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Chan Rhetoric of Uncertainty in the Blue Cliff Record

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Chan Rhetoric Draof Uncertainty in the Blue Cliff Record:

Sharpening a Sword at the gon Gate

Reviewed by Rafal K. Stepien

University of Oxford

rafal.stepien@philosophy.ox.ac.uk


Chan Rhetoric of Uncertainty in the Blue Cliff Record; Sharpening a Sword at the Dragon Gate. By Steven Heine. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016, ISBN 978-0-19-939776-1 (hardback) 978-0-19-939777-8 (paperback), $105.00 USD (hardback) $36.95 USD (paper­back).


Over the last three decades, Steven Heine has maintained a constant presence at the intellectual forefront of Chan/Zen, and more broadly of East Asian Buddhist, studies. Given that he has published over a dozen monographs and as many edited collections, not to mention scores of scholarly articles, dealing mainly with Chinese and Japanese Chan/Zen in its historical, philosophical, and literary dimensions, it should come as no surprise that Heine’s latest monograph, Chan Rhetoric of Uncertainty in the Blue Cliff Record: Sharpening a Sword at the Dragon Gate, will prove re­quired reading for anyone studying not only the Record itself, but also a wide range of related topics in Chan/Zen/Seon studies, embracing the manifold histories of textual, doctrinal, and practical transmissions and


University of Oxford, rafal.stepien@philosophy.ox.ac.uk. transformations from Song-dynasty China to later eras in Chinese, Japa­nese, and Korean Buddhism.


Heine’s book is centrally concerned with the Blue Cliff Record


(C. Biyanlu, J. Hekiganroku), a collection of one hundred gongan/koan cases and commentaries compiled and composed by Xuedou Chongxian WiflS-l® (980-1052) and Yuanwu Keqin (1063- 1135), and long celebrated, as Heine notes, as the “premier work of the Chan school” (1). The opening sentence explicitly states that Heine’s “aim in this book is to provide a critical textual and innovative discur­sive analysis ... of the inventive rhetorical style and its intimate relation to the fundamental religious message of the Blue Cliff Record” (1). The constructive aspect of Heine’s endeavor centers upon formulating a hermeneutic of the Record founded upon the principle of uncertainty. This principle, which Heine advances as “the key to undergoing spiritual realization” (12) as per the Record, is variously defined as, for example, “a resourceful approach to discourse that is characterized by fundamental ambiguity and purposeful inconclusiveness” (1), “a diversion, inversion, or subversion that epitomizes upending fetters and, thereby, gaining lib­eration from conventional views by virtue of the Chan master’s facility with utilizing diverse sorts of discursive devices” (34), and “a spiritual condition of upholding and perpetuating the interior illumination of the ancestors gained through undergoing experiential upheavals and rever­sals” (38).


Heine’s first chapter, entitled “Prolegomenon to a New Herme­neutic,” is primarily devoted to making a case for “uncertainty as an in­novative interpretive tool for deconstructing each and every standpoint” (12). In the course of this chapter, Heine provides a preliminary intro­duction to many of the themes that will occupy him for the rest of the book, including the content and structure of the Record itself; the back­ground to and complicated history of its composition, destruction, and rehabilitation; and the influence it exerted on later Buddhist composi­tions throughout East Asia.


Heine’s interpretation of the Record in terms of uncertainty relies upon a close reading of the text as a structurally multi-layered, literarily poly-morphous, and authorially dual-composed whole. It is in Chapter 2, concerned with “Textual Formation in Historical and Rhetorical Con­texts,” that this reading first gets fleshed out. As in the rest of the book, Heine alternates here between historical exposition and literary herme­neutics, on the understanding that his interpretive goal can and will be buttressed through substantiation of its historical validity.

Thus, Heine initially catalogues and evaluates related earlier texts from all “Five Houses” of Chan and beyond, including encounter dialogues, transmis­sion of the lamp texts, poetry collections, and pre-Buddhist Chinese lit­erary and religio-philosophical writings. Heine uses this material to then detail how Yuanwu’s comments on Xuedou’s base text resulted in what he describes as “a baroque seven-layer style of commentary” (70) com­prised of the main case and verse by Xuedou together with in­troduction Szf, case-capping phrase WsB, case evaluative remark verse capping phrase WsB, and verse evaluative remark by

Yuanwu. Heine proceeds to focus on Yuanwu’s pingchang comments, a term which ordinarily refers straightforwardly to prose as opposed to poetic remarks, but which Heine uses to suggest “the entire inventive commentarial style of Yuanwu” (72); a “harmoneutics” (73) by means of which Yuanwu creatively interacts with Xuedou’s remarks. It merits mentioning here that, through Heine’s nuanced and detailed expositions of the pingchang commentarial method, Yuanwu emerges as the central figure—and a truly creative writer and profound thinker—of both this chapter and the book as a whole.

A section on “Uncertainty as a Model of Self-Realization” follows, in which Heine argues that, rather than posit­ing either a literary or nonliterary stance (as per standard ty­pologies), the Record’s main concern is in aiding awakening through “breakthrough instances that create a radical turnabout at the spur of the moment” (78), the components of which experience are then listed. The chapter concludes with an unfortunately brief list of what Heine considers the five main elements of “the Song worldview that informed the composition of Chan gongan commentaries” (85), and an attempt to find resonances of Blue Cliff Record-style uncertainty in contemporary Western culture. This last section, which mentions figures as disparate as Werner Heisenberg, Richard Schell, John Keats, and James Joyce among others, may well prove divisive among readers: Those familiar with Heine’s forays into such territory (he has authored a monograph called Bargainin’for Salvation: Bob Dylan, A Zen Master?) will doubtless find such zooming-out from the Chan context welcome, while those suspi­cious of cross-cultural comparative work in the study of religion will grumble at the absence of any theoretical framework or enough detail to substantiate the claims made in a section which is in any case altogether tangential to the arguments of the book as a whole.


Heine’s constructive project in Chapters 1 and 2 is intimately re­lated to his critical aim of demonstrating the untenability of what he identifies as the five current approaches to theorizing Yuanwu’s rela­tions to his predecessor Xuedou and successor Dahui Zonggao (1089-1163). These are listed on 92 and critiqued in the remainder of the book: The “lettered Chan thesis” and “prose preference thesis” in Chap­ter 3 on 98-115 and 115-127 respectively, the “stepping stone thesis” and “precursor status thesis” in Chapter 4 on 149-157 and 157-167 respec­tively, and the “diminishing impact thesis” in Chapter 6 (223-258). Heine characterizes all of these standpoints as “one-sided” (93) insofar as they err toward seeing Yuanwu as aligned with one or other of the “literary” or “anti-literary” factions within Chan. Instead, Heine examines Yu­anwu’s pingchang method of prose and poetic commentary to argue that Yuanwu is both aware of the dangers of discourse as a hindrance to en­lightenment and consummately able to deploy literary means as an aid toward it. As such, “Yuanwu seeks to carve out a middle position be­tween naive affirmation and stubborn rejection of literary Chan” (94).


Chapters 3 and 4 elaborate on this thesis through study of Yu­anwu in relation to Xuedou and Dahui respectively. Thus, Chapter 3 on “Yuanwu in His Own Write Vis-a-Vis Xuedou” charts the Song and pre­Song literary and philosophical terrain within which Xuedou, and Yu- anwu following him, wrote. Heine deflates the “lettered Chan thesis” (according to which Yuanwu is said to embrace literature unproblemati- cally and thereby align himself with Xuedou as against Dahui) through study of Xuedou’s and Yuanwu’s rhetorical approaches as per selected passages, all with an eye to demonstrating that “the primary focus of the Blue Cliff Record is on edification in regard to realizing enlightenment ra­ther than erudition based on literary flair” (98). Heine then turns to a critique of the “prose preference thesis” (according to which Yuanwu is said to move the emphasis of the text toward prose as against poetry), arguing that “for Yuanwu poetic and prose approaches to gongan com­mentary are compatible and reinforcing” (43).


Chapter 4 on “Yuanwu in His Own Write Vis-a-Vis Dahui” is con­cerned with Yuanwu’s compositions in the Record in light of his disciple Dahui’s supposed burning of the text around 1140. Heine begins by charting “the historical and ideological (dis)connections between Yu­anwu and Dahui” (128) through study of both the main textual sources describing (and in some cases justifying) Dahui’s action, and the intellec­tual development of Dahui himself in relation to his master Yuanwu. With this as preamble, Heine argues that the “stepping stone thesis” (ac­cording to which Yuanwu is said to move toward but not fully achieve the minimalism espoused by the mature Dahui) “is overshadowed by contrary evidence demonstrating significant differences between the two thinkers” (153).

The “precursor status thesis” (according to which Yuanwu is said to anticipate, even embrace, Dahui’s position as the logi­cal consequence of his own) is rejected on similar grounds, such that “a careful analysis of the rhetorical structures of their respective works for the most part shows a significant disparity between approaches” (158). Chapter 4 ends with a section of “Further Reflections” as to Yuanwu’s relation to Xuedou and Dahui in which Heine proposes three general conclusions. Briefly put, these are, firstly, that Yuanwu’s relationship to these other thinkers, themselves complex, is complex; that Yuanwu’s position on literature is ambivalent; and that (in tension with both this last claim and with Heine’s earlier rejection of Yuanwu as a “stepping stone” or a “precursor” to Dahui) Yuanwu largely shares Dahui’s misgiv­ings as to the soteriological efficacy of linguistic formulations.


Chapter 5, on “Case Studies of Representative Gongan,” suspends Heine’s critical project in favor of further analyses ofYuanwu’s commen- tarial strategies. In the opening section, Heine rehearses his reading in terms of uncertainty (also referred to here through terms such as vagueness, inconclusiveness, and ambiguity) through a series of brief comments on cases culled liberally from throughout the Record. The rest of the chapter is then concerned with “examining how Xuedou and Yu­anwu reacted to diversity and disparity within Chan” (188), and is struc­tured according to a word-play method familiar to readers of Heine’s corpus. Thus, Heine divides the “three commentarial components used to construct the rhetoric of uncertainty in the Blue Cliff Record” (188) he identifies here in terms of (1) an informative and formative foundational level; (2) a reformative and performative transitional level; and (3) a transformative and deformative transcendent level.


The final chapter, on “Enduring Legacy in Relation to Textual Controversies,” is designed to function as a substantial refutation of what Heine earlier identified as the “diminishing impact thesis,” accord­ing to which the Blue Cliff Record is said to have “quickly faded in signifi­cance, almost never to be duplicated or followed again” (223). To but­tress his own position (viz., that the Yuanwu-style pingchang method of evaluative reaction “not only did not die out but was also sustained dur­ing all developmental stages of the gongan tradition” (225) in China, Ja­pan, and Korea), Heine draws on myriad textual sources.

These range from “Early Emulations” (228-238) of the Record in Song-, Yuan-, and Ming-dynasty China, Goryeo-era Korea, and Kamakura-period Japan; “Medieval Applications” (238-241) in Muromachi-era Japanese fine arts (temple gardens, Noh theater, and poetry); “Edo Appropriations” (241- 243) in the form of pingchang-style commentaries on the Record itself as well as both gongan collections and haiku poems inspired by it; and

Modern Adaptations” (243-245) in a 20th-century Japanese novel, mod­ern Chinese and Japanese scholarship, and a contemporary Western rec­reation ofYuanwu’s rhetorical style. The chapter concludes with a foray into the question of the Record’s transmission to Japan, with particular attention to the One Night Blue Cliff—Jails' purportedly brought to Ja­pan by Eihei Dogen (1200-1253).


The book concludes with several end matters. First among these are four appendices: (1) a detailed “Blue Cliff Record Lineage Chart” which provides (what the reader is left to infer are) the Record case numbers in which the mentioned figures occur and their name in Chinese characters but not their dates; (2) a list of “Blue Cliff Record Cases with Notes” which lists the 100 cases in order together with the dialogue participants and terse notes as to who, if anyone, composed an introduction or notes; (3) a list of “Blue Cliff Record Cases in Other Chan/Zen Texts” specifically the Record of Serenity by Wansong Xingxiu (1166-1246) and

the 300 Cases ID'S IS HU MU and Verse Comments from the Extensive Record by Dogen; and (4) “Timelines” of Yuanwu and Xuedou. Fol­lowing this are reference “Notes”; a “Sino-Japanese Glossary” of important terms, individuals, and texts; “Bibliography”; and “Index.” Almost two dozen photographs, maps, textual reproductions, tables, and timelines appear throughout the volume.


Helpfully, the original Chinese text is consistently reproduced in citations, though the occasional Sanskrit terms mentioned are rendered without diacritics (thus, for example, “dharmakaya” is rendered “dharma- kaya,” and “klesa” is rendered “klesa”). Unfortunately, however, the book as a whole is marred by dozens of copy-editing errors, including straightforward typographical mistakes (e.g., “618906” for the dates of the Tang dynasty, or “Daosim” for Daoism), wrong transliterations (e.g. “pushou” instead of pushuo for or “tutishen” instead of tudishen for ztitfe^), and other Chinese language related errors (e.g., instead of for the Linjianlu, or instead of for the Sijia Pingchanglu), among others. Though not as numerous as in some other recent publications from major scholarly presses, such pro­duction errors are disappointing from Oxford University Press, and do vitiate one’s reading enjoyment particularly in the latter half of the book. I mention them here in the hope that they may be rectified in any future edition.


In conclusion, this is an important and innovative literary, philo­sophical, and historical study of the Blue Cliff Record, and thus—given the work’s importance—by extension of Chan/Zen writing, thought, and practice in China, Japan, and—to a lesser extent—Korea over the last thousand years. Throughout the book, Heine’s truly impressive erudition on the topic is evinced above all by the sheer mastery with which he handles primary and secondary sources composed in diverse languages, cultures, and epochs. Heine seems to have read everything. He couples an intimate knowledge of the base text to thorough familiarity with the myriad prefaces, postfaces, and paratexts composed around it; the gongan and poetry collections inspired by it; and the several centuries of commentarial and scholarly work relating to it in Chinese, Japanese, and, more recently, European languages. Although some of the scholars cri­tiqued by Heine will doubtless disagree with his depiction of their views and/or his interpretation of the text, there can be no denying that his espousal of uncertainty as a soteriologically oriented rhetorical strategy in Chan works such as the Record will inform scholarly debate on the top­ic for many years to come.



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