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...
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