In the thirteenth century, King-Monk Trần Nhân Tông founded the Trúc Lâm Thiền (Chan/Zen) sect. During the Golden Age in Vietnamese Buddhist history, the sect flourished under three patriarchs with renowned Thiền masters. Unfortunately, the Trúc Lâm sect faded over the following centuries, and Thiền Buddhism in Vietnam, for the most part, disappeared. In the late twentieth century, a growing new religious movement led by Thích Thanh Từ, a Pure Land monk, called for a restoration of Trúc Lâm Thiền Buddhism. Who is Thích Thanh Từ? How and why did he choose to revive this particular sect and its emancipation practices? Trúc Lâm currently boasts hundreds of monasteries and thousands of monks and nuns in Vietnam and beyond, but how have the forces of modernity influenced its original traditions? Through existing literature and extensive onsite fieldwork, this book analyzes the history and revival of a forgotten Buddhist sect and examines the movement’s reform.

In this ambitious and path-breaking book, Shawn McHale challenges long held views that define modern Vietnamese history in terms of anticolonial nationalism and revolution. McHale argues instead for a historiography that does not overstress either the role of politics in general or communism in particular. Using a wide range of sources from Vietnam, France, and the United States, many of them previously unexploited, he shows how the use of printed matter soared between 1920 and 1945 and in the process transformed Vietnamese public life and shaped the modern Vietnamese consciousnesss. Print and Power examines the impact of the French colonial state on Vietnamese society as well as Vietnamese and East Asian understandings of public discourse and public space. The work goes on to contest the impact of Confucianism on pre-modern and modern Vietnam and, based on materials never before used, provides a radically new perspective on the rise of Vietnamese communism from 1929 to 1945.

Buddhism & Zen in Vietnam provides, for Western readers, a much needed introduction to this important religion—its history, practices, concepts, and role in the lives of the people, the nation, and Vietnamese culture. Recently, Vietnam has aroused the attention of the Western world and made the task of understanding Vietnamese Buddhism more imperative. This Buddhist book gives a comprehensive account of Buddhism in Vietnam and the various Zen Buddhist schools in Vietnam and their relation to Buddhism in other Asian countries. Students of Vietnamese culture and Zen Buddhism will find this penetrating and enlightening study of incalculable value.

The most common description of the supernatural landscape in Vietnam makes a distinction between Buddhist and non-Buddhist “sides.” The “Buddha side” (ben phat) is the focus of this investigation into the intersection of gender, power, and religious praxis. Employing an anthropological approach to Buddhist practice that takes into account modes of action that are not only socially constructed and contextual, but also negotiated by the actors, The Buddha Side uniquely explores how gender and age affect understandings of what it means to be a Buddhist. In seeking to map out the ways and meanings of Buddhist engagement, Alexander Soucy examines everything from the skeptical statements of young men and devotional performances of young women to the pilgrimages of older women and performances of orthodoxy used by older men to assert their position within the pagoda space. Soucy draws on more than four years’ experience conducting ethnographic research in Hanoi to investigate how religious practice is grounded in the constitution and marking of social identity. From this in-depth view, he describes the critical role of religion in shaping social contexts and inserting selves into them. Religion can thus be described as a form of theatre—one in which social identities (youth, old age, masculinity, femininity, authority) are constructed and displayed via religious practice. A compelling look at the performative aspect of Buddhism in contemporary Vietnam, The Buddha Side will be welcomed by anyone with an interest in Buddhism as it is practiced on the ground.

In this ambitious and path-breaking book, Shawn McHale challenges long held views that define modern Vietnamese history in terms of anticolonial nationalism and revolution. McHale argues instead for a historiography that does not overstress either the role of politics in general or Communism in particular. Using a wide range of sources from Vietnam, France, and the United States, many of them previously unexploited, he shows how the use of printed matter soared between 1920 and 1945 and in the process transformed Vietnamese public life and shaped the modern Vietnamese consciousness. Print and Power begins with an overview of Vietnam's lively public spheres, bringing debates from Europe and the rest of Asia to Vietnamese studies with nuance and sophistication. It examines the impact of the French colonial state on Vietnamese society as well as Vietnamese and East Asian understandings of public discourse and public space. Popular taste, rather than revolutionary or national ideology, determined to a large extent what was published, with limited intervention by the French authorities. A vibrant but hierarchical public realm of debate existed in Vietnam under authoritarian colonial rule. The work goes on to contest the impact of Confucianism on premodern and modern Vietnam and, based on materials never before used, provides a radically new perspective on the rise of Vietnamese communism from 1929 to 1945. Novel interpretations of the Nghe Tinh soviets (1930-1931), the first major communist uprising in Vietnam, and Vietnamese communist successes in World War II built an audience for their views and made an extremely alien ideology comprehensible to growing numbers of Vietnamese. In what is by far the most thorough examination in English of modern Vietnamese Buddhism and its transformations, McHale argues that, contrary to received wisdom, Buddhism was not in decline during the 1920-1945 period; in fact, more Buddhist texts were produced in Vietnam at that time than at any other in its history. This finding suggests that the heritage of the Vietnamese past played a crucial role in the late colonial period. Print and Power makes a significant contribution to Vietnamese and Asian studies and will be of compelling interest to those in the fields of comparative religion and European colonialism.