Paths of Practice with Rev. Tony Truong

Rev. Tony Truong serves as Secretary of the Board of Directors and Temple Minister at Ming Ya Buddhist Foundation in Los Angeles, where he supports the community’s liturgical life and daily operations. Ordained as a Lay Minister in 2018 through the International Center for Chinese Buddhist Culture and Education, his path has been shaped by his family’s deep ties to Chinese Buddhist Chan and Pure Land practice, as well as his own training in Shingon Vajrayana.

He studied and practiced at Mount Koya in Japan and later continued his formation at Gokoku-ji Temple in Tokyo, under the Buzan-ha sect of Shingon Buddhism, with which Ming Ya has long maintained a spiritual partnership. Alongside his temple service, he is active in developing English-language liturgical resources to help make practice more accessible within Chinese American communities.

A second-generation Chinese-Vietnamese American of Teochew descent, Rev. Truong was born in Minnesota, raised in the San Gabriel Valley, and teaches high school English in the region. To learn more about his community and work, visit the temple’s Instagram: @mingyabf.la.

We discussed Rev. Truong's early experiences with Buddhism while attending his father’s memorial service and the impact of hearing chanting in the Teochew dialect, curiosity and being drawn to Buddhist symbolism and Ming Ya’s “gold room,” becoming a part of temple leadership and working towards bringing more people into the sangha, Ming Ya’s roots in Vietnamese Daoism and its connections to Shingon, and the importance of remembering that Buddhism is not just philosophy but also experienced through community.