieu is now spreading all over the world,” he wrote to his disciples. “I believe it’s time for me to get back to my roots.”
Witness Modern Vietnam where Thich Nhat Hanh Was Born
That lineage continues in Hue today. Monks and practitioners who have studied in his tradition carry forward a form of Buddhism shaped by Vietnamese soil and Vietnamese history, one that understands contemplation not as withdrawal from the world but as a way of being more fully present in it.
This engaged Buddhism sees spiritual life and community welfare as inseparable, an orientation that aligns directly with the conservation ethic at the heart of Nat Hab’s Terra & Tu approach to cultural travel. On Nat Hab’s Terra & Tu Vietnam Cultural Journey itinerary, guests witness Hue’s living spiritual and artistic heritage, including:
—The Imperial Citadel, the former seat of the Nguyen Dynasty, where palaces and courtyards reflect the city’s royal past
—A Luc Bo cultural space for a hands-on workshop, learning age-old techniques and the symbolism behind traditional handicrafts
—Dong Ba Market and a private lunch in an ancient garden
The highlight of our day in Hue is private, unhurried time with a monk who studied under Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. Over tea, the conversation covers Buddhist philosophy and contemporary spiritual life in Vietnam.
Experience Fast-Growing Vietnam’s Ancient Buddhist Roots
Vietnam’s Buddhist traditions are practiced today in temples where they were developed a thousand years ago and are carried forward by communities in contemplation as a way of being more fully alive and engaged with the world.
An encounter with that tradition, in a cup of tea, an unhurried conversation, the quiet of a pagoda, offers an intimate portrait of a living culture that is growing and changing fast.
Terra & Tu Cultural Journeys by Natural Habitat Adventures weave travelers intimately into the heart and history of local communities. As long as humans have lived on the land, nature and culture have been intertwined and mutually dependent. In Vietnam, that understanding is ancient. A cup of tea with a monk in Hue is one of the most direct ways to experience it.
