Zen Conquests

From minimalism to marketing, the concept of “Zen” has captured global imaginations since the 1960s. In Vietnam this trend coincides with a movement to reconstruct Trúc Lâm Zen Buddhism, a school established in 1301. Alexander Soucy's Zen Conquests analyzes how Vietnam's current political and economic climate drives this revitalization. Practitioners view Zen as ideal for coping with the stresses of modern life, including pressures to adopt neoliberal ethics that emphasize “self-regulation and self-cultivation” (46). While increasing globalization compounds these pressures, Soucy counters any reduction of Vietnam's Zen revival to “Westernization” or “a so-called pizza effect, whereby a Zen exported to the West . . . is now being imported back to the land of its origins and impacting the Buddhism practiced there” (200). Soucy critiques such theories for relying on a romanticized concept of Asian Buddhism as traditional, static, and “essentially conservative” (5). By contrast, Zen Conquests demonstrates how multiple forces compete to define Vietnamese Buddhism, driving continuous internal transformations over the past century. Against this background, Soucy proposes that Trúc Lâm is now gaining popularity in Vietnam because it appeals to upwardly mobile demographics across ages and genders, complements Socialist state values of secular humanism, and fulfills nationalist longings for a distinct religious history.The book is thematically organized into three parts. In part 1, “Contexts,” Soucy opens his introduction by proposing that three forces influence contemporary Vietnamese Buddhism: globalism, parochialism, and localism. He describes how globalism strives to unite Buddhists around the world with common values, practices, and narratives informed by modernism and secularization. Conversely, parochialism resists these “modernist reconstructions of Buddhism,” instead doubling down on “habitual practices” often characterized as traditional (8). Finally, localism situates these previous forces “in their cultural and political contexts” (8). These three forces combine to shape Trúc Lâm as a modernist movement with global aspirations that defines itself against Buddhist parochialism by appealing to a nationalist narrative of Zen history.In chapter 1, Soucy examines how this Zen narrative builds on tenuous documentation, although practitioners consider it historically factual. He describes the legend of Trúc Lâm's founding by the “king-turned-monk” Trần Nhân Tông, then uses research by Cuong Tu Nguyen (1997) and J. C. Cleary (1991) to emphasize that Trần Nhân Tông's conversion likely did not herald a golden age of Zen in Vietnam despite “an elite effort to portray it that way” (31). Rather, the concept of an “indigenous Zen” (42) gained prominence during the 1960s, when Buddhist leaders like Thích Thiên Ân and Thích Nhất Hạnh began to position themselves as Zen masters to attract followers in international contexts.Soucy compares the teachings of Thích Thiên Ân and Thích Nhất Hạnh with the more nationalistic approach to Zen promoted by Trúc Lâm. The Trúc Lâm school was refounded by the monastic scholar Thích Thanh Từ, who began teaching Zen-style meditation in southern Vietnam in 1971. His teachings gained widespread popularity in the 1990s. Trúc Lâm has since expanded to include eighteen monasteries throughout Vietnam and twenty monasteries or centers overseas. Although Thích Thanh Từ “does not claim to be part of a direct lineage transmitting an unbroken Trúc Lâm tradition” (44), he does position his movement as reviving a school of Zen that is highly contested by historians.In part 2, “Characteristics,” Soucy introduces the case study of Sùng Phúc monastery to investigate how Trúc Lâm has expanded transregionally across Vietnam. Sùng Phúc began as a small village temple on the outskirts of Hanoi, which accepted support from Thích Thanh Từ’s disciples to rebuild after a period of neglect. Today, Sùng Phúc has been totally transformed in both its spatial orientations and ritual practices. In chapter 2, Soucy meticulously details how Sùng Phúc now distinguishes itself from the very forms of “parochial” Buddhism that had once been practiced at the same site.In chapter 3, Soucy uses Charles Taylor's theory of secularism (2007) to analyze how Trúc Lâm promotes a “disenchanted” (91) humanistic interpretation of Buddhism. He compares the practices, schedules, rituals, altar arrangements, and architectural floorplans at Sùng Phúc with equivalents more commonly found across Hanoi. Chapter 4 then explores how Trúc Lâm pursues its “missionary mandate” (132) to attract both national and international audiences through these self-distinctions. Soucy proposes that Trúc Lâm has been more successful in gaining followers from local and diasporic Vietnamese communities, rather than non-Vietnamese converts, because of its strategic appeals to national history and culture.“Participants” systematically investigates why demographic groups of women, men, and young adults join Trúc Lâm. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 draw on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at Sùng Phúc to trace how followers seek upward mobility and gendered symbolic capital by cultivating Zen identities. These stories are written in a compelling and accessible way, making the book both vital for academic researchers focused on Southeast Asian religions and useful for classroom teaching. Several chapters feature brief reintroductions of key figures and topics, making it easy to assign individual chapters for graduate and undergraduate courses on modern Buddhism or gender and religion. My only remaining questions about Zen Conquests are ultimately a compliment to the captivating ethnographic vignettes featured in these final chapters: I was left curious to learn even more about the life histories and relationships that draw people back to Sùng Phúc day after day.Altogether, this book provides a much-needed contribution to studies of Vietnamese Buddhism, which are still rare in English-language scholarship despite the country's rich and complex religious history. Soucy's work on northern Vietnam thus provides a crucial accompaniment to emerging research on Buddhism in southern Vietnam produced by scholars such as Le Hoang Anh Thu, Le Hoang Ngoc Yen, and Dat Manh Nguyen, as well as Allison Truitt's recent book on Vietnamese Buddhism in the US Gulf South, Pure Land in the Making (2021). I recommend Zen Conquests as a comprehensive resource for researchers of modern Buddhism, Southeast Asian studies, and religion in globalization

Ancient history · Archaeology · Buddhism · Transformation (genetics) · Chemistry · Chinese history and philosophy · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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