Cuong Lu

Cuong Lu is a Zen teacher born in Vietnam in 1968 who grew up in the Netherlands after his family emigrated there in 1980. He trained for sixteen years as a monk under Thich Nhat Hanh at Plum Village and received lamp transmission as a dharma teacher in 2000. After returning to lay life he spent six years as a Buddhist chaplain in the Dutch prison system, work he later described in his book The Buddha in Jail. He founded Mind Only, a Dutch school for the study and practice of Buddhist psychology, and more recently No Word Zen, which has a practice centre in the Limousin countryside of central France.

His teaching rests on the Yogacara, or consciousness-only, tradition and on Nagarjuna's Middle Way, which he puts in dialogue with Western philosophy. He has a gift for making demanding texts such as the Diamond Sutra feel immediate and usable. He leads multi-year study programmes, online modules and residential retreats in Dutch and English, and teaches in the United States, including at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies and in IMS online programmes. Shambhala publishes his books Happiness Is Overrated and At Peace, Filled with Joy, a reading of fifty-seven verses from the Dhammapada.