Chan Historiography and Chan Philosophy.
A Review Essay on Bernard Faure's Chan Insights and Oversight

By Chung-ying Cheng

Journal of Chinese Philosophy
V. 23:4 (1996.12)
pp. 489-507

Copyright 1996 by Dialogue Publishing Company,
Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A.

p. 489

    A philosopher often approaches Chan Buddhism from a philosophical point of view. The questions he would ask are: What does enlightenment (wu) [a] mean and imply for a human being in terms of his seeking wisdom and freedom? Can all persons achieve such enlightenment? What methodology or process of cultivation would lead him to this enlightenment as claimed by Chan/Zen [b] masters? Finally, why must a person seek enlightenment? We can put these questions in a different way: What is enlightenment? Can anyone attain it? How is it to be attained? Why is it important to attain enlightenment? These four questions could be answered in a "philosophy of Chan enlightenment" and thus constitute a philosophical approach to Chan Buddhism. However, in an after-thought one may even ask whether Chan Buddhism could be understood simply from such an internal and philosophical view. One may further ask whether there are other ways to understand Chan Buddhism which will shed light on these internal questions of Chan. It might be pointed out that one has to study and understand how Chan masters spoke and wrote as found in their recorded discourses in order to detect how notions bearing upon enlightenment (such as "illuminating one's mind as such and seeing one's nature") are formed, informed and intended, as well as to see how and why claims to enlightenment have been accepted as warranted by certain kinds of people. These are external questions concerning the Chan tradition and constitute a historiographic approach to the Chan tradition.

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    This distinction between internal questions and external questions lies in that the former engages the questioner in confronting and embodying the sustaining spirit of the quest for enlightenment as a vital living tradition to which one may commit one's life in practice. But for the latter, the questioner need not worry about the true nature of enlightenment, but instead concern himself with how discourse on the nature of enlightenment and its assertability and/or warrantability are communicated or described. It is a matter of historical-historiographical understanding. From this point of view, it might be asked why internal questions must be raised at all. To answer this, one must see that, even though the Tang/Song [c] periods are long gone, to raise internal questions is to see how the Chan tradition may contribute directly to the basic issues of human existence and the human quest for spiritual emancipation: they are questions to be addressed again and again, so that it may lead to a high point of the question's self-understanding and the understanding of the condition of humanity. This may mean that there exists a human need for spiritual emancipation in the human self which could receive confirmation and vitality from the Chan quest for spiritual emancipation. It presupposes the relevance of a reflective discourse on the human self in which the nature and mind of the human self are to be understood. But for the external questions it is clear that no such quest is presupposed or required. What is presupposed is a quest of understanding into the history of the Chan tradition as a spiritual quest to be seen in various forms and styles of discourses in which this quest has been realized or articulated.

    For the above reason we could distinguish between lijie [d] (understanding according to reason or rational thinking) and wujie [e] (understanding according to my mind, signifying a self-realization of my nature or/and my mind). Perhaps, early studies of Chan/Zen are more on the side of wujie or wujie-oriented. But given the large quantity of historical documents concerning activities of the Chan masters as a movement and as an establishment it is evident that we need more lijie and more lijie- oriented study of Chan/Zen. A methodological question is then whether

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we could make a lijie study of the wujie experience. My reply to this question is that we can do this in light of the reasons and causes for the wujie from materials and texts we have available, and in so far as wujie can be reconstructed in terms of a philosophical theory of the human self and its nature, again to be based on both materials and texts available to us historically and reflections on one's philosophical understanding of the wujie. Theoretically, although we would normally treat the lijie and wujie approaches to the Chan as two independent approaches, they are in fact interdependent, because they represent two functions or two levels of the same mind and same nature of the human self.

    The wujie approach to the study of the Chan/Zen has its advantages as well as its disadvantages. Its chief advantage lies in being able to deal with the philosophical issue in a straight-forward way: it is "to directly point to the original mind" so that one would make clear the mind and see one's nature". Of course, in doing so one still needs to work with the original texts of Chan masters, but one need not worry about historical issues such as how one method arose under which historical circumstances. This is how I made a logical and philosophical study of the Chan/Zen paradoxes in 1973. [1] The chief disadvantage of this approach is: it is blind to the historical origins and social contexts of different positions in Chan as well as their changes and influences in practice, which lead to a form of understanding, constituting an integral part of the whole understanding.

    Thus one needs both internal and external approaches just as one needs both macroanalysis and microanalysis of enlightenment cases in order to make critical assessment of possible inner and outer conditions for deepening of one's understanding of enlightenment. For example, without knowing how Liutou Chan [f] arose one would not see how the distinctive position of Farong [g] relates to the mainstream of the Chan movement after Fifth Patriarch Hongren. [h] History provides an illustration of how concrete rationality takes place and when and where rationality becomes complicated and even falls into obscurity to the

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point of losing any evidence. History also provides a picture of how development proceeds and what a picture a contour of the development yields. History provides resources for abstraction and reflection which could lead to more historical and histographical research. One must therefore recognize the importance of a dialectical exchange and interchange between history and theory.

    A basic paradox in understanding the Chan enlightenment is that it is said to be beyond linguistically constituted understanding (buliwenzi). [i] Does this imply that one must be enlightened in the Chan sense in order to understand the enlightenment? My answer to this question is that one can point to this understanding by having understanding in a rational discourse which can be seen as being conditioned by time and history. To go into time and history is to provide a condition for the rational understanding which would point to the understanding beyond it. Hence we could point to the three steps involved in the lijie understanding of the wujie, namely to reconstruct history from the rational understanding on the basis of historical texts, to illuminate rational understanding on the basis of history thus reconstructed, and to point to a trans-rational understanding with rational understanding.

    With regard to Chan/Zen research since the time of Hu Shih [j] -- Suzuki Debate in the 1930's we see in European languages so far predominantly one-sided attraction to the mysticism of Chan/Zen and find relatively little study of the historiographical sources and historical resources of the Chan. Besides, the West has shown more interest in understanding Japanese Zen than understanding Chinese Chan. In the past 50 years we see a dominance of the writings of Heinrich Dumoulin who apparently did his Zen studies more on the basis of Japanese edited Chinese sources than on the basis of original Chinese sources. He subsumed Chan into Zen without giving adequate accounts of Chan philosophy or Chan history. For this reason one must welcome the appearance of Bernard Faure's book Chan Insights and Oversight (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993, 274 pages with 6 pages of glossary and

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34 pages of bibliography) in which refreshing insights on Chan philosophy and Chan history are found: It is a historically significant book for philosophers of Chan and a philosophically or methodologically significant book for historians of Chan. It is a book which discusses the formation and nature of Chan both historically and as a philosophical school. It also provides a basis for regarding Chan as a testing ground of the validity and adequacy of any modern and contemporary Western theory of meaning or analysis of meaning. It is a book of rich insights and resourceful reflections on the languages and discourses of Chan/Zen, although it may still have its oversights and limitations.

    Faure sees Chan-Zen as related but not sharing the same essence and thus looks at the whole Chan-Zen development from a difference and rhizomatically open point of view: Chan-Zen is developed in various locales and under various historical and ideological constraints. In this way he is able to see a fuller and more microscopic picture of Chan-Zen.

    Secondly, Faure is more methodologically conscious than any earlier Chan-Zen scholars. In this regard, he has relied more on the European tradition of methodology than American analytical methodology. One must admit that the best studies on Chan/Zen outside China and Japan are found in Europe rather than in America. Faure is obviously European in origin, though he published his first English book on Chan/ Zen in 1991. In fact, apart from his reference to Wittgenstein, Gadamer, Heidegger and a few post-modernist authors he is more French-philosophy-oriented than anything else. His methodology is to narrate how the Chan lineage was formed and how it was inscribed and described in language. It is a methodology which is both hermeneutical and performative, both deconstructional and reconstructive. He has much to do with contemporary French postmodernism and Derrida. He is sensitive to the presuppositions of Orientalism of the 19th Century and a new prototyped Orientalism of the 20th Century which sees the Orient or Asia (India and China and thus the tradition of Chan-Zen) as the land of wisdom and "authenticity". But Faure criticized Said nevertheless by pointing out that there are epistemological obstacles to be overcome

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in this Orientalism, not to be simply rejected. For him ethnocentrism and prevalence of Western rationality are a cultural phenomenon or even a hermeneutical issue, not simply a matter of imperialism.

    What then is Faure's approach? The answer is: Faure wants to avoid both Orientalism and Post-Orientalism (idealizing Japanese Zen as pure spirituality as in Suzuki) by adopting a performative-hermeneutical analysis in terms of "localized" understanding and a rhetorical extension to a new discourse. In other words, I understand this to be an effort to find the inner logic of the formation of the Chan-Zen literality and ideology which would stand aloof from the tangles of Western rationalistic philosophy or a mystical Orientalist language. If this is a correct understanding of Faure, he would have my sympathy and support. We do need to treat Chan-Zen as it appears in texts and historiography. We do need to see Chan-Zen from many points of view and in a context of orality versus literality, hermeneutics versus rhetoric, inscribing and describing. We have to point out that we also have to see it as rooted in a fundamental human effort of a human person to liberate himself from himself and this effort as such, of course, cannot be understood without looking into fundamental ways of thinking of Chan-Zen on the one hand and studying the schools of thought which gave rise to them on the other. It is with this understanding I shall now evaluate Faure' own insights and oversights.

    In the first part, there is insight in Faure's view that much of the Chan-Zen tradition as reported in Chan-Zen literature was constructed in later generations and thus should be conceived as a metaphor in literature. He says "This means among other things that, contrary to a common belief, the Chan tradition is seen to develop, not from one single stem to various branches, but rather retroactively, from the branches to the stem: thus, from the seventh to the ninth centuries, a number of relatively independent movements such as the Lankavatara school, Dongshan [k] school, the Northern and Southern schools, the Niutou [l] ("Oxhead") school, the Jingzhong and baotang [m] schools in Szechwan, and the Hongzhou [n] school, all looked back to Bodhidharma

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as their founder and attempted to derive legitimacy from their hypothetical connection with Bodhidharma's early community." (119-120) This is no doubt a useful approach for Chan-Zen, as would be useful for tracing formation of any intellectual and religious tradition.

    It is conceivable that a given tradition is founded by a great master or a great teacher such as in the case of the Confucian tradition with regard to Confucius or in the case of the Daoist tradition with regard to Lao Zi. [o] But even with Confucian tradition one must see the strong contribution from latter-day Confucianists such as Mencius [p] and Xunzi [q] and with Daoist tradition later-day Daoists such as Zhuangzi [r] and authors of the Huainanzi [s]. Thus for any tradition later contributions and retrospective absorption and identification could be important and essential. How could the Confucian tradition or the Christian tradition develop with only Confucius standing alone or Jesus Christ standing alone? Once a tradition is established, then we could see how it branches to different schools like a tree. We can see how a tradition may be misconceived as a tree branching only. We have to ask how the tree forms itself: the tree is formed from its sporadic roots which pull their strength together to give rise to the tree. Hence the post-modern metaphor of the rhizomes for describing the rise of a tradition has its powerful suggestiveness. But then we must be also reminded that once the tree is formed, it can branch out, and likewise once a tradition is established, it could give rise to different subtraditions and divisions and schools. This is true of Confucianism and Daoism as it is true of Christianity.

    In this sense, although we need not stick to a "teleological model" of Chan-Zen tradition as suggested in the writings of Suzuki, we need not deny that Chan-Zen tradition has its historical substance in terms of scattered but related events, interactions and organizations. It cannot be simply conceived as a tradition constructed from texts and latter-day interpretations. It is true that before Hui Neng [t] there is no real great influential figure. Bodhidharma has started something which may be totally different from latter-day developed Chan schools, whether Northern or Southern. [2] As a legendary figure from a foreign land, a

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story of Bodhidharma no doubt has tended a charisma to him as acclaimed founder of the Chan.

    Perhaps we could describe the development of the Chan tradition in China as having three stages: the beginning stage which can be described as "Five patriarchs in search of a tradition". But when we come to the Sixth Patriarch Hui Neng, we have a clearly visible trunk which radiates influences through many of his disciples. Hence the composition or writing of the Platform Sutra should be considered a crucial turning point for the development of Chan as a tradition. This should be the second stage of the Chan development. After Hui Neng, we enter the third stage of development which is the branching of Chan teaching into the Five Houses which their lineages. The transplantation of Chan to Japan would of course belong to a different story which is not teleologically linked to the mainstream development of Chan tradition in China. To what extent Doogen has also preserved the Caotong [u] spirit is of course another question.

    I have no quarrel in considering history as arising from historiography and the historiographic narrative as arising from even more fundamental manipulation of texts or even the first selection of language expression of the historical events. But I am doubtful that Chan history is or should be a history of Chan as literature or as a literary genre (123). This is again a post-modern approach, an idea which needs clarification. Faure fell on Hayden White's philosophy of history which envisions history as simply a story to be told by a writer of the history. A historian is a historiographer and a historiographer is a literary writer or even possibly an artistic poet. Historical narrative is basically formed from a process of "emplotment" controlled by a figurative and rhetorical user of language, and is enhanced by the writer's "topological code" in terms of metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony. But we are not compelled to think of history from this point of view: there is always a relative reality to deal with or a text to be anchored in terms of times and places of its author. This means that we could not erase the referentially of a text. In other words, we could rewrite the history

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of Chan-Zen, but we must still make a distinction between the world-objective and the language-subjective. Many leads are possible and there must be not only interpretations of facts and events, but also recognization of relatively objective facts and events as a basis and target for interpretation. We must see the rise of Chan as signifying different important historical events and reflecting theoretical understandings which need not be conflicting, but rather overlapping and complementary. (124) To see this aspect of historical or histographical writing is to recognize the possibility of previously unknown facts as fundamental basis for creative knowledge.

    Faure has discussed several alternatives to the historical approach, namely the structural and hermeneutical analysis. The discussion of structural analysis is important, for it gives a basis for reconstructing interactive, mutually agonistic or contrastive parallels in the development of Chan. In a sense the historiography of Chan lineage is no doubt such a reconstruction under structural constraints or demands. However I do not regard Hui Neng or Nanyue Huairang [v] and Qingyuan Xingsi [w] as mere reconstructions. One must allow that tracing beginnings may also take time in history: history has to be written when new facts or new understanding of facts emerged in a course of time. There is no paradigmatic type case without a syntagmatic case, nor can there be a synchronic dimension of a history without a diachronic sub-history. The structural approach to the understanding of the history of Chan in this sense informs the history as a structure or as a framework. Yet it might lose sight however of the hidden purpose or meaning of this reconstruction which is to bring historical rationalization or pursuasion to the practice and faith in its truth, namely the quest for enlightenment and emancipation from the vexations and sufferings of life.

    The discussion of the hermeneutical approach is equally well made by Faure. It shows the sophisticated knowledge Faure has of contemporary hermeneutics and its debates. Whether the hermeneutics of suspicion (critique of ideology) or the hermeneutics of retrieval or faith (effective history), there is no merely logical way but only a

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hermeneutical way to establish the meaning and meaningfulness of a text. I agree that a "systematically distorted communication" is always possible and a "fusion of horizons" is difficult but each tradition or text for each representative of a tradition and each reader has a way of assimilating new elements and making extensions or new adjustments under new circumstances. The ultimate model of fusion is resolution and integration of conflicts in a hermeneutical field, where an objective explanation would link and merge with a subjective understanding. As object and subject have to be defined relative to a meta-theory, so also would the objective explanation and subjective understanding. The former could be a rational and scientific discourse of cause and effect, the latter could be a matter of the disclosure of truth. But there is always the possibility of a two-tiered theory of truth relativized to contexts which becomes inexpressible when decontextualized. One may see the Chan enlightenment precisely under these terms: It is to see everything as causally related; then it is to see everything as uncaused and possessing a self-sufficient nature or meaning on its own. Finally it is to see everything as neither this nor that, but as both this and that. Even misunderstanding can prove to be an occasion for innovative understanding in so far it leads to insight into reality. Such is the case of Doogen's misreading of his Chinese teacher Tiantong Rujin's [x] "xinchentuoluo" [y] as "xinshengtuoluo [z] as mentioned by Faure (138).

    This fact underlies Derrida's notions of "differance" and "dissemination". In considering the dialectical or dialogical process of communication, there is no prevention of concrescence of novelty and difference which also makes the understanding of enlightenment "direct", "performative" and even "rhetorical". Each understanding of enlightenment is an enlightenment, and each enlightenment implies also an understanding of enlightenment. Here again Faure is right in pointing out that we cannot simply replace knowledge by performance or hermeneutics by deconstruction (150). I must say that Faure has struck a multifocal balance on the understanding process which no doubt can be applied to our understanding of Chan both as a history and as a theory or

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practice.

    In the second part, languages of space and time in Chan are subject to a philosophical and phenomenological critique in connection with Chan's relation to local religious discourses. It is interesting to see how Chan masters explained the state of enlightenment as an emptiness of both space and time. Faure remarks that the world as emptied of symbols in an enlightened mind needs no interpretation. Certainly, it is true that no interpretation is needed "here and now", but how about "there and then" when and where do symbols and language arise? It is a matter of what I call "contextual reconstitution", where mountains remain mountains and waters remain waters. Although truth reveals itself in the immediate understanding of an unmediated mind, all existing interpretations or their possibilities will remain free from conflict and present themselves as mind and truth at the same time. This suggests that the genuine description of a state of enlightenment is not separation of thought and forms from emptiness, but is rather their mutual transcendence and correlation at the same time, as Hui Neng has stressed in the Platform Sutra. This switch from a Lankavatara nihilism to a Platform Sutra realism must be recognized as an essential element of the Chinese Chan tradition. Faure makes an illuminating footnote on the contrast between localized and unlocalized ("seeing from nowhere") approaches, leading to difference between the structurist and the post-structurist discourses. There is apparently a mixed and unclarified issue involving so called "ocularcentrism" (panoptical conception of the subject), non-ocularcentrism, and a localized perspectivism in both the metadiscourses and the discourses under discussion. This issue in fact is an issue of the tension and balance between the homogeneity or pure oneness in the conscious nonconsciousness of awakening or enlightenment on the one hand, and the heterogeneity and contextualized localities or temporalities in actual perception of the world of practical life on the other. A person who becomes enlightened in the best Chanist way negates his perception of the world of diversity, yet he may also negate his negation of his such perception. Besides, he has to stay active

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or related to this world before he passes away. Therefore a genuine enlightenment should include both a dimension of transcendence beyond diversity and a dimension of immanence toward diversity. [3]

    When we apply this understanding of enlightenment to space and time, we shall see how there must be such a tension of homogeneity versus heterogeneity, and oneness versus diversity. When one reflects on one's enlightenment one will also find that within the enlightenment there are resources for not only resolving this tension, but also for transforming this tension into a creative remaking of oneself as represented in the unity of the three bodies (namely the unity of the law body and the reward body in the creative openness of the transformation body). Hence, the polarity and consequent unity of the logocentricity and multivocality in Chan with regard to their description and experience of space and time should be regarded as an inherent characteristic of Chan thinking, particularly when we think back about the impact of the Zhouyi [aa] philosophy as a way of thinking which shows itself from the beginning in the founding sutra of the tradition, the Platform Sutra. As to whether there are more visual/spatial metaphors than aural/temporal metaphors in the Chan texts, and what this would suggest, remains both an empirical question and a matter of interpretation. Perhaps, this fundamental tension could also apply to the tension between language and non-language in the speaking or showing of enlightenment in the Chan tradition. There cannot be an absolute rejection of language, because the absolute and precise rejection of language has to be itself formulated in language.

    What is then the nature of language in Chinese Chan? In the first place, language denotes objects and articulates ideas. Language is also constitutive of its denotation and articulation, particularly in a visual language such as Chinese. As such, Chinese language like Chinese painting reconstructs reality from a holistic point of view: the whole is constitutive of the world and the mind. What is presented in the language is not simply what is represented in the language, for there is the invisible/or the yin [ab] part of reality existing side by side with the

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yang [ac] part of the reality. Hence language also speaks of that which is beyond the language (yizai-yanwai). [ad] We may thus regard this as the exhibitive function of language. Language speaks and yet the negation of it also speaks. Speaking is not a matter of language alone but of non-language (including silence) as well.

    The fourth ability of language is that it embodies truth and is the expression and realization of truth. Hence speaking is an end not just a means. It is in this sense that Faure has mentioned Granet's characterization of Chinese words as emblems (or marked extensions) of reality itself. Yet Chinese language is not just like a displayed emblem, but is a virtual power which can be elicited or vocalized like a mantra.

    The fifth use of language is that it can be a pointer toward something in a context or situation where the context or situation calls for identification. The pointive or indicative (indexical) uses of language makes the Chan koans (kung-an) [ae] intriguing: It points the way out and it points to nothingness. The fact that koans can be puzzling shows that it is not always clear what they point to. It requires a meditative reflection to reveal what the pointed-out is to be or not to be.

    Finally, Chan language can be highly performative and perlocutionary. It is by its being used, and perhaps being used in terms of all these different functions, that Chan language could become a power of awakening by means of which one becomes thereby quickly enlightened. There is no denial that this power of enlightening is derived from many levels of the language (the syntactic, the semantic, semiotic or pragmatic) when all the levels work together to produce a force destructive of blocking and holding. I have indicated in my writing how patent and concrete contradictions and impossibilities formulated in koans in general leads right into emptiness and de-conceptualization whereby the truth of nature reveals or realizes itself.

    With all these functions of language being said, we may indeed agree with Faure in criticizing the traditional hermeneutical interpretation of the Chan language as too narrow an approach to understanding the art and the functions of speaking in Chan. Not only must we be

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reminded of many different rhetorical styles of speaking in the Five Houses of Chan. We must also remember the famous sayings from the Linji Yixuan: [af] "Sometimes my shout is like a sword of the Diamond King sometimes my shout is like a lion crouching on ground; sometimes my shout is like the fathoming gauge; sometimes my shout is not to be used as one shout." [4] I am, however, not sure that Chan's rejection of "language as absolute" is a result of assimilating Tantric, Daoist and Confucian practices and beliefs. Even if some case can be made for this, it would remain artificial and reductive if we lose sight of the creativity released from the dialectical quest and thinking for the truth of enlightenment in Chan. If anything, Daoism has paved the way and set a model for the Chan masters.

    In his Chapter Eight, Faure has brought out two activities of the Chan's use of language: In-scribing and De-scribing. Or rather he has linked the slogan of "not establishing language" (buliwenzi) to Derrida's analysis of writing and logocentrism. The interesting thing is that while Derrida describes the logocentric spoken word and praises the writing as differentially non-logocentric, Chan would discard both speaking and writing as a hindrance to seeing the nature of the self and illuminating the mind. In fact, for Chan it is not writing alone which hinders our vision of truth. All things would so hinder it, and therefore to see them as emptiness is a necessary condition for the realization of the truth of enlightenment. But then, as I pointed out earlier, once enlightened, no hindrance is also a hindrance, and so speaking and writing would be as well. The pattern (wen) [ag] of language like any pattern would become a display of the truth rather than its hindrance. In this sense the logocentric issue need not be so much an issue of whether there is the spoken language at work as an issue of whether there is the egocentric self at work. Besides, as pointed out by Faure, there is no reason to assume that Chinese language escapes from logocentrism and refuses to lend itself to a "metaphysics of presence" because of the lack of a logos. Similarly, whether there is more orality or more writing literacy is no issue at all, for both can be positively argued for, just as one may also

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equally argue for more concretion or for more abstraction in the use of Chan language.

    The principle of harmonization which is implicit in the Zhouyi symbolism and made explicit in the Yizhuan [ah] is well implemented in the use of the Chan language, where both abstract and concrete, both oral and literary, both li [ai] and dao, [aj] are fused to an indistinguishable extent. Even though different koans and poems in different schools and during different periods put stress one way or another, there is no easy formula to enable one to generalize over the relative weight of orality versus literacy, speaking versus writing, or concrete versus abstract, each in their polarities. The very ritual of transmission may favor the oral over the literal because of the need for direct contact and conventional practice. Besides, to make the auditory sense predominate in the Chan for the sake of subitist enlightenment need not make sense. Faure here is right in pointing out that vision can be simultaneous in time and sound can be sequential in time. Hence there is no reason to explain the nature o sudden enlightenment on ground of sound rather than vision. Perhaps, vision is closer to truth, for there is a long tradition of vision/illumination and observation (guan) [ak] since the founding of the symbolism of the Zhouyi. It is in this vision of the whole reality that the pattern (wen) emerges. Writing as pattern and as a symbolism of pattern is presupposed or emerges from such a vision and observation. Faure has taken note that there is a growing literalization of the oral in the later development of the tradition of Chan, and this no doubt is found in the historiographical formation of the Chan tradition.

    It is clear that in both classical Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism and even in classical Daoism there is the illumination of the truth as the dao or as the li, and this has been described as the "seeing" or "observing" (guan) as suggested in the Yijing tradition. Of course the dao/li is not the logos, but rather it is the self-transformative power of a source to diffuse and totalize in a dialectical framework. Hence the metaphysics of presence is also at the same time a metaphysics of absence via the polarity of yin and yang. It is against such background that Faure's

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speaking of the in-scribing and de-describing makes great sense: in the sense of de-scribing reality Chan writing is against writing, but in the sense of in-scribing reality Chan masters would themselves keep writing. It must be pointed out that although the distinction between in-scribing and de-scribing is not quite thoroughly clarified by Faure, their relationship in terms of their roles has been forcefully made clear by him.

    Apparently, de-scribing is a process which decontextualizes the original orality or in-scription and provides possibility of intertextual extension of meaning. This then allows for a recontextualization. [5] This is a process of the transformation of the rhetoric of the oral into the hermeneutic of the literary. But is this the reason why the Chan master distrusts writing? Again it is a matter of reaching enlightenment either due to the mediation (for transcendence) of the writing or at giving live meaning to the writing because of the enlightenment reached independently. There is no absolute rejection of writing or hermeneutics at all in Chan, as there is always an interplay between the hermeneutical and the rhetorical and between the locutionary and the perlocutionary in the koans of Chan. It is clear that the Chan discourse is composed of both. There interplay serves also both the purpose of canonization and the purpose of re-oralizing the scriptural tradition. Perhaps by exploring into functions of rhetoric and hermeneutic one can make a good and useful distinction between the in-scribing and the de-scribing. Other useful paradigms such as speech and writing, space and time, reason and history, immediacy and mediation, identity and difference, presence and absence, performance and exegesis, can be brought in alignment to form a co-logic of practice and theory in the Chan discourse. [6]

    The overall significance and insight of this book can never be overestimated. But it is also a book which is heavily leaning on contemporary European philosophy for explaining the formation, the transmission, and the transformation of Chan as a tradition and as a discourse. Oftentimes it is unclear to a reader whether he is more informed about Chan or about contemporary European philosophical issues. This is a book of insights which are derived from methodologies and strategies

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of a prismatic analysis as well as derived from theories of discourses in postmodernist literature. Suspicions could arise as to whether there are often overkills of simple and practical questions through extensive use of theoretical and methodological tools. Consequently, the main thesis or the main body of theses on Chan remain, in the end, scattered and dispersed. Perhaps, it is a matter of writing style and a case of a postmodern epistemology of writing.

    Despite what I have said about Faure's numerous insights into the Chan tradition and the Chan discourse, and apart from other comments in the above, there remain also three oversights which perhaps can be said to result from these insights. First, Faure has focused on topics of interest from contemporary postmodernist European philosophy and methodology, but how Chan is related to the native Chinese philosophical tradition was not even touched. It shows how Chan tradition is in-scribed, de-scribed and discoursed but not how Chan works to produce enlightenment. In this connection, we notice that Faure has used almost exclusively Western and Japanese resources for reference while only three or four books written in Chinese are included in the bibliography. All interesting books on Chan published in China and Taiwan before 1993 were ignored. Although we cannot say that Faure is exactly guilty of cultural bias, he has done nothing to avoid this perception.

    Second, the central question of enlightenment in Chan-Zen is only peripherally discussed. Hence Faure's elaboration of Chan "insights", no matter how interesting in his talk on language, writing and self, camouflage an oversight toward the core question. Questions on how these insights are related to enlightenment remain unanswered.

    Finally, although Faure has made some distinction between the Chinese Chan and the Japanese Zen traditions in the beginning of the book, this distinction is not clear nor explicit. Consequently, he seems to develop a pattern of making Doogen a singularly outstanding representative for the whole Chan-Zen tradition at the expense of those who were more collectively or severally representative. Granted that the Chinese literature on Chan is enormous, important Chinese Chan figures from

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the two hundred years of the period of late Tang and early Song (800-1000) should be able to yield more excerpts and cases for analysis, illustration and understanding.

University of Hawaii at Manoa

NOTES

1. See my article "Chan/Zen languages of paradoxes", in Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Vol. 1, Issue 1, 1973.

2. As is known now, Bodhidharma's essay "Two Entrances and Four Practices" is a latter day attribution to him.

3. These two dimensions should not only balance each other but also should generate each other to be capable of balancing each other so that one could both separate from thought at the thought and separate from the form at the form.

4. This is my translation from the original Chinese text: Rentian Yanmu, [al] copyrighted by Pa Hutian [am] and Lin Yizheng, [an] Mingwen [ao] Book Co. 1982, 63.

5. Reference is made here by Faure to Ricoeur's Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, ed. and trans. John B. Thompson, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981.

6. This would also provide a basis for Faure's explaining the formation and perception of self and individuation in the Chan tradition. On this important topic, I shall reserve a future occasion to make my comments.

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CHINESE GLOSSARY