This essay analyzes how young urban elites spiritualize their LGBTQI+ sexualities through the recent popularization of Tibetan Buddhism in Vietnam. New market conditions have commodified Tibetan Buddhism as an alternative to normative Mahayana practices. For the cohort in this study, a tension has emerged between the perceived inadequacies of state-run Vietnamese Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism, the latter of which is experienced as individualizing, fast, elite, and wealth-attracting. The essay focuses on three interrelated case studies of lived religiosity: how a Vietnamese-run Tibetan Buddhist sangha has positioned itself as queer-friendly, how trans followers use Tibetan Buddhism to reconcile gender dysphoria, and how Đạo Mẫu is syncretically combined with Tibetan Buddhism. Drawing on fieldwork between 2018 and 2024, the essay explores the overlapping development of sexual and spiritual cosmopolitanism in late socialism.

Keywords:
Queer religiosity, late socialism, minoritization, diasporic Tibetan Buddhism, Đạo Mẫu, new religions
© 2025 by The Regents of the University of California
2025
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