Phạm Công Thiện (1941-2011)

Phạm Công Thiện is a famous Vietnamese writer, poet, scholar and philosopher born in 1941 in Mytho, in the South of Vietnam. His books, several times best-sellers in Vietnam, had a great influence on all a generation of Vietnamese. A former Buddhist monk in Vietnam, he was also a respected Zen Master and the Dean of Van Hanh Buddhist University in Saigon.

After having lived a long time in France  where he taught philosophy at Université du Mirail in Toulouse, Phạm Công Thiện settled down in USA in the city of Los Angeles, lecturing on Buddhism, writing books and  then later moved to Texas, where he lived a meditative life in a quiet house near a lake until his passing away on March 8, 2011.

In 2000, Nohira Munehiro from the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (Japan) made a thesis on his complete works. And in 2010, his published book "New Consciousness" about Phạm Công Thiện won the prestigious Prize of Japan Society for Southeast Asian Studies.