The Rhetoric of Immediacy: A Cultural Critique of Chan/Zen Buddhism [Paperback]

Bernard Faure (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 14, 1994 | ISBN-10: 0691029636 | ISBN-13: 978-0691029634

Through a highly sensitive exploration of key concepts and metaphors, Bernard Faure guides Western readers in appreciating some of the more elusive aspects of the Chinese tradition of Chan Buddhism and its outgrowth, Japanese Zen. He focuses on Chan's insistence on "immediacy"--its denial of all traditional mediations, including scripture, ritual, good works--and yet shows how these mediations have always been present in Chan. Given this apparent duplicity in its discourse, Faure reveals how Chan structures its practice and doctrine on such mental paradigms as mediacy/immediacy, sudden/gradual, and center/margins.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Not since D. T. Suzuki (1870-1966) has any responsible scholar attempted in English to synthesize such a broad stretch of the history of Zen Buddhism as has Bernard Faure.... [The book] offers the best narration in English of the role that magicians, healers, jesters, relics, mummies, dreams, funerals, deities, and mundane rituals play in a tradition that lays claim to emptiness. -- Stephen F. Teiser, Journal of Religion



Readers will be rewarded by truly insightful vistas of bottomless chasms and distant peaks, flowering puns and mutant etymologies, stunning flights of free association, and encounters with many species of exotic facts, not to mention the tracks and droppings of latter-day giants of social-historical theory. -- Monumenta Nipponica

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (November 14, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691029636
• ISBN-13: 978-0691029634
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,003,798 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant deconstruction, this book reshapes Zen studies., February 22, 1999

By 

[e-mail] Franz Metcalf (Hollywood, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Rhetoric of Immediacy: A Cultural Critique of Chan/Zen Buddhism (Paperback)

After reading the only existing review of this book, I felt the need to offer a counter-view. From the perspective of a scholar, this book fundamentally reshaped Chan/Zen studies. But from the perspective of a practitioner it also reshapes our views. Faure forces us to rethink the cherished illusions of Zen. Whether scholar or practitioner, we had best take up the challenge. It is tough going, but it is work which we all must do to be worthy of the tradition we study.

5 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Perhaps, just rhetoric!, April 4, 2005

By 

Hakuyu "Ikeda" (Kyoto, Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Rhetoric of Immediacy: A Cultural Critique of Chan/Zen Buddhism (Paperback)

Despite the praise heaped on this text, I can't help feeling that Bernard Faure has been constructing the 'straw men' other readers have spotted. It is by no means certain that the Ch'an (Zen) tradition has functioned as Faure suggests. Why, for instance, set up the 'anti-scriptural' argument - only to concede - on proper investigation, that it is a myth? There are enough commentaries - on the sutras, by Zen monks, to make this sort of thing seem pointless. Sorry, but lets place trust in those deluded masters of old - and stay unenlightened, Faure style.

10 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is riddled with arbitrary misinterpretations., February 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Rhetoric of Immediacy: A Cultural Critique of Chan/Zen Buddhism (Paperback)

This book will recommend itself to those who believe that a run-of-the-mill contemporary college professor can have a deeper insight into what the Zen people were doing than they had themselves, and to those who believe that deconstructionism is more sophisticated than the Buddhist perspective on mind found in such works as the Avatamsaka Sutra and the Linji Lu.