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.
