Review EssaysNot So Quiet on the Eastern Front: On Deconstructing and

Reconstructing Traditional Zen Narrativesrsr_1522 157..164

MONKS, RULERS, AND LITERATI: THE POLITICALASCENDANCY OF CHAN BUDDHISM

By Albert WelterOxford: Oxford University Press, 2008Pp. x + 322. Hardcover, $75.

HOW ZEN BECAME ZEN: THE DISPUTE OVERENLIGHTENEMENT AND THE FORMATION OF CHANBUDDHISM IN SONG DYNASTY CHINA

By Morten SchlütterKuroda Institute Studies in East Asian Buddhism, 22Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008Pp. x + 289. Hardcover, $59; paper, $27.

IMPERIAL WAY ZEN: ICHIKAWA HAKUGEN’S CRITIQUEAND LINGERING QUESTIONS FOR BUDDHIST ETHICS

By Christopher IvesHonolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009Pp. x + 274. Hardcover, $52.

SHOTS IN THE DARK: JAPAN, ZEN, AND THE WESTBy Shoji Yamada, translated by Earl HartmanBuddhism and Modernity. Nichibunken MonographSeries, 9Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009Pp. viii + 290. Hardcover, $35.

ONE KOREAN’S APPROACH TO BUDDHISM:THE MOM/MOMJIT PARADIGM

By Sung-Bae ParkAlbany: State University of New York Press, 2009Pp. vii + 152. Paper, $19.95.

SHATTERING THE GREAT DOUBT: THE CHANPERSPECTIVE OF HUATOU

By Sheng YenBoston: Shambhala, 2009Pp. xi + 196. Paper, $14.

REVIEWER: Steven HeineFlorida International UniversityAsian Studies Program, SIPA 505Miami, FL 33174

ZEN DISCOURSES AND COUNTERDISCOURSES

Over the past several decades, a strong scholarly challengehas been presented to the idealized view of Zen Buddhism,which became commonly known in mid-twentieth-centuryAmerica through the works of D. T. Suzuki and A. Watts,among others.1 Based on an insider approach toward dis-seminating Zen narratives first expressed in Song dynasty(960-1279) Chinese sources, including transmission of thelamp, recording sayings, and koan commentary texts, theSuzuki–Watts paradigm portrayed Zen as an uninterruptedseries of transmissions from enlightened master to insight-ful disciple resulting from a sudden experience of intuitiveillumination beyond reason as expressed in an irreverentand antinomian rhetorical style. Because it seemed to takeliterally the traditional self-characterization of Zen as a“special transmission outside the teachings” (kyoge bet-suden), this approach has been referred to as the “string ofpearls” fallacy, which purports that Zen succeeded as anexpanding religious movement because each successivegeneration produced its own charismatic master who inher-ited and in turn passed on the legacy with unique ingenuity.

Influenced by the groundbreaking historical studies ofYanagida Seizan (1967), then a professor at Kyoto Univer-sity, based, in large part, on the discovery of Dunhuangmanuscripts, which reveal the complexity of its develop-ment, “the early history of the Chan movement has beenrewritten” (Welter 4). Since Yanagida, and even though hisown work has been called into question in some quarters forromanticizing the tradition, numerous scholars on bothsides of the Pacific have criticized the Suzuki–Watts para-digm for its presumptions of ahistoricity in the name ofspiritual purity, insistence on immediacy without regard forhuman effort that necessarily intervenes in any flash ofinsight, and assertions of cultural exceptionalism derivedfrom a false sense of moral transcendence.

In examining current debates regarding the role of Zen“writes” or literary records, Zen “rites” or monastic rituals,and Zen “rights” or public involvement issues, my recentbook, Zen Skin, Zen Marrow: Will the Real Zen BuddhismPlease Stand Up? (Heine 2008), makes a basic distinctionbetween what I refer to as dissemination of the TraditionalZen Narrative, which embraces the transmission records,

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and the methods of Historical and Cultural Criticism, whichtry to keep a skeptical distance from insider sources.However worthy as a means of maintaining the tradition, inseeking to convey the subjective essence of the Zen experi-ence by uncritically accepting Song texts as sacred accountsthat are not to be questioned, and thereby conflating histori-cal studies with hagiography while avoiding responsibilityfor engagement in social reform, the Traditional Zen Narra-tive often succumbs to apologetics. At the same time, intrying to uncover the sociohistorical origins and ethicalimplications of the tradition, the approach of Historical andCultural Criticism can at times become overly harsh andunwilling to recognize what is valuable by striving for schol-arly objectivity, which may go so far as to dismiss Zen as amere social construct with reprehensible consequences formodern society.

Zen Skin, Zen Marrow concludes with a plea to overcomeextreme positions while seeking for a middle-way stand-point that surpasses a hyperbolic critique, which throws thebaby out with the bath water, so to speak, yet also does notunconsciously fall back on conceptual categories that aredemonstrably outdated or misleading. Each of the six booksunder review here, which can be grouped into three pairs ofstudies, in its own thought-provoking fashion seeks tooccupy a discursive space that either debunks and demy-thologizes the traditional narrative or revives and resusci-tates its inner meaning. The first four works on the listcontest the deficient paradigm through historical researchbased on exploring a wide variety of sources from bothinside and outside of the tradition that demonstrate thepolitical background and secularized motivations at theheart of the spread of Zen in East Asian societies in theeleventh through thirteenth centuries, as well as often unfor-tunate modern consequences in ethical and cultural realms,such as advocacy for twentieth-century Japanese militarismand misrepresentations regarding the role of Zen inJapanese culture.

The books by Welter and Schlütter exemplify textualhistorians seeking to deconstruct Zen writes, which werecreated during the formative period of Song dynasty China.The authors show that Zen’s monastic institutional and lit-erary traditions became firmly entrenched in the culturalworld of Song literati and scholar-officials based, to a largeextent, on regional political concerns accompanied by ideo-logical appeals targeting powerful lay followers who forgedalliances with the government. The works by Ives andYamada express contemporary social criticism that uncov-ers the misguided role of Zen rights in twentieth-centuryJapanese society in two ways. One is by exposing nefariousconnections with imperial politics on the part of leadingmonks and temples, especially in the period leading up toWorld War II. The other is by explicating how postwar

attempts at appropriating the Zen tradition, including itscelebrated relation to rock gardens and martial arts, havebeen subverted by the insidious trends of Orientalism andReverse Orientalism.

The last two books on the review list are written by heirsand proponents of various lineages, who, in light of attacks onZen spirituality, have tried to reconstruct traditionalapproaches to religious practice by evoking their own per-sonal experiences as a basis for the analysis. In revisiting theZen rites of meditation and koan training, Park and ShengYen, as two Asian scholar-practitioners from Korea andTaiwan, respectively, who have taught extensively in theWest, seek to draw on the deep wellsprings of their ownindividual training. They put forward a particular view of Zencontemplation that is, in both cases, based on the “head-word”or “critical phrase” (Ch. huatou, Jp. wato, Kr. hwadu) tech-nique in interpreting koan cases, which each has inheritedfrom Song dynasty traditions nearly a thousand years old.

ON DECONSTRUCTING THE FORMATIVE YEARS OF

CHINESE CHAN

Welter and Schlütter both show that after harsh sanctionsagainst Buddhism at the end of the Tang dynasty (618-907),and with challenges to its institutional strength still to comein the highly competitive and contested religious environ-ment of the Song dynasty that was dominated by Neo-Confucianism, Zen nevertheless emerged by the beginningof the eleventh century as a leading religious school withstrong ties to secular leaders and associations with the gov-ernment. In fact, political figures who were often also amongthe elite literati class of scholar-officials were very muchinvolved in commissioning or editing many of the Zen trans-mission narratives. Welter explains that in the transitionfrom a wu or martial-based to a wen or literary-based culture,“Under the aura of Chan, illustrious literati, some of whomwere among the highest representatives of government,sought to further the interests of Chan by promoting itsteachings as an instrument of state ideology” (6). Schlüttersums up the deconstructive scholarly effort by arguing, insupport of his subtitle, that “political, social, and economicfactors of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries had adecisive impact on the development of Chinese Chan Bud-dhism, without which there could have been no Zen in EastAsia as we now know it” (175).

Welter and Schlütter concur that it is very important todistinguish between developments during the NorthernSong (960-1127), when Chan first prospered with officialsupport by adopting an inclusive and multibranched stand-point characterized by an absence of sectarianism, and theSouthern Song (1227-79), when Chan had become an insti-tution that was fragmented by sectarian polemics and anattitude of exclusivity. During the Northern Song, compilers

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of the transmission narratives promoted the authorized viewof Chan as the quintessential teaching of Buddhism, inharmony with the scriptures yet not threatening to Neo-Confucian orthodoxy and conducive to the spiritual attain-ments as well as secular aspirations of unaffiliated (or cross-aligned) literati. Supposedly free of reliance on text anddoctrine, Chan claimed to promote spontaneity and ingenu-ity, especially through poetic expressions that appealed tothe scholar-officials.

However, as Welter demonstrates, Chan stories wereintended not so much to awaken an individual practitioneras to pass control from one leader of a monastery to anotherbased largely on connections with lay supporters. Ratherthan rely on the transmission records as presenting factualmaterial, these texts are, according to Schlütter, “betterunderstood as didactic narratives and symbolic representa-tions of core teachings than as actual reports of events” (99).The Chan movement thrived because it maintained an activeengagement with secular leaders and public affairs whilepreserving the aura of political aloofness in its stories.Welter points out that although the transmission narrativeshighlight typically eccentric Chan antics that are supposedlyiconoclastic, anticanonical, and subversive, non-Chansources about the school from the period do not mention thisapproach and take instead a more conservative stance incharacterizing the institution.

The early transmission narratives, including theZutang ji (952), which was lost for centuries until it wasrediscovered in the twentieth century in a Korean editionand reconstructed in Chinese, and the Song gaoseng chuan(988) by Zanning, who also dealt with other Buddhist sects,helped lead to the compilation of the monumentally influ-ential Jingde chuandeng lu (1009) by Daoxuan. This was thefirst officially sanctioned work in the transmission of thelamp genre, which included 1,700 entries of monk biogra-phies or more than four times the number in previousworks. Although this text tended to support the Fayanlineage, which soon died out, its approach was mainly pan-sectarian in presenting the various schools as forming aunited front.

Welter’s examination closes with a careful study of theTiansheng guangdeng lu (1036) compiled by Yang Yi, whichmarks the ascendancy of the Chan branch attributed to Linji(Jp. Rinzai), even though this Tang monk was portrayed as arather unremarkable figure in the Zutang ji and other earliertexts in which the Yunmen faction was seen as the mainrival. Yang Yi, a literary prodigy with unassailable creden-tials who was personally acquainted with two emperors andhad served in a number of influential posts, made the shiftfrom the Fayan to the Linji school based on a personal moti-vation for understanding which form of Chan best suited theinterests of the Song dynasty. Therefore, just a couple of

decades after the multibranched, pan-sectarian outlook hadreached its peak with the Jingde chuandeng lu, in the nextmajor text there was a tendency to reduce Chan to a singlemajor lineage as the Linji school gained dominance.

Welter’s book is masterful in its handling of complextextual materials by a seasoned scholar who is very reason-able in his overall approach to critical analysis by not com-menting or passing judgment in a way that would tend todiminish the value of the tradition. Schlütter’s work picks upwhere Welter leaves off by focusing on the twelfth century.By this time, the Caodong (Jp. Soto) school was significantlyrevived and had become a major competitor of Linji. This ledto a heated dispute regarding the doctrines of Koan Intro-spection endorsed by the Linji school, especially DahuiZonggao, and Silent Illumination promoted by Caodong,especially Tiantong Hongzhi. In contrast to many modernstudies of the schism that merely echo traditional sectarianpolemics, Schlütter’s approach aims for “a more completeand nuanced understanding of the split itself and the causesand conditions surrounding [the schism]” (3). His work“draws upon a wide range of primary sources, includinggovernment manuals, official histories, commemorativeinscriptions for monasteries, funerary inscriptions for Chanmasters, essay collections, travel descriptions, and privateletters, as well as many different kinds of Buddhist sources”(4-5).

Before examining the Linji–Caodong controversy,Schlütter devotes several chapters to explaining some of theinstitutional factors that enabled Chan to expand rapidlyduring the Song dynasty; in particular, he shows that Chancreated a view of ancestral lineage that emulated the Confu-cian family system and also became associated or identifiedwith “public” monasteries, which received significant gov-ernment support in contrast to private temples. The down-side of gaining public status was that “A Chan master wastypically moved from abbacy to abbacy throughout hiscareer at the will of the politically powerful” (71). Becausethis part of the discussion takes up nearly half of the bookand is important yet somewhat disconnected from the maintheme covered in the concluding chapters, I feel that Schlüt-ter would have been better served by a minor but importanteditorial decision to divide the book into two parts: one oncauses for the spread of Chan in Northern Song andthe second on the reasons for intense sectarian discord inSouthern Song.

Schlütter argues that the division between the Linji andCaodong schools was greatly affected by political changes inthe Southern Song as all parties were made anxious becauseof “confiscations of monastery lands, the restrictions onordination, and the diminishing number of monasteryconversions, together with the persecution that Buddhistsunderwent at the end of the Northern Song . . .” (52). Dahui

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and the Linji school more generally felt threatened bythe reinvented and reinvigorated Caodong lineage, whichseemed to have died out but was brought back to life byFurong Daokai and his third-generation follower, Hongzhi.

According to Dahui’s Koan Instrospection method, con-centration on the abbreviated head-word of a koan case—themain example is “Wu” (Jp. Mu) or “No” in response to thequery, “Does a dog have Buddha-nature?”—gets rid of doubtsall at once and is a technique that lay people could practice intheir daily lives, even if they are unable to have the opportu-nity for significant encounters with a Chan master. In fiercelyattacking Hongzhi’s Silent Illumination method for its sup-posed lack of dynamism in recommending that meditationleads to a mental state that is like “dry wood, stone, wall, apiece of tile, or pebble,” Schlütter shows that “Dahui was thefirst to break the code of harmony that the Chan school hadbeen able to maintain throughout the earlier part of the Song”(142). It is unfortunate, he comments, that Dahui’s sectarianoutlook has been adopted uncritically by contemporary schol-ars, who portray it as representing historical and doctrinaltruth rather than a viewpoint competing with others.

Like Welter’s Monks, Rulers, and Literati: The PoliticalAscendancy of Chan Buddhism, Schlütter’s book goes a longway toward achieving a constructive compromise through abalanced weighing of traditional discourse with historicalcriticism as seen through the lens of analyzing diverse kindsof sources. The use of scientific studies applied to ChanBuddhism by these scholars should, in the long run, lead toa greater rather than a lesser degree of appreciation of thetradition; however, they should probably be studied along-side Mark Halperin’s (2006) work, which covers a similarterritory from the standpoint of Song literati rather thanBuddhist monks. Both show “how Zen became Zen” in itsclassical phase in China, which is important for understand-ing the examinations of modern Japan by Ives and Yamada.Welter’s theme, which is useful for understanding Schlüt-ter’s area of study, is isolated to the formative period of theschool in China. However, as is seen in the works of Park andSheng Yen, Schlütter’s theme is crucial for understandingthe legacy of Zen in China and Taiwan, as well as in Japanand Korea, where the Koan Introspection method of traininghas become mainstream in the Linji/Rinzai school; only inJapan does it still compete with the Caodong/Soto sect.

ON DECONSTRUCTING ZEN’S ROLE IN MODERN JAPAN

The books by Ives and Yamada show that the twofold ten-dency of classical Chan to project an ideal realm that is tostand beyond, while at the same time making accommoda-tions within, the mundane world have triggered significantconsequences for Zen in the modern period. The chickens ofpolitical affiliation and alignment with secular interestsforged in Song dynasty China have come home to roost in

two ways: through Zen’s problematically close relationswith imperial Japan, as monks and temples all too eagerlyacquiesced to militarism before WWII, and in terms of thepostwar Reverse Orientalist discourse of commentators whohave allowed themselves, unconsciously or not, to falsify thehistory of the tradition for the sake of gaining worldwidepopular appeal.

Ives provides a very compelling overview of Zen’sentanglement with Japanese supernationalism from thebeginning of the Meiji period (1868) to the present, withinsightful reflections on earlier (classical, medieval, andearly modern) eras as well. As opposed to Brian Victoria(1998), who castigates particular Zen masters for their sub-servience to the emperor, Ives tends to cast the matter froma historical perspective whereby Buddhism had alwaysplayed a key role as protector of the state. Ives’s method-ological gaze in Imperial Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen’s Cri-tique and Lingering Questions for Buddhist Ethics is notcriticism of Zen as an end in itself, however. Rather, in thefinal chapters, he proposes repentance and reform based onZen traditional principles still practiced at temples today.

Ives is guided throughout his study by the life andworks of Ichikawa Hakugen, a Rinzai Zen priest from Kyotoand also a scholar of historical Chan/Zen studies. Ichikawawas one of the few dissenting voices, although he admits thatdespite his criticisms of Buddhism’s war responsibilities(senso no sekinin), he was not able to extricate himself fullyfrom the predicament until after the war was ended. Likeeveryone else at the time, Ichikawa faced an impossiblechoice of kowtowing or being imprisoned by imperialauthorities, yet he avoided the double apostasy (tenko) ofchanging his views radically before the war and then chang-ing them in the opposite direction but without real meaningafter the war. Unlike many of his peers, who continued toequivocate and try to hide or deny their past loyalties, fromthe 1940s up until his death in 1986, Ichikawa provedcapable of genuine repentance and self-criticism.

Ichikawa shows that the problem with Zen before andafter the war is that as a modern institution it has offeredlittle in the way of self-reflection or of genuinely taking toheart its own flaws and deficiencies because “Living like thewater that takes the shape of whatever vessel into which it ispoured, Zen Buddhists run the risk of succumbing to a kindof flexible, shifting submission that lacks the consistency ofprinciples, conviction, and actions necessary for a criticalsocial ethic” (71). According to Ives, “The religious episte-mology and logic of Zen are thus a recipe for passivity andacquiescence in the face of power” (79). Furthermore, within“(t)his constellation of self-forgetting, harmonious non-contention, and obedience mak[ing] up what Ichikawa termsthe ‘ethic of emotion’ ” (134), moral considerations arelimited to a sense of retributive justice based on a kind of

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fundamentalist view of karma that reinforces a status quo-oriented you “get what you deserve” outlook rather thanundertakes a reform-minded attempt to change and upliftsociety.

How is it possible to reverse a standpoint that has long“conflated principles of inner spiritual life with ways oforganizing outer social life, and natural order with socio-political order” by making an accommodation to an accordwith things (nin’nun) as they are and to celebratingharmony (wa) and obedience (junno) while lacking criticaljudgment? According to Ives, the strengths of Zen as anethical system are double-edged in that as soon as they areput into practice, underlying weaknesses are revealed. Forexample, practicing the precepts as a key to disciplinefunctions primarily at an individual and not at a communallevel; the ideal of compassion can lead to active engage-ment but in the end offers very little in the way of specificbehavioral guidelines; and Zen’s vaunted negation ofauthority and convention as well as ideological flexibilitycan revert to an aloof and indifferent vantage point (186).Nevertheless, Ives promotes the notion that Zen templetraining reveals nine principles from monastic life that canbe useful in ethical reform—simplicity, thrift, manual labor,diligence, perseverance, humility, penitent self-criticism,deference-obedience, and respect (177). This analysis is anexcellent springboard for further discussion of Zen’s poten-tial for reform but needs further elaboration, whichhopefully Ives will continue to pursue in his ongoing pub-lications in the field.

The starting point for Yamada Shoji is that devotees onboth sides of the Pacific tend to be so overwhelmed andawestruck by the Suzuki–Watts paradigm that they tolerateno criticism while readily concocting idealizations of thetradition. In his cultural criticism of modern appropriationsof Zen in Shots in the Dark: Japan, Zen, and the West, Yamadatakes on as his primary targets (pun intended) two of themost hallowed iconic images: experiences of spontaneitydepicted in Zen and the Art of Archery by E. Herrigel, aGerman professor who lived in Sendai, Japan, in the 1920swhere he studied archery with eccentric master Awa Kenzofor a few years (although not the full six years claimed in hisbook) and returned to Germany where he became a Nazisympathizer, and widespread admiration for the rock gardenat the Ryoanji temple in Kyoto, which, according to Yama-da’s account, was little more than a pile of weeds until inter-est in it was renewed by Western aficionados in the earlypostwar period.

Over the course of a few decades, these two phenomenathat were not necessarily related to Zen came to be pre-sented by commentators as if they epitomized the Zen tradi-tion so that the martial and landscape arts could not beunderstood without referencing it and vice versa. Accord-

ingly, everything that has an “air of simplicity and solitude”(22) is considered part of Zen, while Herrigel’s dictum that“all Japanese arts can be traced back to Zen” has prevailed inthe general discourse even though it is a laughable proposi-tion that does not hold up to the most basic level of historicalscrutiny. The legacy lives on in such diverse works asRoland Barthes’s Empire of Signs (which mistakenly uses aphotograph of Tofukuji instead of Ryoanji) and KawaiHayao’s Kage no genshogaku (Phenomenology of Shadows),as well as Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Main-tenance, among many other examples. Yamada’s mainconcern, however, is less with the significance of the wayZen has been portrayed in the West (Orientalism) than withthe meaning of the reimportation and embracing of Zen inJapan (Reverse Orientalism). This has transpired throughwhat is, after all, a kind of fun-house “magic mirror” image,which seems to flatter but really distorts by reflecting tradi-tional culture in the best possible light without blemishesdespite evidence to the contrary.

Yamada critically analyzes two main aspects of Herri-gel’s presentation. One is the claim that in Japanese archery,the arrow is not shot by the archer because Awa taught that“It shoots,” although the third-person construction is notplausible in Japanese grammar, and this was not a notion forwhich Awa was otherwise known. The other aspect is thereport that Awa shot at his “target in the dark” and suc-ceeded in splitting a first arrow with a second shot, eventhough splitting is not something valued in Japanesearchery, and Awa seemed to deny the episode when askedabout it. Yamada maintains that both elements of thismodern transmission narrative were a fabrication on thepart of Herrigel, whose Japanese proficiency was weak, anda myth further concocted and contorted through multipleversions and translations of the text (from German toEnglish and then to Japanese). Yet somehow, Herrigel is seenby many as the true Western representative of Zen despiteobvious shortcomings in his presentation as well as in hisown personal and ethical life as a Nazi sympathizer. Theirony of Herrigel’s fascist affiliations, which he tried todefend (his apology is included in the appendix), makes afascinating counterpoint to Ives’s discussion of Japaneseapologists for the imperial regime and willing practitionersof pre- and/or postwar apostasy.

In the case of the rock garden, Yamada documents thetransition of Ryoanji from an obscure historical site knownfor the symbolism of “tiger cubs crossing the river” butwhose beauty was often disparaged or at least hotly con-tested as merely constituting a group of “unsightly stones” torepresenting the “higher self” as the loftiest of spiritualideals. Ryoanji is one of several Zen temples that are promi-nent today but, at the turn of the century duringthe Meiji era, were “neglected to the point of complete

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dilapidation” (144) and existed without legitimate abbots.Yamada reports that while Ryoanji is now known all over theworld for its rock garden, up until around 1950 it was a poor,deserted site standing in a bamboo grove, rarely visited byanyone. Before the war, textbooks rarely mentioned thegarden, which was not cited in Suzuki’s Zen and JapaneseCulture or in Hisamatsu Shin’ichi’s Zen and the Fine Arts (Zento bijitsu).

“After the war was over, however, everythingchanged,” Yamada writes. “Like bamboo shoots popping upafter a rain, official textbooks for the new postwar middleschool system prominently featuring the rock garden atRyoanji, complete with photographs, started to appear enmasse” (128). Yamada highlights the role of Isamu Noguchi,a famous Japanese American sculptor, in disseminatingboth Herrigel’s work and the value of Ryoanji in the early1950s when the Zen boom in the West was getting underway. Over the past several decades, the rock garden hasreceived countless visitations from royalties such as QueenElizabeth, as well as other dignitaries and celebrities. It hasalso been the subject of detailed analyses by surveyors andlandscape art critics, including Eyama Masami’s logarith-mic “golden ratio” interpretation of what makes the fifteenrocks standing in gravel so special for its supposed “prettyflowing water pattern and the balance of proportions whichforbid the intrusion of anyone into it” (112). While somecommentators still ponder whether Ryoanji is great orworthless (161), even if it is granted that the garden show-cases equilibrium, symmetry, and dynamism, Yamada con-tinually ruminates, is it “Zen?”

At the end of the book, Yamada, whose institutionalaffiliation is a think tank known when it was created in the1980s for supporting Japanese exceptionalism, disclosesthat he is less of a scholar of Buddhism than he is a com-mentator and critic of current trends in Japanese society.While he has become sensitive to the “manifest difference”(245) between research support for humanities in Japanand the US, Yamada, whose field of study is informatics,indicates that his driving interest and motivation in explor-ing this topic are not based on Zen but on his involvementin Japanese archery (kyudo). This disclosure does not in anyway diminish his findings about deficiencies associatedwith Zen rights, but readers will have to judge for them-selves to what extent he is an insightful or mischievouscultural critic. One concern I have is that at times in hisanalysis, Yamada is a little unclear about whether or not theevidence he mounts adheres to the postwar emphasis thatis crucial to his overall argument concerning changes inJapanese attitudes about the role of Zen in relation toculture, such as when he examines William B. Acker’s workon Japanese archery from 1937 seemingly out of chrono-logical context (187-94).

RECONSTRUCTING THE TRADITIONAL APPROACH TO

KOAN STUDY

After reading the books discussed earlier, scholars and stu-dents, as well as casual observers of Zen, may wonder ifthere is any discursive space left for presenting the traditionin its own right or if Zen has become a self-parody that isalmost entirely a matter of mere packaging that distortsmore than it reveals. We must acknowledge, on the otherhand, that while criticism on a scholarly basis intensifies,the interest and involvement in Zen on the part of practitio-ners throughout the world continues to grow unabated andto create an appetite for works that seem academically soundyet are primarily inspirational in nature.

Here, we can make a distinction between an approach toreligious discourse that is homiletic, or derived from thepreaching of an insider who may wish to remain oblivious toany critique of tradition, and one that is hermeneutic, orbased on the interpretation of an outsider (or an insiderplaying that role) who teases contemporary meanings out oftraditional sources’ while remaining sensitive to issues ofhistorical criticism. In seeking to evoke the spirit of herme-neutics based on their own extensive experiences as bothtrainer and trainee, Sheng Yen and Park offer an unabashedendorsement of a style of Zen practice that they know fromfirsthand personal insight (Zen rites) as well as through thestudy of traditional sources (Zen writes). The style is directlyrelated to Dahui’s Koan Introspection method, which empha-sizes concentration on the head-word, and the aim of theauthors is to maintain continuity and consistency with, ratherthan change and departure from, the Song dynasty approach.

Park relates in the “Introduction” that as a young pro-fessor in the 1960s in Korea, he had a breakthrough expe-rience while training under master Songchuel, whoinstructed his novices by having them conduct backbreak-ing ascetic practices such as making 3,000 prostrationsand then running up a steep mountain. This primal eventhas guided his understanding of Zen ever since. Park soonleft the university to become a monk, but a few years laterimmigrated to America where he has been a longtime pro-fessor of Korean Buddhism at Stony Brook University inNew York. One Korean’s Approach to Buddhism: The Mom/Momjit Paradigm, his first major university press publica-tion in over twenty-five years, focuses on the distinctionbetween mom or the hidden, invisible, and invariableessence (similar to the Chinese term ti) and momijit or theovert, visible, and variable function (yong) of things. ForPark, the only real way to achieve a true awareness of themom/momijit paradigm is through practice of the hwadu asadvocated by Chinul, the thirteenth-century Korean fol-lower of Dahui, because “it bombs the fortress. It rips awayany and all illusions we may have regarding who we areand what this world is” (70).

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To his credit, Park is more interested in Chinul’s per-sonal spiritual odyssey in which he had “the continuingexperience of being in a shipwreck” (101) before gainingenlightenment, perhaps recalling Sartrean existentialismmore than he is in echoing the master’s doctrine. Park rec-ognizes that both hwadu, which has been adopted by themedia in Korean society to mean something like agenda, andti/yong, which has been discredited or ignored by modernacademics, are in dire need of rehabilitation. He summons avast array of citations, allusions, and references to worldreligious philosophies as well as to popular culturalexamples in the east and west in support of his explication ofthe paradigm. In the end, Park admits that of the four doc-toral students he mentored, only one has been interested inunderstanding mom and momijit (132), but at the same timehe feels strongly that this constitutes a universal truththat needs to be disseminated if only it can be explainedproperly.

Zen discourse comes full circle with the work of ShengYen, the fifty-seventh generational descendent of Linji andthird-generation dharma-heir of the venerable Xu Yun, themajor leader of a Chan renewal in modern China, who fled toTaiwan after 1949, where he eventually returned to themonkhood while completing a master’s as well as a doctoraldegree in Buddhist Studies at a university in Japan. Founderof the influential Chung-Hwa Buddhist temple and institu-tion in Taipei, until his death in 2009 Sheng Yen traveledand taught extensively in many Western Zen centers. Shat-tering the Great Doubt: The Chan Perspective of Huatou isfrom a series of Dharma talks collected and edited posthu-mously, which, like Park’s book, evokes the merit of thehead-word method of training.

An interesting feature of Sheng Yen’s work is that ittreats the stories culled from traditional transmission narra-tives as keys to conquering spiritual doubt, precisely oppo-site to the way that Welter and Schlütter have cast these ashistorically suspect. Furthermore, Sheng Yen’s account ofthe Dahui–Hongzhi discord about Koan Introspection occu-pies the very first page (3), where he maintains in a way thehistorians have questioned that “All lines used this method[head-word],” but the discussion quickly moves on to trum-peting the merits of the practice for calming the mind andachieving a state of harmony. I think that, as a well-educatedand sophisticated scholar who was extremely well-versed intraditional sources and by no means oblivious to modernacademic trends (for example, he organized several high-level academic conferences), Sheng Yen is not ignorant ofhistorical criticism but chooses to disregard it because hisgoal is closer to that of offering homiletics than to exploringhermeneutics.

Like Park, Sheng Yen evokes his own character-formingyouthful experience under extreme physical conditions when

he continued to practice during an intensive meditationretreat in the mountains of Japan even though it was twenty-seven degrees below zero (98). He also forthrightly supportsthe head-word as the one true practice and, in particular,emphasizes the use of the Wu koan case. When challenged atthe end of a question–answer session late one night during aretreat that he was leading in America about why he does notpresent more diverse examples and explanations, Sheng Yensloughs off the inquiry by declaring, “At this store the onlything we sell is Wu. A pizza store only sells pizza. [Laughter].”When pressed further about whether there are not “manyselections of pizza,” he retorts, “But it’s still pizza. [Laughter]OK, thank you. Now let’s practice huatou” (142).

CONCLUSION: WHITHER SKIN, FLESH, BONES,

AND MARROW

A major question raised in Zen Skin, Zen Marrow is whetherthe seminal transmission narrative, in which first ancestorBodhidharma awards the four disciples competing tobecome anointed as his successor his skin, flesh, bones, andmarrow, respectively, should be interpreted to mean that theskin represents the most superficial level and the marrow asthe most profound level of understanding, as in the way thepassage is discussed in most commentaries. Or, as sug-gested by Dogen, the founder of the Soto school in Japan,should this sense of hierarchy be challenged and evenreversed, such that the roles of skin and marrow as well as ofsurface and depth can be seen as relative to ever-shiftingcontexts and viewpoints? When this conundrum is applied tothe six books under review, one wonders which ones—thehistorical and social criticism, which varies from an attitudeof neutrality to sardonic expressions, or the defense of thetraditional paradigm, which may or may not include a com-parative or cross-cultural component—represent the skin andwhich the marrow.

It is clear that the lines of discursive division can easilybe drawn when scholarly critiques disparage traditionalists,even if indirectly, for offering surface-level apologetics, andtraditionalists reverse this judgment by arguing that theirapproach alone captures the depths of the religious experi-ence and that historical studies are interesting but in the endirrelevant to achieving spiritual goals. How, if it is at allpossible, can the impasse be overcome?

Another way of looking at the relation between skin andmarrow is to see the viewpoints as occupying neither the twoextremes (or bookends) of a polarized discourse, as they donot have to be seen at loggerheads, nor the middle, a con-tinuum of complementary viewpoints, as it must be acknowl-edged that there is an underlying inconsistency andincompatibility. Rather, the model could be that each discur-sive stance exists independently and yet, when viewed col-lectively, contributes to providing us with a varying and at

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times, depending on the circumstance, conflicting and clash-ing or overlapping and intersecting perspectives. These mul-tiple and shifting outlooks, which may undermine but do notnecessarily negate one another, are useful and necessary inorder to gain a more complete picture of the unfolding of Zenover a millennium and in its contemporary significance, andin this way, disquiet on the Eastern Front becomes an advan-tage rather than a cause for dismay.

While the beauty, or lack thereof, of rocks piled on stones,for instance, or the value of concentrating on a word thatliterally means negation or nothingness lies in the eye ormind of the beholder, it would be a shame in the original senseof scandal to overlook or ignore the diverse conceptual anglesthat present themselves and help to destabilize comfortableassumptions and assertions on either side of the dividing lineseparating discourses. Those who are fascinated by historicalcriticism may want or, in effect, need to turn to more inspira-tional materials that elicit a spiritual resonance, whilereaders of the latter literature may find their beliefs held inquestion but in the end reevaluated or even reinforced bycritical studies. Holding to tunnel vision would clearly not beworthy of Zen. Rather, to paraphrase some of the classicalfigures who often evoked harsh rhetoric to disparage theirrivals, such an innately limited view would represent thestandpoint of “devils, heretics, and Hinayanists.”

NOTE

1. As Yamada shows (209-11), although Watts was recognized asa leading Western authority on Zen by some Japanese figures

from the era, such as Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, he was rejected byD. T. Suzuki and others for not having a firsthand experience ofawakening, unlike E. Herrigel, German author of Zen and theArt of Archery, which is discussed above. Interestingly, Wattswas known for dismissing artists such as musician John Cagefor being closer in style to “Beat Zen,” as well as Westernpractitioners for their approach to “Square Zen,” rather thantrying to understand authentic Zen (or “Zen”), which referredto the original Chinese style as he understood it.

REFERENCES

Halperin, Mark2006 Out of the Cloister: Literati Perspectives on Buddhism

in the Sung Dynasty 960-1279. Harvard East AsianMonographs. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress.

Heine, Steven2008 Zen Skin, Zen Marrow: Will the Real Zen Buddhism

Please Stand Up? New York: Oxford University Press.

Victoria, Brian Daizen1998 Zen at War. Tokyo: Weatherhill.

Yanagida, Seizan1967 Shoki Zenshushi no kenkyu (Studies of the Historical

Writings of the Early Chan School). Kyoto: Hozokan.

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