Examining the Zen Transmission Model [Book Report - Seeing Through Zen (STZ)]

Book report on the first chapter of Seeing Through Zen:

The common story of Chan is that it is derived from a lineage, beginning in China with Bodhidharma and extending back to the Buddha (and before that to mythological buddhas). This model looks like this:

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pg. 3

What can we say about the "transmission" model? McRae gives us seven points to take note of:

1. "...the origins of this lineage-based transmission scheme are to be found in Indian Buddhism and the fourth- and fifth- century Buddhist meditation tradition of Kashmir. There are a number of parallels between the Chan transmission scheme and Chinese family genealogies of the eighth century and later, but we should remember that Indian Buddhists had parents and teachers, family genealogies and initiation lineages, just as the Chinese did. As an amalgamation of Indian and Chinese elements, though, the Chinese Chan transmission schema developed within the Chinese Buddhist context and was particularly well adapted to that milieu." (5)
2. "Second, by using the lineage diagram to define Chan as a “separate transmission outside the teachings,” the advocates of Chan were declaring their school to be profoundly different from, and fundamentally better than, all other Buddhist schools: where the other schools represented only interpretations of Buddhism, Chan constitutes the real thing, Buddhism itself. This is a polemical move, meant to establish the superiority of Chan over all other schools. Other East Asian Buddhist schools reacted in part by devising their own lineage transmission schemes, and in part by saying that Chan emphasized only one of the “three learnings” of morality, meditation, and wisdom." (5)
   
3. "Third, what counts in the Chan transmission scheme are not the “facts” of what happened in the lives of Sákyamuni, Bodhidharma, Huineng, and others, but rather how these figures were perceived in terms of Chan mythology. This point will come up repeatedly here, and I will argue a rather complex position: In case after case, what the texts say happened almost certainly did not occur, in terms of a straightforward but simple-minded criterion of journalistic accuracy. But rather than being fixated on notions of fact and fabrication, we should notice the very dynamism of the mythopoeic processes involved. Whether or not any anecdote actually represents the words spoken and events that occurred “accurately ” is only a historical accident, and in any case the supposedly “original” events would have involved only a very small number of people, at most the members of a single local community. What is of far greater conse- quence is the process by which that anecdote was generated and circu- lated, edited and improved, and thus transmitted throughout an entire population of Chan practitioners and devotees, until it became part of the fluid body of legendary lore by which Chan masters came to be identified throughout Chinese culture." (5-6)
4. "Fourth, based on the rhetoric of sunyatá, or emptiness, nothing is actually transmitted in this transmission scheme. What occurs between each teacher and his successor is merely an approval or authorization (yinke; inka) of the successor’s attainment of complete enlightenment.6 This is first of all a doctrinal principle of Chan Buddhism itself, but we should recognize that the most important parts of the diagram are not the separate names of individual patriarchs, but the spaces between them, the lines that join them. That is, what is being represented is not only a series of human figures but the encounters between each figure and his im- mediate predecessor and successor. As is frequently stressed in the texts of Chan, there is no “thing”—such as enlightenment, the Buddha-mind, or whatever—that is actually passed from one patriarch to the next. ...the focus is not on “what” is being transmitted, but on the relationship of encounter between the Buddhas and Patriarchs. The act of transmission thus involves not the bestowing of some “thing” from one master to the next, but the recognition of shared spiritual maturity." (6)
5. "Fifth, since the enlightenment of each Buddha and Patriarch is complete, there is no differentiation between the religious status of the In- dian Buddhas and Patriarchs and their Chinese counterparts. This was per- haps the most important reason why this lineage-based exposition was attractive to medieval Chinese Buddhists, since it raised the authority of native Chinese figures to equal those of their Indian predecessors." (7)
6. "Sixth, the “genealogical model” is important not only for the historical self-understanding of the Chan school in its transmission from Sákyamuni Buddha through Bodhidharma and onward, but also for the manner in which it defines how Chan spiritual practice itself is carried out. That is, in contrast to a basically Indian conception of meditation practice as an individual yogic endeavor of self-purification and progressive advancement toward buddhahood, the Chan genealogical model implies that the most important aspect of spiritual cultivation takes place in the encounter between teacher and student." (7)
7. Seventh, I referred above to “each teacher and his successor” (see p. 6), and the gender-specific terminology is appropriate. The Chan tradition is overwhelmingly male-dominated, and the strong implications of the term patriarchal in English (referring both to Chan figureheads and a male-centered ideology) is entirely suitable here. Nancy Jay has analyzed how genealogical systems tend to create justifications for removing women from the nexus of power and fecundity,9 and in a later chapter, we will consider the manner in which Chan represented a way of organizing power within the Chinese Buddhist monastic establishment." (8-9)

This is a lot to read, so will leave it at this for now. For those looking for more details, feel free to read the first chapter in the link provided above, which also has the footnotes and citations for each of these statements. Stay tuned for McRae's re-interpretation of the historical development of Chan in the next installment of this "book report".

Submitted June 14, 2020 at 08:12AM by oxen_hoofprint https://ift.tt/2MZhVFO