Chan Insights and Oversights: An Epistemological Critique of the Chan Tradition

Bernard Faure

Princeton University Press, 1996 - Religion - 322 pages

For many people attracted to Eastern religions (particularly Zen Buddhism), Asia seems the source of all wisdom. As Bernard Faure examines the study of Chan/Zen from the standpoint of postmodern human sciences and literary criticism, he challenges this inversion of traditional "Orientalist" discourse: whether the Other is caricatured or idealized, ethnocentric premises marginalize important parts of Chan thought. Questioning the assumptions of "Easterners" as well, including those of the charismatic D. T. Suzuki, Faure demonstrates how both West and East have come to overlook significant components of a complex and elusive tradition. Throughout the book Faure reveals surprising hidden agendas in the modern enterprise of Chan studies and in Chan itself. After describing how Jesuit missionaries brought Chan to the West, he shows how the prejudices they engendered were influenced by the sectarian constraints of Sino-Japanese discourse. He then assesses structural, hermeneutical, and performative ways of looking at Chan, analyzes the relationship of Chan and local religion, and discusses Chan concepts of temporality, language, writing, and the self. Read alone or with its companion volume, The Rhetoric of Immediacy, this work offers a critical introduction not only to Chinese and Japanese Buddhism but also to "theory" in the human sciences.

What people are saying

Review: Chan Insights and Oversights: An Epistemological Critique of the Chan Tradition

User Review  - Alex - Goodreads

I think it's the kind of book that might only be enjoyable to people who are deeply immersed in both postmodern theory and Sinobuddhology. It's been a few years since I made my first foray into Faure ...

Review: Chan Insights and Oversights: An Epistemological Critique of the Chan Tradition

User Review  - Sage - Goodreads

Think you can toss the word, "Zen" around and know what you're talking about? Pull up a dictionary and read this and get ready to be befuddled. Suzuki was a crock. If you want to begin to pin "Zen ...

Contents

• ChanZen in the Western Imagination: 15
• Buddhism and Quietism: 29
• Chan and Indian Mysticism: 34
• The Apostle Bohidharma: 45
• Claudel and Buddhism: 50
• The Rise of Zen Orientalism: 52
• Suzukis Zen: 53
• The Western Critics of Suzuki: 67
• Nishida and the Kyoto School: 74
• Rethinking Chan Historiography: 89
• Places and People: 92
• The Rise of Chan Historiography in Japan: 99
• The Cost of Objectivism: 110
• The Teleological Fallacy: 114
• Writing Chan History: 123
• Alternatives: 126
• The Hermeneutic Approach: 135
• Toward a Performance Scholarship: 145
• PART TWO: 153
• Space and Place: 155
• Chan and Local Spirits: 156
• From Place to Space: 159
• Chan Insights and Divisions: 167
• Times and Tides: 175
• Conflicting Models: 177
• Dogen and His Times: 187
• The Ritualization of Time: 192
• Chan and Language Fair and Unfair Games: 195
• On the Way to Language: 199
• Poetical Language in Chan: 205
• How to Do Things with the Koan: 211
• InscribingDescribing Chan: 217
• Chan Logocentrism: 220
• Orality in Chan: 228
• Chan as a Kind of Writing: 233
• Another Differend: 234
• Chan Rhetoric: 237
• The Paradoxes of Chan Individualism: 243
• Early Buddhist Conceptions: 251
• Chinese Conceptions: 254
• The Individual and Power: 257
• SolitaireSolidaire: 261
• EPILOGUE: 269
• GLOSSARY: 275
• BIBLIOGRAPHY: 281
• INDEX: 317

About the author

Bernard Faure is George Edwin Burnell Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University. He is the author, most recently, of" The Will to Orthodoxy: A Critical Genealogy of Northern Chan Buddhism "(Stanford1997).

Bibliographic information

• Title: Chan Insights and Oversights: An Epistemological Critique of the Chan Tradition; Princeton paperbacks
• Author: Bernard Faure
• Edition: 2, reprint
• Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1996
• ISBN: 0691029024, 9780691029023
• Length: 322 pages
• Subjects: Religion / Buddhism / General