H-ASIA
December 12, 2007

Book Review (orig pub H-Buddhism) by Peter D. Hershock on  John R. McRae,
_Seeing through Zen: Encounter, Transformation, and Genealogy in Chinese
Chan Buddhism_

(x-post H-Buddhism)
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H-NET BOOK REVIEW

John R. McRae. _Seeing through Zen: Encounter, Transformation, and
Genealogy in Chinese Chan Buddhism_. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2003. xx + 204 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index.
$50.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-520-23797-1; $19.95 (paper)
ISBN 978-0-520-23798-8.

Reviewed by: Peter D. Hershock, East-West Center.
Published by: H-Buddhism (August, 2007)

Defining Chinese Chan Buddhism

Seeing through Zen is a critical evaluation of widely received
representations of Chinese Chan Buddhism as a tradition focused on and
forwarded by demonstrating liberating spontaneity. It is a careful, and
one feels, fundamentally caring, consideration of several centuries of
documentary evidence, interpretative frameworks, and patterns of
conceptual contrast and continuity, in the course of which Professor John
McRae offers us his "best and most cherished insights" into Chinese Chan
with the expressed intention to "change how we all think about the
subject" (p. xi). Seeing through Zen concisely summarizes McRae's
considerable contributions to contemporary scholarship on Chinese Chan
Buddhism in a style that is straightforward, accessible, and yet also
pointedly iconoclastic. It is a book that raises complex questions about
the meaning of Chan in ways that will make many readers pause, this
reviewer included.


McRae states at the outset of his preface that he is committed to actively
and critically examining how Chan emerged as a distinctive "school" of
medieval Chinese Buddhism, where "action" implies continuous engagement
and "critical" implies consideration of all evidence from all angles,
testing hypotheses, and evaluating objections. Following the preface is a
statement of "McRae's Rules of Zen Studies" which I will list here without
their paragraph-long glosses or further commentary: 1) it's not true, and
therefore it's more important; 2) lineage assertions are as wrong as they
are strong; 3) precision implies inaccuracy; and, 4) romanticism breeds
cynicism. The final rule has as its corollary: cold realism eliminates
dismissive misapprehension (pp. xix-xx).

The first chapter opens by reflexively puzzling how best to begin, picking
up the methodological thread laid out in the prefatory material and
pointedly urging a deconstruction of the traditionalist depiction of the
evolution of Chan as an unbroken line of transmission or luminous "string
of pearls." McRae's "deconstruction" of this account leads him to see the
traditional account of Chan origins and evolution as a fiction, but a
fiction that he avers is more significant, more telling with respect to
the emergence of Chan self-identity and its distinctive vitality, than if
it had turned out to be true.

For heuristic purposes, McRae identifies four distinct and yet overlapping
phases in the emergence of Chan: proto-Chan, early Chan, middle Chan and
Song-dynasty Chan. These four phases of Chan development and their
interrelationship are examined over the course of the succeeding five
chapters, in roughly chronological order, beginning with the purported
genesis of Chan teaching and practice with the arrival of Bodhidharma in
China and the subsequent emergence of a distinctive set of so-called East
Mountain teachings. McRae then visits the birth of what he calls
"metropolitan Chan," examining evidence regarding a critical turning point
in the evolution of Chan: the traditionally recounted splitting apart of a
gradualist Northern school of Chan and a Southern school of sudden
realization. Following this is a consideration of the origins of Chan
encounter dialogue, the religious vitality and institutional dominance of
Chan during the Song, and the cultural precedents for and patterns of what
McRae characterizes as a stable and self-sustaining "climax paradigm" of
Chan teaching and practice (pp. 119-120).

On the basis of evidence detailed throughout these several chapters, McRae
concludes that there gradually consolidated over a period of several
generations a set of "biographical" narratives, recorded sayings,
teachings, and discourses on practice that would become fully
authoritative within Chan and that revolve around the (richly imagined and
vibrantly represented) advent of a creative "golden age" of Chan teaching
and practice in the eighth and ninth centuries. Contrary to this
traditionally authoritative set of tales and teachings, McRae claims that
the actual (rather than imagined) golden age of Chan creativity occurred
during the Song dynasty, with the emergence of the "golden age" narrative
itself. The genius of Chan and its particular construction of enlightened
(and enlightening) virtuosity, did not manifest in the events of
day-to-day life within practicing Chan communities, but rather as a
meta-discourse on that life, romantically reconstructed. The most
consistent and coldly realistic interpretations of documentary evidence
encourage admitting that, "Chan encounter dialogue derived not (or,
perhaps, not solely) out of spontaneous oral exchanges but (perhaps only
in part) out of ritualized exchanges" and that in seeking out the origins
of Chan encounter dialogue we should not look to purportedly historical
events but rather to texts (pp. 92-93).

In spite of the parenthetical equivocations in this statement, McRae's
reasons and rhetoric unswervingly and overwhelmingly direct readers toward
the view that the Chan texts that eventually came to constitute an
authoritative Chan "canon" did not develop on the basis of first-hand
experiences of the sort that they record, but rather inter-textually. At
the very least, the events described in the encounter dialogues so central
to the Chan "canon" did not occur as described, with the actors named, in
the situations specified. At least as I read McRae's multi-faceted
arguments, he would urge considering that it may well be that, in fact,
nothing like these events occurred, for any actors, in any situations, at
any time.

This reading of McRae's reasoning finds considerable support in his
rhetorically charged observation that what is both "expected" and
"natural" for those operating within Chan is "intellectually debilitating"
for those standing outside of it as observers and analysts. "What from the
standpoint of Chan religious practice may be absolutely essential becomes,
from the standpoint of intellectual analysis, the passive submission to a
hegemony, the unwitting contraction of an intellectual pathology" (p. 10).
As McRae sees it, "if Buddhist spiritual practice aims at seeing things as
they are, then getting past the foolish over-simplifications and confusing
obfuscations that surround most interpretations of Zen should be an
important part of the process" (p. xii). Failing to do so, as he makes
clear at various points in the book, is in his view to be "crippled" and
"simplistic" in either explaining or expressing Chan.

Harsh judgments of this sort will draw judgments of their own, perhaps
understanding or forgiving and perhaps not. At the very least, they make
clear that McRae takes seriously his own stated in intention of changing
"how we all think about the subject" of Chan (p. xi), including those who
identify themselves with and as members of Chan traditions. But setting
aside their scathing tone, McRae's judgments regarding Chan "insiders" and
what is "natural" and "expected" of them direct attention to complex
questions that McRae is clearly grappling with and that he would convince
readers to raise and grapple with as well.

One such question is about the status of Chan teachings. Embedded as they
are in the internally authoritative biographies and encounter narratives
of Chan, wherein (if McRae is right) they had their actual origins, these
teachings cannot be assumed to be accurate conveyances of the lives and
works of Chan luminaries. Can they, nevertheless, be considered
illuminating in terms of their explicit or implicit formulations of the
form and meaning of Chan Buddhist realization? The potential disparity
between what is accurate and what is illuminating begs further questions
about what is meant by "true" in the context of Chan, or other Buddhist
traditions, where theory functions as a support for practice, but not an
explanation of it. Does the "fact" that Chan teachings were originally
formulated in fictions entail seeing them as at some level fictitious?
What, in other words, is the truth-value of Chan teachings?

To be sure, claiming that the traditional account of Chan origins and the
teachings and tales embedded within them are fictions is not to state that
they are false. And perhaps McRae is employing considerable scholarly
skillful means to force consideration of what might be referred to as the
ontological priority of value over fact in Chan narratives. Fictions,
after all, are narratives in which the conveyance of facts is subordinated
to the expression of particular structures and potentials for meaning. In
a Buddhist context, where crucial and critical emphasis has always (at
least traditionally) been placed on understanding and skillfully
responding to the operation of karma, that is, to the meticulous
consonance obtaining among sustained patterns of value-intention-action
and experienced outcomes-opportunities, fiction may well be a more
suitable vehicle for the expression of liberating insight than factually
accurate documentation.

Indeed, although it is quite common to attribute to Buddhism a firm
commitment to seeing things "as they are," the formula as presented in the
earliest Buddhist teachings centers critically on the term, "yathabhutam,"
which is most accurately rendered "as they have come to be." Buddhist
practice aims, quite fundamentally, at generating deepening skill in
seeing the process or path by means of which things have come to be,
precisely as they have come to be in reflection of compounding patterns of
value-intention-action. Insofar as all Buddhist traditions enjoin engaging
suffering as a function of errant interdependence, the purpose of
developing such deepening skill should not be understood simply as a way
of improving perceptive clarity with respect to present situational
dynamics, but to true or properly align the patterns of interdependence
informing them. Traditional Chan narratives, whatever their factual
accuracy or inaccuracy, demonstrate the meaning of truing or properly
aligning errant relational dynamics. The encounter narratives of Chan
Buddhism, whatever their historical origins, express clarifying
originality, skillfully displaying liberating relationships as both
means-to and meaning-of non-duality.

A second question raised by Seeing through Zen is the proper relationship
of scholarly work and religious belief or conviction. McRae's harsh
judgment of those operating "simplistically" or "foolishly" within the
context of traditional Chan convictions makes clear that he believes
something important is at stake in forcing confrontation with "the facts"
of Chan's historical origins. Chan "histories" are not fictions in the
same way as Shakespeare's recounting of the lives of European royalty.
Chan narratives purport to be histories and are not. The dissemblance they
evidence may be reasonable, it may even be skillfully carried off, but it
is dissemblance nonetheless and (in McRae's estimation) "should" be
acknowledged as such by all.

I am not so sure, an uncertainty that has much to do with discerning
whether there are limits to the proper scope of scholarship and whether
the contemporary scholarly route to dissolving Chan's "master narratives"
is not liable to enforce dependence on a "master methodology" that
ultimately results in derivations of a normative or ethical "ought" from a
purely descriptive or ontological "is" or "was." That is, does the
scholarly method, applied beyond its proper scope, run the risk of
committing us to the fallacy that determining how Tang dynasty Chan really
was in some way properly determines how we should engage Chan as a
tradition of religiously significant practice?

The master-student encounters of Chan are sacred events in the sense of
being events around which distinctively Chan religious sensibilities have
coalesced and been imbued with generation upon generation of layered,
spiritual significance. For Chan practitioners, these narratives come to
be experienced as opening direct access to the virtuosic spontaneity and
genius of Chan relationality in a way no less forceful and no less
religiously or spiritually charged than the seminal events in other
religious or spiritual traditions centered on more literally miraculous
conjunctions of the human and the divine. Whatever gains are made through
embracing documentary evidence regarding their historical origins, to
abandon faith or confidence (Chin.: xin) in the encounter narratives of
Chan as religiously real events is to cease activating Chan conviction and
readiness for expressing, in an increasingly confident, committed and
virtuosic manner, the meaning of relating freely in liberating intimacy
with others.

Should Chan scholarship be directed to supporting or enhancing the
conviction and readiness of Chan practitioners? I do not think so. The
internal "histories" and commentarial traditions (oral and written) are
charged with precisely this role. At the same time, however, I do not
think that academic scholarship should position beliefs and patterns of
readiness, which for those within a given religious tradition are both
"natural" and "expected," in such a way that they are determined to be
"foolish" or "pathological." Academic scholarship should not aim at
supporting religious belief; neither should it aim at inducing religious
disbelief. Contemporary scholarship on Chan, from this perspective, should
chart a course that avoids embroilment in the dichotomous discourse of
belief and disbelief.

The articulation of such a non-dual approach to Chan scholarship is, I
think, a work in progress, with Professor McRae as a notable participant.
Seeing through Zen culminates on a telling note in this regard, with an
affirmation that "the avenues of inquiry are virtually endless--such
exciting possibilities for future research, so many different ways of
seeing through Zen" (p. 154). This might be interpreted as a celebratory,
academic positioning of Chan history as an infinitely "good read" in the
way that the best literature is. But the passage also echoes the
bodhisattva vows to learn all of the Buddhist teachings, though they are
infinite in number; to travel the Buddhist Path fully, in spite of it
being endless; and to save all sentient beings, in full awareness that
they are numberless. The parallelism suggests at the very least that Chan
scholarship should be no less devoted to infinite inquiry than Chan
practitioners are to the infinite cultivation of wisdom and compassion.

But perhaps it can also serve to suggest something more. Chan master Mazu
is said to have had a moment of particularly deep realization when his
attention was directed to the difference between "seeing the Buddhist
Path" and "seeing from it." Granted that the Chinese term for the Buddhist
Path, "dao," ambiguously means understanding, path, way, method, and
practice, the distinction functions religiously: first, to express the
phase of considering the Path without having committed oneself fully to
it; and, secondly, to evoke the non-duality of Chan awakening and Chan
practice. In terms more relevant to scholarship, however, the distinction
can be seen as useful for how it invites discernment with respect to the
interplay of what can be studied (the Path as conveyance or text) and what
can only be activated (the Path as conveying or meaning). Perhaps the
deepest challenge of Chan scholarship, so thoughtfully engaged by Seeing
through Zen, is to embrace and illuminate the ambiguity of the boundary
separating these distinct scopes of "understanding" the "way" of Chan,
doing so in such a way that we are enabled to follow Huayan scholar-adept
Fazang, affirming that they are ultimately "the same," precisely insofar
as they "differ" from one another. Like all other things, perhaps Chan
Buddhist scholarship and Chan practice ultimately are only what they mean
for one another.

Copyright (c) 2007 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the
redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational
purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location,
date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social
Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial
staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu
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