Doogen and the Kooan Tradition: A Tale of Two Shoobgenzoo Texts
By Steven Heine

Reviewed by Jeffrey W. Dippmann

Journal of Chinese Philosophy
V. 26:3 (1999.09)
pp. 415-419

Copyright 1999 by Dialogue Publishing Company, 
Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A.

Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. xxii+329. Hardcover, US $20.50. ISBN 0-7914-1773-5.

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    Standard accounts of the Zen tradition routinely incorporate two complementary ideas. First, the kooan inexorably progressed from an incipient dialogic state to the main phrase method of watoo, utilizing cryptic puzzles (such as "What was my face before my parents were born?") to induce a psychological disruption leading to satori. The second premise argues that Doogen was vigorously anti-kooan and at irreparable odds with the Chinese Rinzai master Ta-hui. Together, these axioms have effectively relegated Doogen to a peripheral, if not wholly antagonistic, position outside the mainstream.

    Doogen and the Kooan Tradition is Steven Heine's third contribution to the continuing reevaluation of Doogen's place within the Zen tradition. While his first two works concentrated on Doogen's conception of impermanence as it relates to Heideggerian philosophy and Japanese literary precedents, the present volume advances Heine's postmodern discourse analysis of the kooan tradition and the nature of religious language. Using two Shooboogenzoo texts attributed to Doogen as his platform, Heine reassesses the Japanese master's relation to the kooan along with the conventional, teleological interpretation of its historical development. Besides, developing a unique methodological tool, the text also incorporates and summarizes the best of contemporary Japanese studies.

    Long considered genuine, the Japanese collection (Kana or Kaji Shooboogenzoo), contains kooan cases and extensive commentary. Sootoo traditionalists have rejected the Chinese collection of three hundred cases (the Mana or Shinji Shooboogenzoo) [1] since acceptance would have "upset their assumptions concerning the priority of zazen." [2] However, based on contemporary Japanese research, Heine accepts the Mana's authenticity and develops his analysis accordingly. [3] From this premise, Heine shows that we must reevaluate Doogen's place in the history of Zen from the perspective of his acquaintance with Sung Chinese thought and the interrelatedness of the two shooboogenzoo essays. Indeed, "the Japanese work can only be

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understood properly in connection to or as initially deriving from and eventually overshadowing the Chinese text." [4] Along with several other writing, [5] the Shooboogenzoo essays are analyzed intra-textually to elucidate Doogen's thought. Simultaneously, his works are placed within the inter-textual context of Sung ear materials from which he drew many of his passages and intellectual support. Herein lies the work's promise and failing for Chinese studies.

    While comparable to Bielefeldt's contextualization of Doogen, [6] the present work goes beyond this project and sets out three principal goals: (1) to introduce the most recent Japanese scholarship on the Shooboogenzoo texts; (2) to develop and apply a new methodological instrument (discourse analysis) to clarify the kooan tradition's development; and (3) to question conventional psychological interpretations of the kooan's purpose and propose a textually oriented symbolic intentionality. Each of these objectives is admirably met.

    According to Heine, discourse analysis serves as a corrective in overcoming conventional views of Doogen by examining Zen writings from a holistically oriented perspective. This method works by emphasizing ''intertextuall and interdependent genres." Clarifying potentially partisan history through a literary examination of Zen textual and narrative structure, concentrating on the symbolic nature of religious soteriology, and synthesizing the evaluation with insights from psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. [7]

    The first three chapters serve as methodological background to the concluding analysis in chapter four. Unfortunately, repetition mars the presentation, with several points repeated two or more times. Given the complexity and richness of Heine's methodology, restatement may be necessary, albeit distracting. While his interpret the Chinese roots of the tradition, the real promise of the book, as highlighted in the subtitle, lay in Heine's proposed analysis of the interaction between the Mana and Kana Shooboogenzoo texts. However, despite the prominence of the Chinese cases in both the subtitle and introductory remarks, the Mana plays virtually no role in Heine's analysis or methodological construction. Chapter three, outlining the contextuality of the two texts and discussing their inter- and intra-textual relations, has the potential for being the strongest part of the work, but ultimately proves the most disappointing.

    On the one hand, references to the Mana Shooboogenzoo (MS) are liberally distributed throughout the text. As for extended analysis or

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as the two texts arc introduced and the MS's authenticity is documented, [8] and again as Heine addresses intra-textuality and the MS's preparatory nature. [9] Outside these limited discussions, the Chinese version is relegated to a subsidiary role. This is particularly disappointing from the perspective of Chinese studies, especially after the author has eloquently established the importance of inter-textuality understands the text as far more than a simple written document. Instead, "'text' refers to the entire creative process, encompassing oral and written, conscious and unconscious, grounded and groundless dimensions." [10]

    Thus, in defending his articulate and well-founded assertion that the kooan best function as a religious symbol, Heine describes the multivalent and concrete nature of the Chinese language, the "importance of the dialogical encounter in Confucian, Neo-Confucian and Neo-Taoist tradition," and the integration of folk religion into the philosophical systems of Chinese religion. [11] The application of this formulation to the Chinese Shooboogenzoo and the multiple texts funneling into it and the Japanese version would have significantly strengthened the work.

    While the lack of attention paid to the MS is disappointing, Heine provides an extremely important appendix illustration the connections between the Mana Shooboogenzoo three hundred cases, Doogen's other texts and his principal Sung sources. Besides nine works by Doogen, the chart includes sixteen Sung Zen texts. The MS's most frequently cited masters are also tabulated, listing twenty-five instructors along with Sakyamuni. Invaluable as a resource for further research, the chart encapsulates the Ch'an foundations of Doogen's thought into a readily accessible format.

    Heine has devised a highly promising methodology designed to illuminate traditional aporetics haunting Zen scholarship. When applied to Sung and T'ang Ch'an texts, the method holds tremendous potential for unraveling the convergent influences on the developing tradition, while simultaneously illuminating the role and nature of language within Zen. Despite its neglect of the Chinese, the work is highly recommended for scholar interested in the history of Zen and the ongoing methodological reassessment.

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ENDNOTES

1. Also known as the Shooboogenzoo Sanbyakusoku.

2. Heine, p. 150.

3. However, as William Bodiford pointed out in his review of the same work (Journal of Japanese Studies 21:1 [1995] 222-228), Doogen's authorship of the Chinese manuscript has not yet been fully addressed nor definitively settled. Citing the work of Ishii Shudoo in particular, Bodiford contends that a number of unresolved issues remain, including the fact that Doogen's principal disciple, Senne, never consulted the Chinese text while amending a series of kooan's in the Shooboogenzoo writings. Heine's survey of the recent Japanese scholarship concerning the text's authenticity both neglects this problem and conveys the impression that the Sanbyakusoku's authenticity has been satisfactorily established (see his remarks on p. 9ff).

4. Heine, p. 12.

5. Specifically, the Ichiya Hekiganroku, the Eihei Koruku (ninth fascicle) and the Shooboogenzoo Zuimonki.

6. Carl Bielefeldt, Doogen's Manuals of Zen Meditation (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988).

7. Heine, p.97. Unfortunately, I am unconvinced and somewhat apprehensive about his use of Harold Bloom's psychoanalytical theory as it relates to intertextuality. Heine appeals to Bloom's "oedipal confrontation" theory a one means of explaining why Zen students often seek to go beyond, and at times assail their masters. According to Bloom, this occurs due to anxiety produced in the student's desire to establish his/her own "creative independence and integrity" (p. 63). While eschewing the psychological interpretation of Zen as propounded by Suzuki and others, Heine appears to uncritically accept this psychoanalytical theory inasmuch as it supports his underlying thesis.

8. Heine, pp. 3-13.

9. Heine, pp. 149-158.

10. Heine, p. 62.

11. Heine, pp. 56-58.

CHINESE GLOSSARY

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