Within Vietnamese Buddhism, nunneries are structured in a way that closely parallels male monasteries, yet they also bear the imprint of local culture and the lived experience of women renunciants. Most are affiliated with the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha and form part of the female sangha (ni giới), operating semi-autonomously under its oversight. Leadership typically rests with an abbess (trụ trì, ni trưởng, ni sư, or sư bà), whose authority arises from seniority, experience, and recognized spiritual attainment. Beneath her, senior nuns guide the community and supervise departments such as administration, education, ritual affairs, and community outreach, while novices (sa-di-ni) undertake training and much of the daily labor. Some nunneries also host lay women who live under monastic-style discipline without full ordination. Daily life is ordered around meditation, sutra chanting, study, and service, creating a disciplined rhythm that supports both inner cultivation and outward engagement.

The spiritual life of these communities reflects the characteristic Vietnamese fusion of Zen, Pure Land, and indigenous practices. Nuns lead Zen-style meditation sessions and maintain regular Amitābha recitation and Pure Land ceremonies, often weaving these into a single, integrated path of mindfulness, devotion, and ethical living. They conduct chanting, repentance ceremonies, funeral and memorial rites, Ullambana (Vu Lan) services, and seasonal festivals that incorporate ancestral veneration and local folk elements. In many local temples, nuns ensure the continuity of daily ritual life and maintain ancestral altars, acting as guardians of a syncretic religious culture that honors both Buddhist doctrine and Vietnamese traditions. Through teaching dharma classes, leading study groups, and instructing laypeople in chanting, meditation, and basic ethics, they help make this blended practice accessible to households and villages.

Education and social engagement form another major dimension of their role. Nuns study Vinaya, sutras, and Buddhist philosophy, often at Buddhist colleges and institutes alongside monks, and some go on to teach or administer schools and study centers. Many nunneries run or support orphanages, homes for the elderly, free clinics, soup kitchens, and other forms of social welfare, and they frequently participate in disaster relief. Economic support for these activities comes from donations, temple rituals, and community services, and in some cases from communal labor such as handicrafts or related temple enterprises. Through such work, nunneries become important points of contact between Buddhism and wider society, especially among the poor, the elderly, and families in distress.

Within the sangha and the broader community, nuns serve as moral exemplars and cultural mediators. They are often numerous and widely respected for their discipline, learning, and charitable activity, and in many places they occupy a very visible public role. Older nuns, in particular, are regarded as motherly or grandmotherly figures who offer spiritual counseling, mediate family conflicts, and guide life-cycle rituals. At the same time, formal institutional leadership at the highest levels of the national sangha remains largely in the hands of monks, and nuns may have less access to resources and patronage. Yet precisely within these constraints, their steadfast presence in ritual life, education, and social service allows them to sustain and transmit a distinctly Vietnamese form of Buddhism in which Zen contemplation, Pure Land devotion, and native beliefs are held together in a single, lived tradition.