Vietnam Association of Pure-land Lay Buddhists has held three national congress and currently has about 1.5 million followers and members establishments  in 23 provinces and cities, from  Khanh Hoa to Ca Mau provinces. Current head office of the Vietnam Pure Land Buddhist Association is located inside Hung Minh pagoda, address: No. 45, Ly Chieu Hoang Street, Ward 10, District 6, Ho Chi Minh City. 

Given the religious practicing guideline as "Cultivating Merit and Wisdom Altogether”, The Association of Pure-land Lay Buddhists holds perception that to attain ultimate spiritual uplifting, one needs to cultivate merit and wisdom; each person contains a physical body and thinking mind, so both Buddhist dharma for the mind and medicines for physical body are needed to heal physical and mental sufferings; and medicines of a real medical system to heal physical suffering should be first offered in order to make people strong.  

Therefore, cultivating merit means to contribute intellectual, materials and money to build and develop the traditional medicines by establishing charity clinics for offering free and traditional medicines for treatment of health diseases, contributing to heal people’s physical sufferings as a condition to make them able to learn Buddhist dharma. charity clinics of the traditional medication of the Association of Pure-land Lay Buddhists are also places for Buddhist worship, studies and practices.

The Buddhist association has established 210 medical clinics of traditional medicines in 210 branches with over 70 medicine gardens, over 80 experts in traditional medicines, more than 700 herbalists, medical trainers and physicians, 1000 volunteers to work in the collection and processing of traditional medicines.

The medical clinics of traditional medicines all have sections providing health examination, prescriptions, free distribution of herbal medicines, acupuncture and treatment of simple diseases. Each medical clinic has a group of experienced physicians and herbalists with proper qualifications.

According to Preacher Nguyễn Văn Tuy. Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Pure-land Buddhist association, each of the charity clinics of the association receives hundreds of patients each days, and provide free health checks, acupuncture and thousands of packs of herbal medicines

Lay Buddhists work voluntarily at temples of the Buddhist association, and serve patients free of charge. Though they are often provided only vegetarian meals and modest accommodations in the temples, they live and work happily, shining their commitment of compassion and love through medical charities. 

The rich and diverse herbal medicines have come from the medicinal gardens of the Pure-land Buddhist association, the natural environment and sponsors. Each charity clinic has a warehouse for careful storage of herbal medicines.

According to statistics of the medical charity board of the Association of Pure-land Lay Buddhists, each year the Buddhist association offers free herbal medicines to four million patients, acupuncture to over one million people and visual treatment for tens of thousands of people, with the total contributing value estimated at VND 25 billion. In the second tenure (2014-2019), the Pure-land Buddhist association made  contributions worth over VND 867 billion through providing free health examination and treatment for 21,882,763 people, presenting 74,304,143 packs of herbal medicines and 75,000kg of powdered medicines, and offering other support supplies valued at over VND 50 billion./.

PTT