Chan Insights and Oversights
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CHAN INSIGHTS AND OVERSIGHTS CHAN INSIGHTS AND OVERSIGHTS AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL CRITIQUE OF THE CHAN TRADITION BERNARD FAURE PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY Copyright © 1993 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Chichester, West Sussex All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Faure, Bernard. Chan insights and oversights: an epistemological critique of the Chan tradition / Bernard Faure. p. cm. ISBN 0-691-06948-4 ISBN 0-691-02902-4 (pbk.) 1. Knowledge, Theory of (Buddhism). 2. Hermeneutics—Religious aspects—Zen Buddhism. 3. Zen Buddhism—Study and teaching. 4. Zen Buddhism—Doctrines. I. Title. BQ4440.F38 1993 294.3—dc20 92-37150 This book has been composed in Linotron Sabon Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources Second printing, and first paperback printing, 1996 Printed in the United States of America by Princeton Academic Press 10 98765432 For Anna Seidel CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix ABBREVIATIONS xi INTRODUCTION 3 Chan as Secondary Orientalism 5 The Cultural "Encounter Dialogue " 9 Comparison, Counterpoint, Intertwining 10 PART ONE CHAPTER ONE Chan/Zen in the Western Imagination 15 Missionary Accounts 15 Buddhism and Quietism 29 Chan and Indian Mysticism 34 The Apostle Bodhidharma 45 Claudel and Buddhism 50 CHAPTER TWO The Rise of Zen Orientalism 52 Suzuki's Zen 53 The Western Critics of Suzuki 67 Nishida and the Kyoto School 74 CHAPTER THREE Rethinking Chan Historiography 89 Places and People 92 The Rise of Chan Historiography in Japan 99 The Cost of Objectivism 110 The Teleological Fallacy 114 Writing Chan History 123 CHAPTER FOUR Alternatives 126 The Structural Approach 126 The Hermeneutic Approach 135 Toward a Performative Scholarship 145 Vlll CONTENTS PART TWO CHAPTER FIVE Space and Place 155 Chan and Local Spirits 156 From Place to Space 159 Chan Insights and Di-visions 167 CHAPTER SIX Times and Tides 175 Conflicting Models 177 Dogen and His Times 187 The Ritualization of Time 192 CHAPTER SEVEN Chan and Language: Fair and Unfair Games 195 On the Way to Language 199 Poetical Language in Chan 205 How to Do Things with the Koan 211 CHAPTER EIGHT In-scribing/De-scribing Chan 217 A Qualified Anti-intellectualism 217 Chan Logocentrism 220 Orality in Chan 228 Chan as a Kind of Writing 233 Another Differend 234 Chan Rhetoric 237 CHAPTER NINE The Paradoxes of Chan Individualism 243 The Western Configuration of the Self 243 Early Buddhist Conceptions 251 Chinese Conceptions 254 The Individual and Power 257 Solitaire I Solidaire 261 EPILOGUE 269 GLOSSARY 275 BIBLIOGRAPHY 281 INDEX 317 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS HE PRESENT BOOK was originally conceived as a companion volume to The Rhetoric of Immediacy (Princeton, 1991). Research Twas permitted by grants from the Japan Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Society for the Humanities at Cornell, and the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford. Among friends who have read the manuscript and offered corrections and suggestions, special thanks go to Wendi Adamek, Neil McMullin, John Kieschnick, and Kuo Li-ying. Carl Bielefeldt has helped me in countless other ways. I also received invaluable stimulation from graduate students at Cornell and Stanford. Louis Frederic helped me solve the technical problems at the time of printing out the manuscript. Finally, I have greatly benefited from the help of Margaret Case and Molan Chun Goldstein at Princeton University Press, and my copyeditor, Lisa Nowak Jerry. A portion of chapter 4 appeared under the title "Bodhidharma as Tex- tual and Religious Paradigm" in History of Religions 25, no. 3 (1986): 187-198. (© 1986 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.) An earlier version of chapter 5 appeared under the title "Space and Place in Chinese Religions" in the same journal, 26, no. 4 (1987): 337-356. (© 1987 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.) Being in France during the final revision of the manuscript, I was unable to check the English translations of a number of the works quoted. I have therefore given in the bibliography both the French and the English edi- tions, and, depending on circumstances, referred to the former or the latter in the text and footnotes. ABBREVIATIONS BEFEO Bulletin de I'Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient. Paris: Ecole Franchise d'Extreme-Orient. DNBZ Dai Nihon bukkyo zensho. Takakusu Junjiro et al. , eds. Tokyo: Yuseido, 1913—1922. Reprint Suzuki gakujutsu zaidan, ed. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1970-1973. 100 vols. DZ Daozang [Zhengtong daozang, 1445]. Including the Wanli xu daozang [1607]. 1,120 vols. Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1923-1926. Reprint Taibei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1962. 60 vols. EOEO Extreme-Orient, Extreme-Occident. HJAS Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. IBK Indogaku bukkyogaku kenkyu [Journal of Indian and Bud- dhist Studies]. JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society. QTW Qinding Quan Tang wen [1814]. Dong Gao (1740-1818) et al., eds. Taibei: Huaiwen shuju, 1961. SKSLHB Shike shiliao xinbian. 30 vols. Taibei: Xinwen feng. SZ Sotoshu zensho. Sotoshu zensho kankokai, ed. , 1229—1935. Reedition Tokyo: Sotoshu shumucho, 1970—1973. 18 vols. T. Taisho shinshu daizokyo. Takakusu Junjiro and Watanabe Kaigyoku, eds. Tokyo: Taisho issaikyo kankokai, 1924— 1932. 100 vols. ZZ Dai Nihon zokuzokyo. Nakano Tatsue, ed. Kyoto: Zokyo shoin, 1905-1912. 150 vols. Reprint Taibei: Xinwenfeng, 1968-1970. CHAN INSIGHTS AND OVERSIGHTS INTRODUCTION You will find contradictions here. Since no thinking can take place without them, and we are not in geometry, their statistical presence is almost de rigueur. (Paul Valery, Tel Quel) UCH HAS BEEN written about Zen Buddhism over the past decades. The present book, however, does not belong to the Mplethoric genre of "Zen mysticism." It is an analysis of the conditions of possibility of a certain type of discourse labeled Chan/Zen and of the various constraints that have informed it. Its main purposes are to present a "topology" of Chan—that is, an analysis of Chan topoi and categories—and to open the field of Chan/Zen studies to the questions raised in other academic disciplines in the hope of bringing Chan/Zen closer to the mainstream of Western thought. I am primarily interested in Chan/Zen ideologies; the term ideology is understood both in the general sense of a system of representations and in the Althusserian sense of a teaching that presents an inverted image of its relationships with reality.1 Why use two names—Chan and Zen—when one would seem to suffice? As it is well known, Zen is the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese character Chan (itself the transcription of the Sanskrit dhydna), and Japa- nese Zen developed out of the Chinese tradition known as Chan Bud- dhism. There is undeniably a continuity between Chan and Zen, and most scholars consider the two terms interchangeable. However, there are many historical, cultural, and doctrinal differences as well, and these differences are not merely superficial: they would surely affect the "essence" of Zen, if this term had any referent. Two basic assumptions of this book are that there is no such "essence" and that discontinuities are, when one focuses on them, at least as obvious as continuity. True, Zen succeeded historically to Chan, but what did it actually inherit from it? Has it not, rather, thrived in areas left uncharted by "early" and "classical" Chan? Chan and Zen are not monolithic entities, but fluid, ever-changing networks; or perhaps one might compare them to those "duck-rabbit" images analyzed by Ludwig Wittgenstein, in which, depending on one's viewpoint, a certain pattern 1 Georges Duby (quoting Louis Althusser) defines ideology as "a system (possessing its own logic and rigor) of representations (images, myths, ideas or concepts depending on the cases) endowed with an existence and a historical role within a given society" (Duby 1974, 149). For Althusser, however, ideology also refers to "the imaginary representation of the subject's relationship to his or her real conditions of existence" (Althusser 1972, 162) 4 INTRODUCTION (duck) emerges at the detriment of the other (rabbit) (Wittgenstein 1958, 194e). Therefore, if I chose to lay emphasis on certain aspects of the Chan tradition to the detriment of others, it is not to deny the importance of the latter, but to counterbalance the dominant "spiritual" and philosophical interpretations of Zen. The Chan tradition first acquired its legitimacy as a narrative about patriarchs, and, although some points of the narrative have been ques- tioned by historians, the ideological function of the narrative itself has rarely been scrutinized. There is no point in repeating this process and trying to turn Chan history into a "seamless stupa" (J. muhoto)—a sym- bol of death and perfection often used in Chan/Zen literature. The homo- geneity of the Zen tradition cannot be taken at face value. The terms Chan and Zen themselves cover at times vastly different religious or intellectual trends, some of which appear and reappear under various guises, behind entirely different sectarian affiliations. This alone should alert us to the fact that the sectarian categories used and abused by most Chan/Zen scholars may not be the most appropriate means to understand the actual evolution (and devolution) of these trends. The field of Chan and Zen studies has been particularly thriving in Japan since the war, and the area seems to be gaining some recognition in Western scholarship too, despite the lingering associations of Zen with the counter- culture pervasive during the 1960's. The main factors for this development have been the discovery of the Dunhuang library at the turn of the century and its gradual exploitation.