Chan Insights and Oversights: An Epistemological Critique of the Chan Tradition

by Bernard Faure

Overview

For many people attracted to Eastern religions (particularly Zen Buddhism), Asia seems the source of all wisdom. As Bernard Faure examines the study of Chan/Zen from the standpoint of postmodern human sciences and literary criticism, he challenges this inversion of traditional "Orientalist" discourse: whether the Other is caricatured or idealized, ethnocentric premises marginalize important parts of Chan thought. Questioning the assumptions of "Easterners" as well, including those of the charismatic D. T. Suzuki, Faure demonstrates how both West and East have come to overlook significant components of a complex and elusive tradition. Throughout the book Faure reveals surprising hidden agendas in the modern enterprise of Chan studies and in Chan itself. After describing how Jesuit missionaries brought Chan to the West, he shows how the prejudices they engendered were influenced by the sectarian constraints of Sino-Japanese discourse. He then assesses structural, hermeneutical, and performative ways of looking at Chan, analyzes the relationship of Chan and local religion, and discusses Chan concepts of temporality, language, writing, and the self. Read alone or with its companion volume, The Rhetoric of Immediacy, this work offers a critical introduction not only to Chinese and Japanese Buddhism but also to "theory" in the human sciences.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691029023
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	12/01/1996
Pages:	340
Product dimensions:	7.75(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Bernard Faure is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Abbreviations	xi
	Introduction	3
	Chan as Secondary Orientalism	5
	The Cultural "Encounter Dialogue"	9
	Comparison, Counterpoint, Intertwining	10
Part 1
Chapter 1	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 2	The Rise of Zen Orientalism	52
	Suzuki's Zen	53
	The Western Critics of Suzuki	67
	Nishida and the Kyoto School	74
Chapter 3	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 4	Alternatives	126
	The Structural Approach	126
	The Hermeneutic Approach	135
	Toward a Performative Scholarship	145
Part 2
Chapter 5	Space and Place	155
	Chan and Local Spirits	156
	From Place to Space	159
	Chan In-sights and Di-visions	167
Chapter 6	Times and Tides	175
	Conflicting Models	177
	Dogen and His Times	187
	The Ritualization of Time	192
Chapter 7	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 8	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 9	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/Solidaire	261
	Epilogue	269
	Glossary	275
	Bibliography	281
	Index	317

Editorial Reviews

Winner of the 1993 Tricycle Prize for Excellence in Buddhist Scholarship

From the Publisher

Thoughtful and thought-provoking. After reading Faure's contributions in The Rhetoric of Immediacy and Insights and Oversights, none of us working the fields of Zen, Buddhist studies, or historical and cultural studies can go about our work in quite the same way. . . . Our thinking [is] reshaped by the topics he raises and the approaches he uses.

Journal of Japanese Studies - Martin Collcutt

A highly sensitive and richly textured re-examination of the Chan/Zen tradition. [Faure] is to be congratulated for having provided us with just such a fruitful (and by no means temporary) scholarship that enriches our understanding of Chan/Zen. It makes us keenly aware that Chan/Zen is . . . a continuously evolving entity that can withstand the most rigorous and critical scholarly inquiry.

The Journal of Asian History - Richard Shek

Thoughtful and thought-provoking. After reading Faure's contributions in The Rhetoric of Immediacy and Insights and Oversights, none of us working the fields of Zen, Buddhist studies, or historical and cultural studies can go about our work in quite the same way. . . . Our thinking [is] reshaped by the topics he raises and the approaches he uses.
— Martin Collcutt

Journal of Japanese Studies

A highly sensitive and richly textured re-examination of the Chan/Zen tradition. [Faure] is to be congratulated for having provided us with just such a fruitful (and by no means temporary) scholarship that enriches our understanding of Chan/Zen. It makes us keenly aware that Chan/Zen is . . . a continuously evolving entity that can withstand the most rigorous and critical scholarly inquiry.
— Richard Shek

The Journal of Asian History