# Truc Lam: Zen Buddhism — Vietnamese Zen, every day > Vietnamese Zen, every day (iPhone/iPad app by BAO NGOC PHAM.) - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/truc-lam-zen-buddhism/id6798248433 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`) - Developer: [BAO NGOC PHAM](https://appshunter.io/developer/1896690937) - Category: Reference, Lifestyle - Price: Free with in-app purchases - Age rating: 4+ - Requires: iOS 17.0 · 321 MB - Languages: American English, Vietnamese - Released: 2026-08-21 - Data updated: 2026-10-10 ## What is Truc Lam? Coming home from the temple, most of us want to keep a little of that life going: knowing when the full moon falls, chanting in the evening, reading a few pages from the old teachers. Truc Lam was made for that, following the Truc Lam Zen school of Vietnam. Free forever, no ads, and nothing you have to pay for before you can use it. The app works with no internet. The readings, the books and the chanting are in Vietnamese. Article titles and summaries also read in English, and the menus follow your device language. THE LUNAR CALENDAR AND THE SPECIAL DAYS • Open the calendar and today is there, with the days left until the next special day. • Add your own dates, mark the ones you want to come back every year, and get a reminder one or two days ahead. • A widget puts today's lunar date and the next special day on your Home Screen. CHANTING WITH THE TEMPLE • Two full chanting services led by Venerable Thich Tue Phuc, shared with this app by Truc Lam Yen Tu Monastery. • Repentance of the Six Senses, about 50 minutes. Repentance of the Three Karmas, about 39 minutes. • Press play and chant along, keeping the temple's own hours at home. BOOKS AND STORIES • The books of Master Thich Thanh Tu, gathered from several sources, on nine shelves: his talks on the sutras, his talks on the classic Buddhist essays, the basics of Zen, Chinese Zen, Japanese and Korean Zen, Vietnamese Zen, the lives of the Zen teachers, his own writing, and advice for monks and nuns. • Search all 96 books on your device. On devices with Apple Intelligence, the app understands natural-language questions; every result still opens the exact passage in the original book. • A Start Here row for newcomers: First Steps in Buddhism, Practice Is Changing Karma, Where Is True Happiness, The Duties of a Lay Buddhist, Buddhism for Young People. • Articles on the Truc Lam school: Tran Nhan Tong, the emperor who became a monk; Phap Loa, who led the school after him; Huyen Quang, who led it next; Tue Trung Thuong Si, who never became a monk; the old poem Cu tran lac dao phu; the spring festival at Yen Tu. • What Master Thich Thanh Tu taught: see the wandering thought and do not follow it, meet the world without adding anything to it, how he taught people to sit, and the ten pictures of the ox. • Picture stories for children: the life of the Buddha, the emperor who became a monk, Rahula and the mirror, the seven days of rain at the Mucalinda tree, and more. • Every special day on the calendar has an article behind it. More Zen reading is added over time. SITTING AND LISTENING • A full screen timer for sitting, with one bell to start and one to close. • Dharma talks from the temple to listen to, or just a bell and a wooden fish. SMALL THINGS THAT HELP • 18 vegetarian recipes with what to buy and what to do, handy on full moon days. • The Sorrowless Flower garden: every day you practise opens one more flower in a garden that is only yours, with 68 quiz questions. Flowers come from reading, sitting and chanting, and they open further the more you find inside the app. • The whole app is painted in the style of Vietnamese lacquer painting, with its own artwork for light and for dark. WHO THIS IS FOR • Someone new to Truc Lam Zen who wants to read the old texts. • A Buddhist who chants every day. • A working person who needs ten quiet minutes. • A Vietnamese family living abroad, still keeping the lunar dates together. Truc Lam is free forever, has no ads, and nothing inside it has to be bought. If you want to help, there are optional support purchases; they keep an independent developer working on the app, and they are not offerings to a temple. This app is independent and is not run by any temple or Buddhist group. May your body and mind be at ease. ## Pricing and in-app purchases Base price: Free. **One-time purchases** | Purchase | Price | Type | | --- | --- | --- | | A Small Gesture | $0.99 | one-time | | Support the Work | $9.99 | one-time | | Long-Term Support | $99.99 | one-time | ## Is Truc Lam safe? Not enough ratings yet to assess Truc Lam. ## Is Truc Lam legit? Truc Lam: Zen Buddhism has limited verification signals. The AppsHunter Legitimacy Score for Truc Lam is 58 out of 100 points across 7 verification signals from App Store and developer data. ## Version history (last 4 releases) ### 1.2.1 — 2026-08-30 Version 1.2.1 The Main Hall is easier to follow. Hide the buttons and the text window grows, so you see more of the lines already chanted above the line being chanted now. Rotate, share and bookmark moved into one place, so the bottom row is no longer crowded. The book reader shows all its buttons again: contents, text size, share and background clarity. iOS was quietly hiding the last two. The daily quote on the Home screen is much easier to read, the teacher's name below it too, because the ink is darker while still looking like a brush stroke. The Vu Lan entry on the Home screen is now a clear invitation card with an arrow, so you can see it is tappable, and the days left until the ceremony are easier to read. The little flower in the corner now changes gently, so you can watch the seed become a sprout and the sprout become a flower. Text size now really does get bigger. There are two new large steps, and the places on the Home screen that used to cap the size themselves no longer do, so the size you pick is the size you get. The Daily tab is rearranged: the calendar sits on top, the buttons below it, and every card is tidier. In the Library, press and hold any book, talk or story to share that one item, instead of sharing the whole library. On the Calendar screen, tapping a festival opens that day's reading straight away. The daily teaching on the Home screen is now a pool of 71 lines selected from the master's own talks, so it changes every day and every line leaves you something to work on. Tap the line and it opens the exact book page the line comes from. The Tonight's page screen now leads to hand-picked sections of the master's books, instead of any sub-heading from a table of contents. Hoa Vo Uu has more questions, 68 to 111, going deeper into the liturgy, the sutras and daily practice, each with its explanation and source. ### 1.2 — 2026-08-27 Version 1.2 The services now follow the words. Repentance of the Six Senses and Repentance of the Three Karmas have all three rounds of the Heart Sutra and the right incense verse. The parts a monk reads aloud at the temple are marked, so you know when to just listen. Easier to read. Settings has a new Text size option, and the smaller text is darker for older eyes. During Vu Lan you can enter the Main Hall straight from the Home tab. A share button lets you invite someone to read with you. The widget now follows the language you pick in the app, not the language of your phone. ### 1.1 — 2026-08-26 Version 1.1 The books of Master Thich Thanh Tu now live inside the app: 96 books on nine shelves, and you can read them with no internet. Eight of them are marked as a good place to start. Lunar death anniversaries: enter the date once and the app comes back to it every year, even in a year when that lunar month has only 29 days. Nine more special days on the calendar, checked by our editors, including Vu Lan, the day for honouring parents. Four new articles on the Truc Lam school, each with its own painting. The menus follow your device language. An English phone now reads the month and the weekday in English, instead of mixing two languages in one line. The app now says plainly that it is independent, that it does not speak for any temple, and that every support purchase is optional. The app opens more smoothly, and a few jerky animations are fixed. ### 1.0 — 2026-08-21 No release notes. ## More apps by BAO NGOC PHAM - [Tape Calc: Feet & Inches](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/tape-calc-feet-and-inches/id6796522337) All apps by BAO NGOC PHAM: https://appshunter.io/developer/1896690937 --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-10-10.*