The Rhetoric of Chinese Language in Japanese Zen
THE RHETORIC OF CHINESE LANGUAGE IN JAPANESE ZEN
WILLIAM M. BODIFORD
Japanese Zen developed within Japanese society, where it was taught by Japanese teachers to Japanese students on behalf of Japanese patrons. From within this thoroughly Japanese context, Zen teachers and students looked to China for models of what Zen should be. The development of Chinese-style Zen communities in early medieval Japan forced Japanese Buddhists to express themselves in written Chinese. They studied with great care the rules of Chinese prosody and Chinese rhetorical norms, as well as the entire range of specifically Zen literary genres (the so-called Flame Histories, Recorded Sayings, kan collections, etc.). In spite of great effort, except for a few noticeable exceptions they were unable to produce in Japan the same kinds of Zen language that they imported from China. Their efforts to do so, both their successes and failures, can reveal a great deal regarding the construction of Zen rhetoric, their institutional functions and social audience.
The persuasive power of Zen rhetoric in pre-modern Japan rested on an inseparable bond between message and medium. Japanese Zen teachers used Chinese literary forms to convey the authentic Buddhism that, they asserted, had been transmitted in an unbroken lineage from India to China. Zen rhetorical expression included not just semantic content (e.g., literary tropes, puns, doctrinal formulations, mythological imagery, etc.), but also specific vocabulary, syntax and genres. Today, it is difficult to gauge how frequently or how freely Zen priests in Japan at any specific geographical location or historical moment used the Chinese language because, except for the Chinese poetry of the Five Mountains (Gozan bungaku /¦ã), the vast bulk of Japanese Zen literature remains unknown. It has not been adequately cataloged, surveyed, or archived, much less published or studied. We do not know how much literature survives in the locked storerooms of old temples.1 Even when we do
1 Catalogs are not completely lacking, but they are incomplete and inadequate. The well-known Zenseki mokuroku œŢł& (1928; reprinted 1962 as Shinsan zenseki mokuroku åŭœŢł&), for example, primarily lists published texts found in 286 WILLIAM M. BODIFORD know that literature exists in this or that temple, it is not always accessible to outsiders. Nonetheless, a preliminary survey of the ways that Japanese Zen priests expressed themselves through Chinese literary forms might nonetheless be useful if only for the methodological questions it raises regarding the ways that scholars have approached the study of Zen texts and Japanese religious history.
China as the Model for Japanese Zen
Independent Zen groups, temples, and lineages developed in Japan at a time of social transformation when Buddhist institutions spread into rural areas and many other new Buddhist schools, such as Pure Land, Lotus (e.g., Nichiren), and Precept Schools appeared (Bodiford 2006a). Within this context, Zen leaders argued for the supreme religious authority of their Zen teachings by identifying them with an unbroken lineage of master-disciple relationships stretching from Japan to India via China (Bodiford 2007:268–269).2 They extolled this lineage not as a sectarian identity (i.e., one faction within Buddhism), but rather as something that authenticated their own mastery of the Buddhism practiced in the state-recognized Zen (Chán) monasteries of Sòng-dynasty (ca. 960–1279) China. In their eyes, only the Zen lineage conveyed the whole of Buddhism (literature, doctrines, rituals, institutional practices, etc.) in its most authentic form (Bodiford 2007:262–264). In Japan, the abstract notions of lineage and authenticity assumed concrete form in a variety of ways. First, Zen priests served as conduits for the introduction and dissemination of new material culture either imported from China or manufactured in Japan based on university and institutional libraries. It does note manuscript editions of a few well-known titles, especially if they are works associated with the St Zen lineage. Nonetheless, it makes no attempt to survey the libraries and manuscript archives of Zen temples in general. Likewise, the Kaidai, sakuin ƓǛ, ť¹ (1978), supplement to the revised edition of the Stsh zensho òĔOñ, includes (Pp. 672–732) a list of manuscripts from St Zen temples that were donated to or copied by Komazawa University Library during the editing of this compilation. It is even more limited in scope, consisting exclusively of notable works associated with the St Zen lineage. 2 In the dialog translated here, the Japanese Zen priest Enni ~ħ (1202–1280) cites the authority of his lineage to silence the Confucian critic Sugawara Tamenaga Ƃd ǃ (1158–1246). Similar assertions by other Japanese Zen teachers are too numerous to count.