Zen Skin, Zen Marrow: Will the Real Zen Buddhism Please Stand Up? (review)

Zen Skin, Zen Marrow represents a departure from Steven Heine's usual style of Zen scholarship. Its first four substantive chapters offer up Heine's usual brand of carefully crafted and evenhanded scholarship on the Zen tradition. Here, the author focuses his attention as much on the field of Zen studies as on the religious and philosophical tradition of Zen, seeking a middle ground between apologetics and excessive criticism. That shift in focus, however, is slight compared to the major departure he makes in the final chapter, entitled "Epilogue: The Real Zen Buddhism." In the epilogue, Heine self-consciously assumes a normative voice in order to express his recommendation that repentance be considered as a possible basis for the reformation of Zen "for those who care deeply about Zen and its place in Japan and the world" (p. 167). While it has not been uncommon for other scholars and proponents alike to speak normatively about Zen in seemingly un-self-conscious ways, Heine has generally maintained a "descriptive, nonjudgmental tone" (p. 22), which he sets out as a goal for this book as well, while carrying out his historical and literary explorations of the tradition and its literature. His departure here is therefore both surprising and refreshing for its sincerity and self-awareness.

In the first chapter, Heine identifies two extremes within Zen studies—the TZN (traditional Zen narrative) and the HCC (historical and cultural criticism). The former argues that "Zen is an idealistic, utopian vision of nondual experience" (p. 6) that can be characterized as ineffable, nondual, and promoting social harmony. The latter approach applies various historical and philological methodologies to understand the historical, philosophical, and social development of Zen. It argues that an honest historical examination of the tradition demonstrates that it is characterized by the extensive use of language, reliance on mediation,¹ and widespread use of ritual and supernaturalism in spreading the school and by support for social injustice, nationalism, and military aggression in early modern and modern Japan. After laying out his aims and his methodological approach and providing a textual basis for understanding Zen's self-portrayal, Heine uses his analysis of these three areas of dispute to form the basis for the following chapters.

Throughout his analysis (and in the book's title), Heine draws upon the famous kōan case in which Bodhidharma awarded his skin, flesh, bones, and marrow to four disciples, while selecting which among them would become the Second Patriarch. Noting that Dōgen's interpretation remains the minority position, Heine chooses to draw inspiration from it. Like Dōgen, he argues that the four awards, representing here various perspectives on Zen and different approaches to Zen studies, need not be understood in a strictly vertical, hierarchical fashion that designates a winner and losers. Following Dōgen's lead, Heine recommends that they may be viewed horizontally, as different but equally valuable means to gain understanding. Heine maintains that this allows the various viewpoints "to constructively encounter, rather than remain polarized against each other" (p. 26). In chapters 2 through 4, Heine achieves his goal of maintaining a descriptive and nonjudgmental tone while exploring the valid contributions of the two opposing viewpoints. He demonstrates, for example, that it is possible to accept the validity of the historical finding that Zen institutions participated in and supported both class discrimination and militarism without rejecting as hypocrisy the view that Zen can contribute constructively to contemporary ethical issues.

In a style delightfully appropriate to his subject matter, Heine enlivens his text with witty wordplay throughout, beginning with his clever use of titles that play upon the homophonic writes, rites, and rights to describe the three areas of contestation. Inspired by the Zen tradition's love for word games and allusion, Heine builds in numerous allusions of his own, making use of modern literature and popular culture, as well as parallel constructions, such as the questions that...