The Teachings of Master Wuzhu: Zen and Religion of No-Religion by Wendi L. Adamek (review)

Book Reviews 91 The Teachings of Master Wuzhu: Zen and Religion of No-Religion WENDI L. ADAMEK. Translations from the Asian Classics. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. x, 208 pages. ISBN 978-0-231-15023-1. US$27.50, £19.00 paper. This book takes its place in one of the most venerable lineages in Western-language Chinese studies, Columbia University Press’s Translations from the Asian Classics. For generations, its titles have provided seasoned scholars and beginning students alike a reliable entry into the worlds of East Asian literature, philosophy, and religion. This work is no exception. Adamek’s study, which offers an introduction and translation of the eighth-century Chan text, Lidai fabao ji 歷代法寶記 (Record of the Dharma-Jewel Through the Generations; hereafter abbreviated as LFJ), draws on her The Mystique of Transmission: On an Early Chan History and Its Contexts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007; hereafter abbreviated as Mystique), which won the American Academy of Religion's annual award for textual studies in 2008. Mystique, an immensely learned study with a 294-page introduction and a thoroughly annotated translation, clearly took Chan experts as its main audience. The book under review represents a slimmer version, shorn of academic argument, Chinese-language text, and extensive footnotes. No foreword identifies its audience, but given the work’s subtitle and the scattered asides about contemporary Buddhist practice, one might assume that the work aims primarily at Western Buddhist practitioners, as well as students of Buddhism, religion, and China. As for the LFJ itself, the book turned up in the great cache at Dunhuang and is dated to the 780s. It ranks among the earliest classics attributed to the Chan tradition, antedating the Platform Sutra or the Chan Preface of Guifeng Zongmi 圭峯宗密 (780–841). While its precise author(s) are unknown, the text derives from the obscure Baotang 保唐 (Protect the Tang) group, headquartered in Sichuan. Composed of 47 sections or 88 translated pages, the LFJ divides roughly into two parts. The first takes up the issue of transmission, with particular attention to the disposition of that all-important talismanic authority, Bodhidharma’s robe. The second part centers on the career, encounters, and sermons of Wuzhu 無住 (714–774), leader of the Baotang group and putative recipient of the robe. Even within the Chan tradition, with its rhetorical disregard for scriptural knowledge or dependence on the Three Treasures, Wuzhu’s teachings stand out for their iconoclasm. In his insistence on the primary importance of “no-thought” (wunian 無念) and formless practice, Wuzhu went so far as to discourage his disciples from any commitment to ritual or devotional routine. Put otherwise, Wuzhu pushed the radical implications of Chan further probably than anyone else. His group vanished from the historical record soon after his death, however, and, as Adamek notes, its collapse constitutes “perhaps a warning about the necessary limits of the ultimate teaching” (p. 66). Journal of Chinese Religions 40 (2012) 92 Journal of Chinese Religions For its part, the LFJ rapidly met sharp criticism within Buddhist circles, who found its dismissal of the mind edging into antinomianism and nihilism. The work soon disappeared from general circulation, re-emerging only in the early twentieth century with the Dunhuang discovery. The introduction offers a succinct guide to the text. It includes five chapters, entitled “Introduction to the Lidai Fabao Ji and Medieval Chinese Buddhism,” “Questioning Wuzhu’s Transmission,” “Radical Aspects of Wuzhu’s Teachings,” “Wuzhu’s Female Disciples,” and “Wuzhu’s Legacy.” Along the way, Adamek explains for the neophyte Buddhist concepts such as merit, interdependence and non-being, subitism, the talismanic significance of the robe, as well as Wuzhu’s soteriology. Judicious examples from the original text aid her elucidation. For those who still view Buddhism as a largely interiorized, meditational faith, Adamek’s contextualization of the work in its mid-Tang milieu will serve as a welcome corrective. The section on devout women also offers an unusual peek at female religiosity, a topic rarely seen in medieval sources. While recognizing its many merits, greater clarity in places would have enhanced the book’s usefulness, especially since The Teachings of Wuzhu, unlike Mystique, aims at a “lay” audience. Its first sentence suggests that...