Customer Reviews

Seeing through Zen: Encounter, Transformation, and Genealogy in Chinese Chan Buddhism (Philip E. Lilienthal Book in Asian Studies)

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This is not a conventional review -- as author, I *might* be considered prejudiced! And the Amazon site *forced* me to rate the book... :)

If there are questions about this book, I would be happy to entertain them here. The goal of the book, as explained in the preface, is to try to change how we think about Chinese Chan Buddhism. I expect that to be an on-going process.

I was especially amused by the brief paragraph reviewing the book in a practitioners' journal, which concluded with the appraisal that this book might demythologize Zen more than some readers would like. True enough!

Here's a bit of news: The book is currently being translated into Japanese, and I'm hoping that Chinese and Korean translations will be done also. In this process the translator and I have turned up some minor slipups, one embarassing goof, and a couple of points that will require further elaboration. When we get through the initial translation draft of the entire book, I'll put these on my web site.

P.S.: I tried to find the Amazon link for making author's reviews/comments, but couldn't find it.

As a Zen priest who is also an academic, I am frequently frustrated both by scholarly books on religion that dismiss practitioners' perspectives, and by religiously oriented books that accept religious claims uncritically. In Seeing Through Zen, John McRae synthesizes a great deal of recent scholarship on Ch'an (Zen) and shows that many of its central claims -- an unbroken lineage of patriarchs, the biographies of key figures such as Bodhidharma and the Sixth Patriarch Huineng, a "golden age" of iconoclastic masters during the Tang Dynasty -- are not "true" in the modern historical sense. At the same time, McRae's first rule of Zen studies is: "It's not true, therefore it's more important." His careful scholarship is balanced by sensitivity to the religious meanings and the institutional value of these myths for Ch'an/Zen practitioners. I highly recommend this book to academic students and religious practitioners of Zen.
The book opens with four axioms for Zen studies that can be applied usefully to almost any historical study. The subsequent analysis focuses on the Ch'an lineage and the literature of "encounter dialogue" (koans). McRae helps readers to understand the content of Ch'an myth and doctrine, the process by which it developed, and the ways it shaped the religious identities of institutions and individual practitioners.
He cautions readers not to accept portrayals of heroes or villains at face value, but to look beneath the rhetoric to what's at stake in their portrayals: whose interests are being served, and how? He also cautions against assuming that the more precise a Zen story is, in details of place and time, the earlier it is likely be. In fact, the opposite is more likely. The details of Bodhidharma's life, for example, accumulated gradually over a thousand years. His identity was continually reinvented by successive generations of practitioners, according to their religious identities and ideals. Likewise, the teachings of many great Tang Dynasty masters were attributed to them retrospectively by later generations of students. This does not mean, however, that the mytho-poetic accounts are worthless. They tell us about the concerns and aspirations of the people who developed them, and help us to think more carefully about the religious claims of our own era and institutions.
Western Zen is often built on misunderstandings of the tradition, in part because of the vast divide between our culture and that of Song Dynasty China, when many elements of Zen tradition took shape. For modern practitioners, it is not possible to do a careful and thoughtful job of interpreting Zen tradition for our own circumstances if we accept traditional stories unquestioningly in a literal, fundamentalist way. McRae offers helpful resources for re-thinking the tradition.
The book does have some limitations: it pays almost no attention to gender; and it focuses almost entirely on texts, rather than on, say, archaeology, religious objects, or art, all of which tell us something about how religious traditions were actually lived. The focus on texts is a bias of western Buddhist studies that has been critiqued in recent decades, because religious literature may tell us more about what elites thought practitioners should do and believe, than about what practitioners actually did. McRae also might have drawn more connections between Indian and Chinese traditions: the question-and-answer format of koan literature, for example, seems reminiscent of The Questions of King Milinda.
Despite these constraints, Seeing Through Zen is an engaging, accessible, highly informative book that demonstrates both rigorous scholarship and sympathy for the people he studies. This is a difficult balance, and McRae accomplishes it with flair.

I didn't get too far into this book before getting pissed off. And that's a GOOD thing! John McRae , as a zen student, has taken on the task of looking at the history and hagiography of zen and tried to sort out fact from fiction, uses of the fiction, implications for practice, and much more. As you read this book, if you are a zen student like I am, you will find some of your most cherished beliefs challenged in regard to zen. I find this a refreshing book. The early part on lineage is particularly interesting as most zen groups I am aware of place heavy emphasis on lineage and "proving" how they are descendant from Shakyamuni himself. This was a very rewarding read and I look forward to reading more by this author on Northern school of Zen.

Separating fact from fiction in history is problematic at best. Religious history is especially difficult as there are many stakeholders propogating certain lines of belief and practice. McRae's book strips away much of the mythology of the development of Chan/Zen from the time of Bodhidharma through to the Song Dynasty (ca. 950-1300) in China. This demythologizing is sure to upset some Zen practioners and teachers whose faith in Zen Buddhism is intimately tied to an idealised version of Zen's history.
McRae not only presents a refreshing view of the Chan lineage charts and their role in the development of Zen's history, but also gives a detailed analysis of the Northern/Southern Schools split and the development of "encounter dialogues", which laid the foundation for koans. Along the way, he takes a swipe at Heinrich Dumoulin's interpretation of Zen history, the Platform Sutra as history (it never happened), and even the idea that Chan was a distinct and separate Buddhist school in ancient China. For those whose faith is based on these colourful but historically inaccurate myths, this book will be troubling and thought-provoking.
McRae and other academics in the field are providing a valuable service to Buddhism's migration from the East to the West and books such as this one should be required reading in Zen centres around the world. McRae tackles the issues with a light touch and even non-experts in the field should have little difficulty in reading this. I highly recommend this book to all who are interested in Zen's true history.
(...)

I appreciate McRae's book for its new (to me) perspective on Chinese Chan (Zen). My introduction to Zen through the radio talks of Alan Watts, the Zen stories in "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones" and the books of D. T. Suzuki instilled in me a romantic view of the old masters. This book grounds this romanticism and offers a new way to regard the evolution of Zen and to engage in its practice.
Of particular interest to me is the discussion of the arising in China of the importance of lineage. Lineage is still taken quite seriously in many of our current Zen/Chan/Son schools in the West. I suspect many readers will balk at McRae's perspective. However, I like being cast adrift, as it were. "Be a beacon unto yourselves," as Gautama is reported to have said.
And I thank the professor for opening a discussion on this topic.
I'm eager to hear what others say!

In this book John McRae intends to write a history of Chan Buddhism in a manner different from his predecessors. He begins with a short list of rules he has come up with for studying Zen. These rules involve reading stories for content instead of truth, being untrusting of lineage assertions, taking facts and details as tell-tale signs of inaccuracy, and reading stories through realism. These rules create the basis for how he will write the rest of the book, and help lead him to his conclusion and main point at the end of the work. He takes the entire book to lead up to his main point, which is finally stated in full in the last chapter, "Climax Paradigm". In this chapter he pieces together all of the history and stories he has told throughout the book to claim that it was in fact the Song-dynasty instead of the Tang (which most writers assert) that was the climax and ultimate stability of Chan.

Not being a scholar on Chan or really any other Asian history, I cannot evaluate McRae's conclusions and assertions based on historical accuracy. I wish to merely look at whether he follows his own rules which he laid out before the book began. For this we will need a good break-down of what he does in his first five chapters, the ones leading up to his argument and conclusion. In chapter one he discusses Chan lineage and how to properly use it to view Chan history. One of his biggest claims in this section is that we must avoid the "string of pearls fallacy" (McRae 9), which means not telling simply in terms of a list of important people and what they did. He says we need to look at the bigger picture of ideas and overall changes.

In the second and third chapters he talks about Chan in different historical time periods and the developments and changes made during those times. He discusses which people were important to that time and what they did. The fourth chapter diverges from this slightly, in that it follows one type of structure in Chan, which is encounter dialogue. He follows this type of practice through the people who developed it, and the ways it was used with each person and time period. In the fifth chapter he discusses "Zen and the Art of Fund-Raising", which really turns out to be a discussion of the political connections that allowed Chan to flourish above other forms of Buddhism in the Song-dynasty.

I think McRae's final chapter did a great job of showing Chan Buddhism and a different light than previous writers (at least based on what he says other writers did). He shows reasons why the Song-dynasty was the peak of Chan's influence, power, and stability with specific reason as well as larger concepts. His argument is well-formed and coherent. My problem, however, is with the first five chapters of the work. For the most part, he does not even follow his own rules when writing. He repeatedly gives specific details in his stories, which he originally claims implies inaccuracy. In addition, he takes the time to explain the "string of pearls fallacy" and then commits this very crime throughout the book. The simple fact is that there is no way to tell a history without talking about the individual important people involved. It seems that he was simply trying to make his book appear different from others at the beginning in order to make his argument at the end stronger. This is unnecessary; his argument is already strong, and he does not to prove himself to anyone by trying to make the rest of his book appear new and innovative as well.

Studies of this type were perhaps inevitable. Following in the footsteps of Dr.Hu Shih, John McRae questions the 'orthodox' in-terpretation of Ch'an (Zen) history. Like many others, however, I feel that he has made too much of certain arguments. Some things may be less than clear, about the early Ch'an tradition and its geneologies etc. However, the primary sources which shaped the Ch'an tradition - the T'ang masters, were very real people - and, for the most part - what has come down to us today - in their records, is a faithful reflection of what they had to teach.

John McRae makes much of 'sectarian' identities - but, did the T'ang masters encourage people to cling to such things? Masters like Ma-tsu and Shih-t'ou used to send their disciples back and forth, between each other's temples. Like Hu-shih, John McRae is keen to make it known that figures such as Hui-neng were made to bolster an 'ideological' position but, in actual fact, Hui-neng's Altar Sutra includes the story of his encounter with Yung-chia, a joint T'ien-tai/Ch'an master. Given John McRae's position, we should expect to find a 'triumphalist' account of Ch'an here - but, it actually acknowledges that Yung-chia was enlightened - and that he could hold his own - with Hui-neng. So - where's the obsession with 'sectarian' identities? The Ch'uan Teng Lu (Transmission of the Lamp) - technically a 'Ch'an-school' document, contains the records of several T'ien-tai masters.

John McRae dismisses almost everything about Hui-neng as a fiction- but, if he cares to visit to Pao-lin temple one day, not far from Canton, he will find Hui-neng's body, seated in the meditation posture. It has been there since 713, interestingly enough - in proximity to the body of an Indian master, who had predicted Hui-neng's birth and future career. Are the Buddhists who venerate this place - misguided fools? When it comes to it, the Ch'an school has not occupied the narrow horizons suggested in John McRae's account. You will find people practicing 'Pure Land meditation in Ch'an temples - and Master Yung-Ming wrote his monumental 'Tsung Ching Lu' (Record of the Source-Mirror), helping to explicate how all Buddhist teachings - as 'upaya' can be harmonised in the 'One Mind.' This affords a perspective quite different to that presented in John McRae's account. By default, perhaps, people now discriminate - and cling to sectarian identities. But is there a single T'ang master - on record, telling us to 'cling' to anything?

McRae is truly an engaging scholar. Not only are his topics intriguing, but his writing style is smooth, accessible, and clear. Seeing Though Zen was a solid treatment of commonly misunderstood aspects of Chan (chinese zen). He fills the reader in on important aspects of the development of Chan without an over-burdening assessment the factors involved (that's what the bibliography is for), but he also treats the major 20th-century scholarship on Zen which accounts for these misunderstandings. I would have liked more of a "step into the beyond" in the conclusion, but I guess I'll have to wait for the Shen-hui work.

Please disregard my rating, as I have not yet read this title. I have however used An earlier work: The Northern School and the Formation of Early Ch'an Buddhism, quite extensively in the recent past. This is one of very few titles regarding a subject that certainly deserves more treatment. Especially in terms of more "academic" work/demystification. I am looking forward to reading this, as I have come to respect Mr. McRae's scholarship very much. I would like information on Mr. McRae's website, as I am unable to locate it.