Chan Rhetoric of Uncertainty in the Blue Cliff Record: Sharpening a Sword at the Dragon Gate by Steven Heine (review)

A convenient but not necessarily accurate way of telling the story of Chan is by depicting it as a two-staged tale. In the beginning there was what is known as “zushi Chan” 祖師禪 (“Chan of the Patriarchs and Masters”), which coincided with the reign of the great Tang Dynasty and the brief period of disunity in the tenth century. This was followed by “gong-an Chan,” 公案禪 (“Chan practice based on the study of gong-an”), a form of Chan practice that flourished in the times of the Northern Song and the Southern Song dynasties.

Steven Heine’s new book Chan Rhetoric of Uncertainty in the Blue Cliff Record is a work on Chan practice of the gong-an era. More precisely, it is a book devoted to the defense of one single Chan text of this era, the Blue Cliff Record (Biyan lu 碧巖錄), historically attributed to the Chan master Yuanwu Keqin 圜悟克勤 (1063–1135) of the Northern Song dynasty. Heine seeks to establish an unconventional and controversial thesis, namely, the claim that, despite its reputation as a text of excessive rhetoric,¹ Blue Cliff Record is a work of great hermeneutic achievement and a significant contribution to Chan thought and practice.

One should not underestimate the difficulty of the task Heine sets out to accomplish in writing the book. The obstacles to overcome are many. Historically, the Blue Cliff Record had not been as popular as some other texts of the same era by other authors. Wumen’s Barrier (Wumen guan 無門關), to cite just one example, is both historically more influential and better respected. If the Blue Cliff Record is as significant a Chan classic as Heine claims it is, its relative historical obscurity—in the development of Chan Buddhism in China anyway—needs explaining. In addition, there is the inevitable impression of the Blue Cliff Record being a book of excessive rhetoric, an impression unmistakable as soon as one lifts its pages. To defend the Blue Cliff Record on this score, one needs to have an answer to the charge of literary excess as well. Furthermore, as largely a text of prose commentary on one of the works of Yuanwu’s own teacher, Xuedou Chongxian (雪竇重顯, 980–1052), questions of its relationship to the latter’s work have always been a nagging issue. If the question is one about who should be credited with the development of lettered Chan (wenzi Chan 文字禪), the name of the master whose prose Yuanwu commented on would seem to be the logical choice. That puts the originality of Yuanwu’s contribution to literary Chan in doubt. But that is not all. The lettered Chan method is also a practice condemned by followers of the more austere “key-word” Chan (variously known as kanhua Chan 看話禪 or huatou Chan 話頭禪, a type of Chan practice advocated by Yuanwu Keqing’s heir Dahui Zonggao 大慧宗杲, 1089–1163), to which the latter was a radical reaction. The Blue Cliff Record had a reputation of being a work chiefly responsible for the spread of lettered Chan. This means that one who wishes to defend the Blue Cliff Record must also defend it against the charges coming from the key-word Chan camp.

In a word, an undertaking of the type Heine takes up here faces potential objections from both sympathizers and critics of the historical text. Such a project must answer those who think the text pushed Xuedou’s lettered Chan too far and thus contributed to its downfall; it also has to answer those who condemn it for what it had been taken to stand for.

Heine’s case for the hermeneutic authenticity of the Blue Cliff Record critically relies on his notion of the “rhetoric of uncertainty,” a principle he claims the author of the Blue Cliff Record deployed in the construction of the text, and which he...