the publishing of books and stories of 14th Dalai Lama, who has a personal friendship with Thích Nhất Hạnh and were commonly critical of the Chinese regime after the 2008 Tibetan unrest, which was seen as an attempt to antagonize the Chinese Government and China as a whole, as Beijing still considers the Dalai Lama to be a terrorist. Overseas After the fall of South Vietnam to the Communist North in 1975 at the end of the Vietnam War, the first major Buddhist community appeared in North America. Since this time, the North American Vietnamese Buddhist community has grown to some 160 temples and centers. Proselytizing is not a priority. The most famous practitioner of synchronized Vietnamese Thiền in the West is Thích Nhất Hạnh, who has authored dozens of books and founded the Plum Village Monastery in France together with his colleague, bhikṣuṇī and Zen Master Chân Không. According to Nguyen and Barber, Thích Nhất Hạnh's fame in the Western world as a proponent of engaged Buddhism and a new Thiền style has "no affinity with or any foundation in traditional Vietnamese Buddhist practices", and according to Alexander Soucy (2007), his style of Zen Buddhism is not reflective of actual Vietnamese Buddhism. These claims are contradicted by Elise Anne DeVido, who examined the life and legacy of Thích Nhất Hạnh and how we can understand his teachings in terms of its Vietnamese origins. Thích Nhất Hạnh also often recounts about his early Thiền practices in Vietnam in his Dharma talks, saying that he continued and developed this practice in the West, which has a distinctive Vietnamese Thiền flavor. Thích Nhất Hạnh's Buddhist teachings have started to return to Vietnam, where the Buddhist landscape is now being shaped by the combined Vietnamese and Westernized Buddhism that is focused more on the meditative practices. Practice Followers in Vietnam practice differing traditions without any problem or sense of contradiction. Few Vietnamese Buddhists would identify themselves as a particular kind of Buddhism, as a Christian might identify themself by a denomination, for example. Although Vietnamese Buddhism does not have a strong centralized structure, the practice is similar throughout the country at almost any temple. Gaining merit is the most common and essential practice in Vietnamese Buddhism with a belief that liberation takes place with the help of Buddhas and bodhisattvas. Buddhist monks commonly chant sutras, recite Buddhas’ names (particularly Amitābha), doing repentance, and