## 1. Introduction



Buddhist thought and practice are said to have emerged out of
sustained practical commitment to discovering and nullifying the roots
of human suffering. Canonical accounts of the liberation of
Buddhism's founding figure, Siddhartha Gautama, make it clear
that becoming one awakened (*buddha*) to the origins and ending
of suffering was not a process of rational distillation, but rather of
one of embodied conduct (see, e.g., *Majjhima Nikaya* 26).
The pivotal insights afforded by such conduct are, first, that all
things arise and pass away in dynamic interdependence
(*paticca-samuppada*), and, secondly, that conflict and
suffering (*dukkha*) are relational distortions marking the
troubling inflection of interdependence as a function of ignorance
(*avijja*); corporeal, perceptual, cognitive, and
emotional habits (*sankhara*); and craving forms of desire
(*tanha*).



Chan Buddhism developed in China as a radical reaffirmation of the
primacy of embodied practice, the signal achievement of which came to
be envisioned as unwavering attentiveness and responsive virtuosity.
In the words of the founder of the Hongzhou lineage of Chan, Mazu
Daoyi (709-788), the fruition of Chan practice is a fluid



> 
> 
> harmony of body and mind that reaches out through all four
> limbs...benefiting what cannot be benefited and doing what
> can't be done. (*Xu zangjing*, Vol. 119, 408b)
> 
> 
> 



Building on the prevalent Chinese Buddhist conviction that all beings
have/are Buddha-nature (*fo-xing,* Fo Xing ), however,
practice was not advocated in Chan as a *means* to
enlightenment, but rather as the *meaning* of demonstrating it.
It is only in denial or ignorance of our own true nature that
enlightenment can be regarded as something to seek, a destination at
which we might one day arrive.



In sharp contrast with more scholastically-inclined schools of
Buddhism, Chan did not see dispelling ignorance of our own true nature
as something to be accomplished by studying canonical texts and
commentaries. On the contrary, in keeping with the Buddha's
claim that the wise "do not hang onto anything, anywhere"
and "do not enter into the mud of conceptual thinking"
(*Sabhiya Sutta*, *Sutta Nipata* III.6), Chan came
to insist that we cannot read or reason our way out of conflict,
trouble and suffering. And, in contrast with more ritually-defined
schools of Buddhism, Chan also came to deny the merit of seeking help
from supramundane sources. Dispelling ignorance of our own
Buddha-nature does not involve cultivating or acquiring anything; we
need only end the relational paralysis that prevents us from
conducting ourselves *as* enlightening beings. This does not
require special conditions or implements. It does not require
extensive study or training. It can be accomplished here and now, in
the midst of our own day-to-day lives.



This description might suggest that Chan originated in and actively
propagated what could easily be viewed as anti-philosophical
sentiments--a view arguably supported by the apparent illogic of
many of the "encounter dialogues" that purported to record
the interactions of Chan masters and their students, and by the
four-fold phrasing that came to be used in Song dynasty China to
characterize Chan distinctiveness:



> 
> 
> a special transmission outside the scriptures (*jiaowai
> biechuan*, Jiao Wai Bie Chuan ); not established upon
> words and letters (*buli wenzi*,
> Bu Li Wen Zi ); directly pointing to the human
> heartmind (*zhizhi renxin*, Zhi Zhi Ren Xin );
> seeing nature and becoming a Buddha (*jianxing chengfo*,
> Jian Xing Cheng Fo ).
> 
> 
> 



In both, there are appeals to the importance of immediacy, rather than
reflection, and assertions about the limits of language and the
ultimate irrelevance of thinking to the realization of truth. Indeed,
the Sixth Chan Patriarch, Huineng (638-713), famously proclaimed
that throughout Buddhist history, those transmitting the true Dharma
established "without-thinking" (*wunian*,
Wu Nian ) as the core doctrine. For many of those involved in
the first generation of "globalizing" Chan and Zen in the
first half of the twentieth century, Chan's apparent
anti-rationality was central to its promotion as a distinctively East
Asian humanism and an antidote to heartless and humorless
scientism.



It is, however, possible to view Chan differently. The body of Chan
literature is ironically perhaps the most voluminous of any in Chinese
Buddhism. And while one would be hard-pressed to find therein
arguments of the kind that are now widely regarded as essential tools
of the (especially analytic) philosophical trade, it is a body of
literature that I think can be very productively be engaged as
*enacting* insights and inferences of considerable
philosophical significance--a body of philosophical evidence
rather than exposition and explanation.



A major difficulty in attempting to engage philosophical perspectives
originating from beyond the horizons of European and American
traditions is the tendency to assume default status for Western
philosophical categories and questions. This leads, for example, to
expending considerable energy considering whether Confucian or
Buddhist ethics are best seen as species of consequentialism,
deontology or virtue ethics, rather than trying to understand them as
much as possible in their own terms. Doing so risks overwriting the
philosophical distinctiveness of so-called "non-Western"
traditions and tacitly justifying the continued definition of academic
philosophy in terms of exclusively Western defaults. Being aware of
these risks, however, I think it is nevertheless possible to make
provisional use of Western categories to initiate exploration of
philosophical terrains shaped by very different forces than those with
which we are most familiar. That, at least, is the approach taken here
with the aim of making it easier for students and teachers of
philosophy to find some places from which they might enter into
productive dialogue with Chan.


## 2. History



Chan coalesced over the course of several centuries of sustained and
reflexive engagement with the meaning of being both Chinese and
Buddhist. That is, it took shape over the period from roughly 500 to
1000 CE in the context of negotiations taking place within what the
anthropologist James Clifford (1988) has referred to as the
"predicament of culture"--the feeling of pervasive
off-centeredness that occurs when we are confronted with an
unavoidable and unprecedented overlay of distinct meaning systems and
compelled to choose among or reconcile different and often contrary
sources of personal and cultural identity.



Buddhism first entered China in the latter part of the Han dynasty
(206 BCE to 220 CE) along with growing trans-Eurasian trade. Early
records of Buddhist presence in China depict the arrival of this
foreign religion as at once intriguing and unsettling--a
confrontation with cultural difference, not as an objectively
observable fact, but as a subjectively troubling experience of failing
common sense (Sakai 1997). Monastic Buddhist missionaries were visibly
alien with their monochrome robes, their shaved heads and eyebrows,
and their restricted diets. Along with strikingly novel votive statues
and paintings--the first term for Buddhism was, in fact, the
"teaching of the images" (*xiangjiao*)--they
brought with them new meditative techniques, new ritual technologies,
and, most importantly, new forms of writing.



Since very early times in China, writing had been understood as
intimately tied to spiritual, political and cultural authority (Lewis
1999)--an association manifest in the Chinese term for culture
(*wenhua*, Wen Hua ), which combines characters for
literature (Wen ) and transformation (Hua ). The arrival of
Buddhist texts were evidence that there were peoples in "the
West" who, unlike any other peoples the Chinese had encountered,
not only had their own customs, but also their own literary culture
and thus their own claims to authority. Buddhist texts held out the
promise of alternative ways of understanding the world and the place
of humanity in it, but also new forms of subjectivity and imagination,
new personal ideals, and new visions of the interrelatedness of the
spiritual and the political.



Buddhist practices of meditative discipline, image worship and ritual
devotion spread rapidly through Chinese society in the period of
disunity after the fall of the Han dynasty. By the early fourth
century, for example, regular, multi-week Buddhist retreats of up to
5,000 people were being held, and by the sixth century over two
million people--roughly one out of every twenty-five people in
China--were ordained as monks and nuns. Buddhism played crucial
roles in the unification of nomadic peoples under the Northern Wei
(386-534) and in the eventual restoration of the Chinese empire
with the founding of the Sui dynasty (581-618). A sense of the
importance of Buddhism in shaping the political and cultural
*imaginaire* of medieval China can be gleaned by considering
the investment needed to build the monumental cave complexes at
Yungang Grottoes and Longmen Grottoes--each with tens of
thousands of Buddhist images carved out of live rock, some as large as
sixty feet in height with faces originally clad in gold.



But it was through collaborative projects of translation and textual
exegesis that Buddhism came to be woven so thoroughly into the fabric
of Chinese culture that the emperor of Song China, Song Xiaozong (r.
1162-89), would compare the three teachings of Confucianism,
Daoism and Buddhism to the legs of a bronze *ding*: a
ceremonial vessel associated with political unity and power and
cultural authority that would be useless if any one of the three were
to be removed. Indian and Central Asian Buddhist texts offered new
visions of the cosmos, new narrative structures, and new concepts that
made obvious the boundaries and biases of Chinese literary and
philosophical thought and practice. Engaging these texts required
improvising linguistic and conceptual bridges, but ultimately also
building new kinds of cultural consciousness and identity.



At the time that the great Central Asian translator,
Kumarajiva (334-413), was working with a multi-ethnic
translation team in the Chinese capital of Chang'an (a city of
between 300,000 and 500,000 people at the time), Buddhism had
undergone nearly a thousand years of adaptive evolution and several
hundred texts were catalogued as part of the Buddhist canon. By the
seventh century, that number had grown to over a thousand. These texts
all purported to be authentic renderings of Buddhist teaching. But in
actuality they often had quite disparate historical and cultural
origins, and this presented Chinese Buddhist scholars with immense
hermeneutical challenges. Drawing on evidence internal to key Buddhist
scriptures, different systems were devised for classifying and ranking
Buddhist teachings and texts, and these became the basis of competing,
textually-defined schools of Buddhism, the foremost being the
Consciousness-Only (*Weishizong*, Wei Shi Zong ),
Tiantai or Heavenly Terrace (*Tiantai zong*,
Tian Tai Zong  ), Pure Land (*Jingtu zong*,
Jing Tu Zong ) and Huayan or Flower Ornament (*Huayan
zong*, Hua Yan Zong ) schools.



Chan traces its origins to a radical break from this scholastic
approach--an explicit rejection of the ultimate authority of
writing combined with an insistence that authentic Buddhist teachings
are not to be found in books or memorized liturgies but only in the
immediate, face-to-face encounters of Buddhist masters and their
students. The iconic precedent for this break is the moment of
transmission said to have occurred when, in the middle of preaching to
a gathering of some 10,000 people on Vulture Peak, the Buddha held up
a single flower and elicited a smile of shared realization from his
disciple, Mahakasyapa. Nearly a thousand years later,
the purported 28th lineage holder in this line of direct
transmission--an Indian monk named Bodhidharma--is said to
have arrived in southeast China by sea, made his way to north China,
and eventually offered the "skin", "flesh",
"bone" and "marrow" of his teaching to his
four closest disciples, one of whom, Huike (487-593), came to be
regarded as the second Chan Patriarch in China.



This account of Chan origins was well-established by the tenth
century, and its rudiments were already circulating by the late
6th and early 7th centuries. Contemporary
scholars now regard this account and much of what Chan eventually came
to regard as the particulars of its own history as inventions of
tradition (see, e.g., McRae 2003 and Faure 1991). But for present
purposes, the traditional story of Chan's origins affords a
useful way of introducing the philosophical concerns that shaped the
consolidation of Chan identity.



In the earliest strata of texts reliably attributed to Bodhidharma and
other early Chan teachers (see Broughton 1999), we find Bodhidharma
claiming that there are two points of entry to Buddhism: via
*li* (Li ), an "informing impetus" or
"principle"; and via *xing* (Xing ),
"practice". Entry by *li* consists in realizing
that all sentient beings have the same true nature; entry by
*xing* consists in making good on wrongs done; corresponding
with conditions; seeking nothing; and acting in accordance with the
realization that all beings have the same true nature. Buddhist truth,
in other words, is not something attained *through* practice,
but rather an aspect and achievement *of* it. Moreover,
Bodhidharma affirms that this is possible anywhere, whether one is
walking, lying down, sitting or standing. Successful Buddhist practice
is not based on being in some specific place or posture. Neither is it
dependent on textual study. In fact, it is claimed that whoever
obtains understanding through reading will have weak vital energy
(*qi*, Qi ) and that to have the energy needed to truly
enact the Buddhist path one must obtain understanding in the medium of
circumstances and events by never losing mindfulness anywhere.



These claims eventually become conventional elements of Chan identity.
But they were profoundly iconoclastic given Chinese associations of
writing with authority and the institutional ramifications of Buddhist
scholasticism. They were also philosophically pregnant claims when
seen in the light of the hermeneutical challenges with which Chinese
Buddhists were grappling in the seventh and eighth centuries.



One of the signal debates of the seventh century centered on whether
or not there were people who had committed such heinous
crimes--for example, killing their own parents or an enlightened
being--that they had absolutely no prospect of ever realizing
enlightenment. One could find textual evidence, in the highly
influential Lotus Sutra, for example, that even beings like Devadatta,
the cousin of the Buddha who had tried to murder him out of jealousy,
are already doing the work of bodhisattvas and will eventually reach
Buddhahood. Other texts forwarded the controversial but supportive
thesis that what guaranteed this was the fact that all sentient beings
already have/are Buddha-nature. Since we are all originally
enlightened (*benjue*, Ben Jue ) practice is not a
process of acquisition, but one of restoration. Not everyone agreed.
The Chinese monk, Xuanzang (602-664) was not convinced by such
texts and went on a sixteen-year sojourn through Central Asia to India
to put an end to the debate. He returned laden with more than six
hundred new Buddhist texts and confirmation of the heterodox nature of
the idea that all beings have Buddha-nature. In spite of being treated
to an imperial welcome and granted lavish support for his translation
work, his report on the state of Buddhist teaching in the birthplace
of the Buddha ironically seems to have buoyed the confidence of
Chinese Buddhists committed to the Buddha-nature thesis and the
teachings about nonduality and the bodhisattva ideal that were
presented in such key texts as the Nirvana,
Vimalakirti and Huayan sutras. Interest in Indian Buddhism waned
and Chinese Buddhists, including early proponents of Chan, began
seeing themselves as the true inheritors of the Buddha Dharma with a
mandate to demonstrate the skillful means (*upaya*) needed
to present Buddhism in ways suited to Chinese audiences.



A striking, symbolic turning point in the confidence of Chinese
Buddhists occurs less than fifty years after Xuanzang's return
from India when Huineng, an illiterate manual laborer, is made the
sixth Chinese Chan lineage holder and given the unprecedented
treatment of having his transcribed teachings titled the Platform
Sutra (*Tanjing*). Since "sutra" is traditionally
reserved solely for the recorded teachings of the historical Buddha,
this effectively proclaimed that Huineng was China's first
"homegrown" Buddha. It is hard to imagine a more dramatic
affirmation of the Buddha-nature teachings in China, or a more pointed
rejection of the identification of Buddhist authority with Buddhist
literacy.



Over the next two centuries, Chan identity crystalized around the
teachings of nonduality and Buddha-nature. In the aftermath of a
devastating purge of Buddhism during the Huichang era (841-846),
during which more than a quarter million monks and nuns were forcibly
returned to lay life and over 5,000 temples, monasteries and Buddhist
libraries were destroyed, Linji Yixuan (d. 866), one of the most
influential teachers in Chan history, took these teachings to their
iconoclastic extreme, dismissing the great Buddhist scriptures as
"hitching posts for donkeys" and encouraging anyone who
happened to see "the Buddha" on the road to kill him.



Whereas the metropolitan, text-based schools of Chinese Buddhism were
devastated by the mid-ninth century purge, rural Chan communities
flourished, resulting in the so-called "five houses" or
Linji, Caodong, Fayan, Yunmen and Guiyang lineages. Collections of
"encounter dialogues" between Chan masters and their
students began circulating and resonated well with Chinese literati.
With the collapse of the Tang dynasty (618-907) and the founding
of the Song (960-1279), Chan fortunes continued to swell as a
"homegrown" form of Chinese Buddhism that fit well into
the literati mission of using ancestral cultural traditions
(*guwen*) to craft a new imperial identity for China. By the
twelfth century, Chan had both religious and political prestige and
the vast majority of public monasteries supported by the Song court
were devoted to the practice of Chan (see Welter 2006).


## 3. Chan and the Nature of Reality



Chan iconoclasm seems to have been largely rhetorical insofar as the
targets of Chan invective shifted from teacher to teacher and from
generation to generation, and insofar as Chan teachings and practices
did not generally evidence anything like the radical breaks from
Buddhist tradition that famous Chan texts like the thirteenth-century
Gateless Barrier (*Wumenguan*, Wu Men Guan ) might
suggest. On the contrary, daily life in Chan communities followed
standard Chinese monastic precedents and even in the writings
associated with the Hongzhou lineage of Mazu, renowned for his use of
physical "shock tactics" like kicking and punching,
references to works in the Buddhist canon are quite common. Among the
key texts frequently invoked by Chan teachers were the
Vimalakirti Sutra, the Nirvana Sutra, the Flower
Ornament Sutra, the Lotus Sutra, the Lankavatara Sutra, and
various Prajnaparamita texts like the Diamond
Sutra.



The nature of reality as depicted in these texts, and for the most
part assumed as valid in Chan circles, does not fit comfortably into
such customary Western philosophical categories as idealism,
materialism and dualism. Common to all Buddhist traditions are the
teachings of interdependence and karma. Strongly interpreted, to claim
that all things arise and abide interdependently is to claim that
relationality is ontologically more basic than
"things-being-related". That is, interdependence is not a
contingent, external relation among essentially separate entities; it
is internal or constitutive. As it came to be understood in China,
interdependence entails interpenetration and individual existents are
thus abstractions from already ongoing relational dynamics. Existence
is relationality.



This strong reading was reinforced in China by indigenous Confucian
and Daoist conceptions of a thing's nature (*xing*,
Xing ) as dispositional and of the world as an auto-poetic or
self-creating (*ziran*, Zi Ran ) system of
continually-evolving relational patterns (*dao*,
Dao )--not a divine creation, an objective determinant of
universal physical laws, or a material expression of transcendent
principles. These indigenous Chinese conceptions of reality resonated
well with Buddhist notions of interdependence and impermanence. But
Buddhism added to them the teaching of karma, directing attention to
the dramatic character of phenomenal reality.



Stated as a conditional, the Buddhist teaching of karma is that if we
pay close and sustained enough attention to the dynamics of our
experience, a meticulous consonance becomes manifest between the
complexion of our own values, intentions and actions, and the patterns
of outcomes and opportunities we are experiencing. In short, all
experienced realities imply responsibility. But because our values,
intentions and actions are always open to revision, all experienced
realities also express opportunities for responsively altering the
character and disposition of the relational dynamics that constitute
us as persons and as communities.



One objection to this view of reality is that, if the world is
self-generating and without any specific point or moment of origin, if
we are truly relational and thus ultimately intergenerational beings,
and if experience is karmically-conditioned, how is enlightenment or
liberation from conflict, trouble and suffering possible? If we have
had an infinite amount of time to act with ill intent or in accord
with misguided and perhaps conflicting values, do we not have an
infinite amount of troubling experiential consequences to work
through--an infinite burden of "bad" karma to bear
and eventually suffer and make good on?



For the historical Buddha, the answer was quite simple: it is karma
itself that makes the realization of liberation possible. We may not
be able to change *what* we have done in the past, but at this
very moment we can change the *meaning* of what we have done,
establishing a new dramatic trajectory that carries us beyond the
reach of much of what we otherwise would have been
"destined" to experience. Thus, although the serial killer
Angulimala did experience some violence from villagers affected
by his prior rampages after having met the Buddha, become a monk, and
practiced well enough to realize liberation, being pummeled with small
stones and rotten fruit was minor suffering in comparison to what
otherwise was due him based on his ruthless and proud slaughter of
dozens of people (*Majjhima Nikaya*, no. 86).



As Xuanzang's arduous journey to India and the controversy
motivating it make clear, however, not all Buddhists were satisfied by
this explanation. After all, the Buddha was the greatest of all
teachers and this was clearly a factor in his disciples'
abilities to realize liberation under his guidance. Indeed, the body
of literature detailing the Buddha's prior lives (the Jataka
Tales) portrays the Buddha's closest disciples as having
traveled with him over time as members of an ensemble of
"characters" in a drama of liberation playing out over
dozens of lifetimes. What of less karmically fortunate people living a
hundred or a thousand years after the Buddha had died? If all beings
have "no-self" or abiding essence, if all things are
characterized by emptiness (*sunyata*) or the
absence of any intrinsic nature--basic teachings of both early
and later Buddhist traditions--and if we have been living the
ignorance-biased lives of "sinners" rather than
"saints", how is liberation ever possible? Without the
live guidance of a teacher like the Buddha, the possibility of
enlightenment would seem to be purely theoretical.



One response to this--variously expressed in a range of
Mahayana texts and variously understood by those
interpreting them as Buddhism spread from India through Central Asia
and into China--was that all sentient beings have
"within" them a "seed" or "embryo"
(*garbha*) of enlightenment: the innate capacity to be like the
Buddha himself, a "thus come one"
(*tathagatha*). Texts espousing some version of this
*tathagatha*-*garbha* thesis--the
Nirvana, Srimaladevimhanada and
Lankavatara sutras, for example, and the apocryphal
commentary, the Awakening of Mahayana Faith--became some of the
most influential Buddhist texts in China, and especially in the
development of Chan. Many of these texts also drew connections between
*tathagatha*-*garbha* teachings and the notion of
*buddhadhatu*, literally "buddha-element",
"buddha-substance" or "buddha-realm". This
concept seems to have developed through a merger of justifications for
relic veneration practices and assertions about the originally
luminous nature of the mind that are found in both very early
Pali-language and Mahayana Buddhist texts. These texts maintain that
mind is originally pure and that it only appears impure because of
experiential pollutants (*klesas*) caused by actions
undertaken in ignorance or out of anger, hatred and greed. This idea
of the original luminosity of mind was seemingly grafted onto the idea
of an ineradicable "element" or "substance"
(*dhatu*) of enlightened being, eventually resulting in
claims that all sentient beings have already within them a seed of
enlightenment--a luminous capacity for awakening
(*budh*).



For some Buddhists, the "substantial" character of this
capacity seemed to imply the presence in each of us of a "true
self"--not the egoistic self that appears as a function of
ignorance, habit formations and craving forms of desire, and that is
dissolved through Buddhist training and the realization of no-self
(*anatman*), but rather an unassailably aware core of
being-present. In China, however, the term that was used to translate
*buddhadhatu*--Fo Xing  or
*fo-xing*--opened other interpretative possibilities. In
contrast with the connotations of the Sanskrit *dhatu*,
which has connotations ranging from an individual component of
existence to a realm of existents, *fo-xing* literally means
"Buddha-nature" and carries with it dispositional or
relational accents deriving from the indigenous Chinese notion of
"nature" (*xing*, Xing ). Thus, Buddha-nature
could be seen as a propensity for entering into enlightening forms of
conduct and relationship, rather than as a substantial essence.
Buddha-nature is not something hidden "in" each of us, but
rather something that manifests as a distinctive pattern and quality
of interactive conduct. Chan strenuously endorsed this interpretation,
and illustrating it became the distinctive feature of the
*gong'an* (Gong An ) or "public case"
literature of master-student encounters expressing the
"bone" and "marrow" of Chan: communicating the
meaning of enlightenment is not a matter of *saying*, but of
*showing*.



Just as significantly, the Buddha-nature thesis also came to be allied
with teachings about nonduality that were found both in key
*tathagatha*-*garbha* texts and in the profoundly
influential Vimalakirti Sutra. The key figure of this sutra is a
layman, Vimalakirti, who feigns illness as a pretext for being
visited by the Buddha's key disciples and other eminent Buddhist
figures--each of whom he engages and surpasses in sophisticated
debate about core Mahayana concepts and practices. The sutra climaxes
both dramatically and philosophically when the bodhisattva of wisdom,
Manjusri, asks Vimalakirti to explain the
meaning of nonduality and Vimalakirti responds by simply
remaining silently and unwaveringly present.



In the history of Western and certain branches of Indian philosophy,
claims about nonduality have often taken the form of monistic
challenges to metaphysical dualisms asserting the incommensurability
of, for example, mind and body or spirit and matter. Nondualism denies
the presence of the implied ontological gap separating these
constituents of reality, asserting instead that everything is
(ultimately) one or the same. Buddhist nondualism, as it came to be
understood in China, does not involve an erasure of difference or a
denial of its reality, but rather a restoration of the otherwise
"excluded ground" between "being" and
"nonbeing".



The great Indian Buddhist thinker, Nagarjuna (c.
150-250 CE), set the stage for this conception of nonduality by
famously pointing out the logical inconsistencies of reality claims
about being; nonbeing; both being and nonbeing; and neither being nor
nonbeing. Blending early Buddhist insights into interdependence and
the Mahayana conception of emptiness
(*sunyata*), Nagarjuna's
Madhyamaka philosophy stressed the unreality of *svabhava*
or "own being" to advance what he described as a
"middle path" between existence and non-existence that
offered an alternative to both dualism and monism, but also to any
pluralisms affirming the ultimate reality of some (perhaps indefinite)
number of independent existents. This logical approach to the Middle
Way had powerful impacts on the development of Chinese Buddhism. But
it was seen by some as offering an apophatic or negative nonduality
that, while successful in undermining metaphysical foundationalism,
did little to address ethical and more broadly karmic concerns or to
support the bodhisattva ideal of resolutely compassionate wisdom.
Conceptually linking emptiness and Buddha-nature opened possibilities
for a relationally positive nondualism consistent with the
valorization of meaning-generating mutual responsiveness.



With great impact on the development of Chan, this was the approach
taken by the Chinese Huayan thinker, Fazang (643-712). Although
proponents of Chan often stressed its distinctiveness, Chan monastics
lived in community with monks and nuns who had allegiances to other
Buddhist traditions. Indeed, rather than being a source of doctrinal
schisms, the scriptural commentaries and philosophical essays being
produced by thinkers from the full range of Buddhist traditions can be
thought of as constituting a shared scaffolding for engagement in
"Buddhist studies". Fazang was among the most respected
Buddhist intellectuals of his time. In contrast with those who
understood the Mahayana assertion of the emptiness
(*sunyata*) of all things as an assertion about
the absence or negation of identity--an assertion that denied
ultimate actuality to things as individual existents--Fazang
linked realizing the emptiness of all things to realizing that
interdependence is an internal or constitutive relationship. That is,
interdependence consists in dynamic interpenetration. In a move that
paralleled the description in the Awakening of Faith of the "one
mind" (*yixin*, Yi Xin ) of ultimate reality as
having two aspects--*ti* (Ti ), "embodied
structure" and *yong* (Yong )
"function"--Fazang held that the
*dharmadhatu* or realm of truth/ultimate reality should be
seen nondualistically in terms of both informing principles
(*li*, Li ) and phenomenal experiences (*shi*,
Shi ). That is the *dharmadhatu* or realm of
truth/ultimate reality is at once a realm of *shi* or
experiential matters (Shi Fa Jie , *shi fajie*); a
realm of *li* or informing patterns/principles
(Li Fa Jie , *li fajie*); a realm of the mutual
non-obstruction of *li* and *shi*
(Li Shi Wu Ai Fa Jie , *li-shi wuai
fajie*); and a realm of the mutual non-obstruction of *shi*
and *shi* (Shi Shi Wu Ai Fa Jie ,
*shi-shi wuai fajie*). Thus, very much in keeping with the fact
that the Sanskrit term, "dharma", can mean a specific
existent, a phenomenal unit or a teaching, the nonduality of the
*dharmadhatu* implies a relationship of mutual
determination between the domains of metaphysics and epistemology.



To help clarify the significance of this, Fazang made metaphorical use
of a traditional, timber-framed building that is held together without
any fasteners by the compressing force of gravity on all of its parts
(*Huayan wujiao zhang*, in Taisho shinsho
daizukyu, Vol. 45, no. 1866). Removing the clay roofing tiles and
their immense weight would destabilize such a building, eventually
causing it to collapse. But the roofing tiles are placed on top of
purlins that are placed perpendicularly on rafters resting on a
central ridge beam and on rim joists that are themselves resting on
columns placed atop individual foundation stones. Since removing the
roofing tiles of such a structure would cause the entire building to
collapse, the tiles can be said to be the cause of the totality of the
building. But the same is true for all of the other parts of the
building. Similarly, each particular in the world (*shi*)
consists at once in causing and being caused by the dynamic patterning
(*li*) of the totality of all things. Each thing ultimately
*is* what it *means* for all others.



It can be said, then, that all things are the same, but this is true
only insofar as each thing differs meaningfully from and for one
another. Nonduality does not mean that all things are reducible to
some common essence or substance, but rather that each thing or being
is part of an emergent ecological matrix through which the
*functioning* of each thing or being serves as a distinctive
*cause of the totality* of the real. Reality ultimately
consists in dynamically evolving mutual contribution. The
*dharmadhatu* is not something we have in *common*,
a foundational essence; it is something in which we each have a
distinct and indispensable contributory *share*. Thus,
Buddha-nature is not an adamantine and ineradicable element of who we
are; it consists in the uninterrupted expression of enlightened and
enlightening relationality.



Chan embraced this account of nonduality and Buddha-nature, but
distinctively used it to qualify the meaning of Buddhist practice and
the personal ideal of the bodhisattva. In the Platform Sutra
attributed to Huineng, he insists that



> 
> 
> meditation is the embodiment (*ti*) of wisdom, and wisdom is
> the functioning (*yong*) of meditation.
> 
> 
> 



The point of Chan is to see one's own "original
nature" (*benxing*, Ben Xing ) and realize
"authentic heartmind" (*zhenxin*,
Zhen Xin ), and in doing so the dualities of thought and
reality, of passion and enlightenment, and of the impure and pure all
dissolve. Then,



> 
> 
> true suchness (*zhenru*, Zhen Ru ) is the embodied
> structure (*ti*) of thinking, while thinking is the functioning
> (*yong*) of true suchness. (Platform Sutra, 13-17)
> 
> 
> 



To see our own original nature is to see that true suchness and
thinking are as intimately related as the bodily structure of a horse
and its customary activities. Just as the bodily structure of the
horse establishes the conditions of possibility for grazing and
galloping, it is only the proven evolutionary advantage of grazing and
galloping in horse-like ways that have made this bodily structure
possible. True suchness or ultimate reality is not a preexistent
something "out there" that can be grasped intellectually
or accessed through some mystical vision; it can only be enacted.



Huangbo Xiyun (d. 850) describes this as demonstrating
no-"mind" (*wuxin*, Wu Xin ) or freedom
from conceptual impositions that would define or limit reality. But
this is not a lapse into mental blankness or indiscriminate presence.
Realizing no-"mind" restores our originally whole mind
(*yixin*, Yi Xin ) that Huangbo qualifies as the
"silent bond" (*moqi*, Mo Qi ) of
"conducting oneself as all Buddhas have" (in Taisho
shinsho daizukyu, Vol.48, 2012.380b to 383c). Significantly,
the term "*qi*" originally referred to notches or
tally marks on a strip of bamboo that record the terms of a trade
agreement and the bonding that Huangbo invokes is thus one of mutually
entrusted obligation and responsibility. True suchness consists in the
personification of the bodhisattva ideal of realizing liberating forms
of relationality. Ultimate reality consists in enacting the
morally-inflected nonduality of wisdom and compassion.



Regarding reality as a dynamically-manifested relational quality
rather than as something to be "known" or
"attained" disposed Chan to valorize responsiveness as an
index of liberating presence. Thus, while Mazu iconoclastically
proclaimed that "ordinary, everyday mind is Buddha"
(*Xu zangjing*, 119.406), he also identified this with
"responding to situational dynamics and dealing with people as
they come", no matter where one is or with whom one is
interacting (*Xu zangjing*, 119.406). And Linji, founder of one
of the two Chan lineages that have remained continuous to the present
day, urged his students to become "true persons of no
rank" (*zhenren wuwei*, Zhen Ren Wu Wei )
who refrain from taking any fixed position, improvising as needed in
any situation to contribute to the emergence of enlightening
relational dynamics.


## 4. Truth and the Nature of Knowledge and Language in Chan



Chan's identification of ultimate reality or true suchness (Ch.
*zhenru*; Skt. *bhutatathata*) with
liberation-enacting responsive virtuosity implies that reality is both
personal and communicative. Given this, it is not surprising that
"public cases" (Ch. *gong'an*; J.
*koan*) purportedly recording the encounters of Chan
masters and their students came to be the premier Chan literary form
and by the mid-Song dynasty constituted a kind of core curriculum for
Chan training. But, as noted earlier, Chan also came to represent
itself as



> 
> 
> a special transmission outside the teachings (*jiaowai
> biechuan*); not established upon words and letters (*buli
> wenzi*); directly pointing to the human heartmind (*zhizhi
> renxin*); seeing nature and becoming a Buddha (*jianxing
> chengfo*).
> 
> 
> 



And this suggests that the relationship among truth, language and
communication in Chan may confound some common Western philosophical
expectations.



As is suggested by the abundant references to canonical texts found in
Chan master discourse records, announcing that Chan involves a special
transmission (*biechuan*) beyond the scope of scriptural
teachings (*jiaowai*) does not necessarily call the value of
textual transmission into question. But it does point to the
possibility of a form of communication that directly indexes or
indicates (*zhi*) the human heartmind without either standing
upon or erecting (*li*) words and letters as conveyances for
knowledge.



The term *chuan*, translated here as
"transmission", has the connotation of publishing or
putting into circulation and is thus compatible with imagining
Buddhist understanding as being transferred from person-to-person,
from place-to-place and from generation-to-generation by means of
textually-manifested teachings. But *chuan* also has the
connotation of spreading through a process of conduction. Heat can be
transferred from one place to another by convection as high energy
particles or objects move into a space of lower energy ones. But heat
can also spread without any particles or objects changing location.
Conduction is energy flowing as a function of vibrational resonances
among adjacent particles or objects and is measured not in terms of
*amounts* of energy transferred, but rather *rates* of
transfer. Something analogous seems to be at the heart of Chan claims
of a "special transmission" and of the repeated denials by
Tang and Song dynasty Chan masters that they have anything--like
a robe or bowl-- to give or that there is ultimately anything for
their students to seek and attain.



The textual transmission of Buddhism signals a process of
"knowledge convection" that can easily result in energy
dissipation--a possibility that seems to have informed
speculations about the eventual demise of the effectiveness of the
Dharma that were widely prevalent during the period of Chan's
emergence and maturation. It is in keeping with this insight that
Bodhidharma warned that Buddhist realization attained through the
medium of words results in weak *qi* (Qi ) or energy, and
that Huineng broke with Chinese scholastic tradition to deny the value
of classifying teachings and texts having "sudden" or
"gradual" content and directed attention instead to seeing
"sudden enlightenment" (*dunwu*, Dun  Wu )
as a function of personal readiness (a root meaning of the term,
*dun*) to engage in enlightened/enlightening conduct--a
function of the keenness or dullness with which one enters into
liberating resonance with others.



Consistent with seeing knowledge transfer as a process of conduction,
the paradigmatic Chan term for records of intergenerational
transmission is *denglu* (Deng Lu ) or "lamp
records"--a term that invites imagining a series of lamps
being restored to their natural luminosity as teachers and students
enter into effective resonance with one another. In Chan, knowledge is
not something that can be bequeathed. Truth is not a function of
propositional coherence or of a correspondence between propositions
and reality. Truth is the enactment of liberating
relationality--a *truing* of relational dynamics.



This understanding of truth is crucial to the evolution of Chan
teachings, and to the apparent embrace of such contradictory
claims--sometimes made by the same teacher--as that Chan
involves the realization of "one mind" or "ordinary
mind" or "no-mind". Chan teachings are--at
least ideally--improvised in effective and always situated
response to actual needs and concerns. That is, they are
exemplifications of the bodhisattva exercise of *upaya* or
responsive virtuosity, not final expressions of eternally or
universally valid insights.



Mazu, for example, was once asked by a monk, "Why do you say
that 'mind is Buddha'?" Mazu replied, "To end
the crying of small children". The monk then asked, "So
what do you say when the tears have dried up?" Mazu answered,
"It is neither mind nor Buddha". The monk continued
probing. "Then what if people come along who don't fit
into either of these categories? How do you teach them?" Mazu
said, "Then I tell them that it's not a thing".
Still not giving up, the monk finally asked, "But what about if
you come across someone who is truly present?" To this Mazu
replied, "I teach such a person to realize the great Way"
(*Xu zangjing*, Vol. 119.408b).



The provisional nature of Chan declarations exemplified in this
encounter and even more apparent in some Chan teachers' use of
physical gestures like raising a finger, wiggling eyebrows or killing
a cat in response to students' questions was a lightning rod for
criticism. If Chan teachings can include contradictory statements and
such gruesome acts as killing a cat, what is to prevent the truth of
nondualism from spurring an antinomian erasure of the boundaries not
only between sense and nonsense, but also between the moral and
immoral? This was a concern for even such eminent Buddhist thinkers as
Guifeng Zongmi (780-841), a lineage holder in both the Huayan
School and the Heze Chan lineage, who argued that if any kind of
speech or action can be the functioning of Buddha-nature, then what is
to stop hatred and gratuitous violence from being seen as
"liberating" (*Xu zangjing*, Vol. 110.435d)?



Here it is useful to place Zongmi's concerns in the context of
Chinese appropriations of the distinction between conventional truth
(*samvrti-satya*) and ultimate truth
(*paramartha-satya*)--a distinction that had roots in
both Nikaya and Mahayana Buddhism, and that was given
perhaps its most developed expression in the work of the Indian
thinker, Candrakirti (570-650). In China, while the
"two truths" distinction became a philosophical mainstay,
it was also seen as being in tension with the teachings of nonduality
since it implies two separate levels of reality or at the very least a
contrast of reality and illusion. One of the most influential
responses to this seeming inconsistency was put forward by Zhiyi
(538-597), one of the founding figures of Chinese Tiantai
Buddhism, who forwarded a "three truths" approach that
embraced such apparent opposites as existence and nonexistence,
enlightenment and delusion, and the sacred and the profane as equal
partners of the "Middle Way". According to Zhiyi,
conventional realities/truths (based on day-to-day experience) and
ultimate realities/truths (based on the realization of emptiness) are
equally involved in bringing about the end of suffering (the Middle
Path). And this implies that, in fact, all things and statements can
be true as mutually inclusive aspects of a single reality/truth.



The more radical streams of Chan teaching--for example,
Huineng's claim that passions are not an obstruction to
enlightenment, or Linji's use of hitting and shouting--are
consistent with this approach. But both in Zhiyi's Tiantai and
in Chan it arguably was not held that all things *are* doing
the Buddha work of enlightenment, but rather that they *can*
function in this way. Whether or not raising a finger actually brings
about a liberating turn in a teacher-student encounter is not a
function of the action or the intention behind it, but of what it
*means* relationally. Case 19 of the Blue Cliff Record (see,
Cleary 1977) recounts how Chan master Juzhi was fond of
responding to students' queries simply by raising his index
finger. One day, Juzhi was away and his teenaged attendant
greeted some visitors inquiring as to the master's whereabouts
by mimicking his master's trademark gesture. When Juzhi
returned, the boy informed him how things had gone while he was away
and Juzhi asked him to demonstrate how he had responded to the
visitors. The boy raised his finger, which Juzhi promptly severed with
a knife. As his attendant fled in pain, Juzhi called out his name.
When the boy stopped and turned, Juzhi raised his finger. The
boy's mind opened and realization blossomed. Chan teaching is
not something conveyed by words or gestures; it consists in direct
relational transformation.



It still can be asked, of course, how one knows what direction of
relational transformation is truly liberating or what interventions
are appropriate in any given situation. This epistemological concern
is not one, however, that Chan endorsed. On the contrary, the general
Chan view has been that asking the epistemological question is perhaps
the single most pernicious form of distraction from embarking wholly
upon the path of Chan practice. Huineng insisted that from the
ancients down to his day, without-thinking (*wunian*
Wu Nian ) had always been the core teaching (Platform Sutra,
17). But he also noted that being without-thinking can be sustained
even as thoughts are arising and passing away so long as one refrains
from forming attachments, calculating outcomes and taking up fixed
positions. In short, being without-thinking is being single-mindedly
present in unwavering attentiveness. Deliberating about whether an
action is right or wrong is already to have departed from such
presence and to have fallen into doubt or being of "two
minds".



In an iconic encounter between Mazu and his teacher, Nanyue Huairang
(677-744), Mazu has an awakening after pointing out to Huairang
that he cannot make a mirror by rubbing together a stone and a clay
roofing tile, only to be asked why he then thinks it is possible to
make himself into a Buddha by sitting on a meditation cushion. To
become a Buddha, Huairang avers, simply act as a Buddha. This opens
Mazu's mind, but then it swiftly closes as he wonders how he
will know when he is acting like a Buddha. Huairang's reply to
this question triggers a still deeper awakening: "You cannot see
the Path, you can only see *from* it". Epistemological
worries are potentially endless detours of often fervently justified
disengagement--detours predicated on the separating out of a
questioning subject and a questioned object or environment. Seeing
from the Chan path is seeing completely.


## 5. Ethical Dimensions of Chan



From the perspective of Chan practice, the merits of cutting off
conceptual craving and calculation are immediately evident. But
claiming no-thought and unquestioning participation as norms can be
seen as promoting unreflective and potentially uncaring and unjust
actions, as well as generating liabilities for authoritarian abuse.
Given that ethics seemingly requires reasoned reflection on how to
realize the good life as persons and as communities, is Chan finally
un-ethical or anti-ethical? If there is really nothing to seek or
attain, as so many Chan masters have averred, and if enlightenment is
not so much a substantive change as it is a gestalt shift, is this not
to simply leave untreated and likely worsening all of the ills and
injustices plaguing us?



There is little in Chan literature that could plausibly warrant
positioning Chan wholly within any one of the standard Western
categories of consequentialist, deontological and virtue ethics, or,
for that matter, within such alternatives as communitarian or care
ethics. Chan literature is notoriously silent about the kinds of
questions to which ethics typically offers answers. Indeed, the
recurrent valorizations of non-thinking (*wunian*), non-abiding
(*wuzhu*, Wu Zhu ) and non-reliance (*wuyi*,
Wu Yi ) in the context of Chan's nondualistic
metaphysics and its idealization of responsive virtuosity suggest that
if there is such a thing as Chan ethics it is an ethics of relational
improvisation.



The mainstream of Western ethics takes the individual, decision-making
agent as the basic unit of concern, and a primary concern is to
develop a universally applicable method of arbitrating among the often
disparate interests of individual agents, establishing
rationally-guided means to determining and practically realizing the
meaning of the good life. Chan nonduality shifts concern from
individual agents to relationality, and in particular to the kind of
relationality that fully manifests our original Buddha-nature. In this
sense, the basic method of Chan ethics might be thought to be
emulation--a method of deliberately acting as the Buddha did. But
this would imply a goal orientation that is entirely at odds with
Chan's cautions against objectifying enlightened/enlightening
conduct or making Buddha-hood a goal or destination. As the example of
Juzhi and his attendant makes strikingly evident, the method of
Chan is not to imitate or mimic the behavior of either past or present
exemplars. Rather, it is to exemplify ourselves the dramatic clarity
and relational virtuosity of bodhisattvas who are able, in any
situation whatsoever to bring about a liberating inflection of ongoing
relational dynamics. If Chan ethics involves emulation, it is
emulation of something like an improvisational style rather than
mastery of a specific deliberative or behavioral repertoire.



It can be said, then, that freedom is a primary ethical value in Chan.
But Chan freedom is not identified with the exercise of control or
choice; neither is it rooted in rational determinations of whether a
given course of action is good or will have good results. That is,
freedom is not associated with independence (which is imaginable only
in ignorance of the interdependence and interpenetration of all
things), nor is it conceived essentially as a property of individual
agency. In keeping with the bodhisattva ideal, freedom consists in
embodying superlative *capacities-for* and
*commitments-to* realizing the conditions for *relating
freely*: the improvisational expression of *relational
virtuosity* oriented toward the resolution of conflict, trouble
and suffering. Chan ethics is not a function of living in accord with
predetermined means-to and meanings-of the good, but rather of
improvisational genius--a creative marriage of fluid vigilance
and unwavering care: an ethics of ever-intensifying appreciative and
contributory virtuosity.



This, of course, is a distillation of Chan ideals. Extant evidence is
that life within Chan monastic communities was conducted in adherence
with the disciplining precepts of Buddhist ordination, and that
interactions with the lay community were for the most part consistent
with prevailing moral and social norms. Chan rhetoric notwithstanding,
Chan practice seems to have been more norm-respecting rather than
norm-eliding. In keeping with this, when the famous Tang poet,
Bai Juyi (772-846) asked Chan master
Niaoke (741-824) about the true meaning of Chan,
Niaoke responded, "As for doing evil, avoid it; as for the
good, practice sharing it". When Bai Juyi derisively
dismissed this as the kind of advice given to three-year-old children,
Niaoke didn't disagree, but simply added that although it
was advice that rolled easily off the tongue, it was also advice that
most eighty-year-olds failed to put into practice.



Yet, when Niaoke extols sharing the good, he is not referring to
some fixed or predetermined ideal or attribute. Like the Sanskrit
*kusala* for which it served as a translation, the Chinese
word he uses, *shan* (Shan ), connotes the superlative:
"good" in the sense of being expert or virtuosic.
Moreover, he does not advocate "being" good or even
"doing" good, but rather sharing it. Chan ethics is thus
not a *knowing-that* something is or will be good, but rather
*knowing-how* to extend the horizons of virtuosity in ways
deemed valuable by others (on this distinction, see Varela 1999). And
this knowing-how is not an intellectually-attained method, but rather
the result of embodied, relationship-attuning practice.



With this in mind, it is interesting to note that among its signal
achievements Chan came to include the Chan Rules of Purity (*Chan
jinggui*), attributed to Baizhang (749-814), which
established a comprehensive code of conduct for Chan monastics. Even
in the radical Hongzhou lineage, living in accordance with these rules
was seen as essential to holding open the circuit of mutual
contribution that made the privilege of monastic life possible.
Weishan Lingyou (771-853), for example, explicitly urges monks
in his community gratefully and with a lofty and peaceful spirit to
repay the kindnesses of their parents, their donors, the emperor and
the Buddha, without whose offerings they would not have the
opportunity to realize Chan awakening (*Weishan jingce*, T.
48:1042b-43c), primarily by adhering to established rules of
comportment for those embracing the bodhisattva ideal. The emphasis on
bodily comportment is crucial.



As the Pali and Sanskrit texts of the Vinaya division of the Buddhist
canon make clear, the norms of Buddhist monastic life were not arrived
at in an *a priori* or purely rational fashion, but rather in
situated response to tensions arising within the early monastic
community and in its interactions with the rest of society. This
situational approach to the development of norms for conduct and
demeanor resonated well with indigenous Chinese approaches to ethics.
The moral and ethical norms of the Confucian tradition around which
social relations have been structured throughout much of China's
history do not consist in rationally-derived principles and virtues,
but rather in standards of ritual performance (*li*, Li )
within the roles--as fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, friends
and societal participants--that are the constitutive means-to and
meanings-of being authentic and valued persons-in-community (see Ames
2011). These standards are, of course, behavioral. They provide a
social grammar to which recourse is made in shaping one's
relationships in meaningful and situationally appropriate ways. But
more importantly, these standards are also qualitative--standards
of intention, attitude and energy as they pertain to relational
enhancement. Although any grammar is by nature restrictive, the
purpose of Confucian norms is to provide a structure for the
progressive personification of consummate conduct (*ren*,
Ren ). Ethics is ultimately inseparable from aesthetics.



Understood in this context, monastic discipline provides a basic
grammar for living as persons-in-Buddhist-community. Abiding by
monastic rules of behavior and comportment are a kind of "basic
training" on the way of developing relational virtuosity. That
said, Chan virtuosity involves much more than
"grammatical" proficiency. An intimation of what this
means is presented in this beautifully crafted passage in the
discourse records of Mazu.



> 
> 
> Buddhas are capable of authoritative personhood (*ren*). Having
> realized kind wisdom and the excellent nature of opportunities and
> dangers, you can break through the net of doubts snaring all sentient
> beings. Departing from "is" and "is-not" and
> other such bondages....leaping over quantity and calculation, you
> will be without obstruction in whatever you do. When your situation
> and its pattern are penetrated, [your actions] are like the sky giving
> rise to clouds; suddenly they exist, and then they don't. Not
> leaving behind any obstructing traces, they are like phrases written
> on water. (*Xu zangjing*, Vol. 119.406b)
> 
> 
> 



The Chan ethical ideal is liberating intimacy and efficacy without
agency.


## 6. Conclusion



Chan's iconoclastic rhetoric and its fondness for using such
apparently negative terms as no-thought, no-mind and no-cultivation as
cardinal points of liberating practice might suggest seeing Chan as a
premodern form of deconstructivism. But given its affirmation of
Buddhist teachings about karma and the role of values and
intentionality in shaping experience, Chan might just as well be seen
as constructivist. The humor and apparent absurdity of Chan's
premier literary form--vernacular encounter dialogues--might
alternatively suggest existentialist leanings, while its celebrations
of everyday life, embodied action and doing what works now rather than
following past precedents can be seen as pragmatic. Philosophically,
Chan presents itself as an enigma.



At the same time, Chan had profound impacts culturally. In China, Chan
ideals of personal vitality and responsive virtuosity found ongoing
visual expression in calligraphy and painting, and literary expression
in poetry. And as Chan spread to other parts of East Asia, these
ideals came also to be infused into the performance arts of music, tea
ceremony and drama. The distinctive ways in which Chan wedded
nonduality or metaphysical ambiguity with a moral aesthetics of
improvisation opened real possibilities for imagining presence as
already liberating.



The nature of the relationship between the enigmas that Chan presents
philosophically and the cultural productivity of its personal and
aesthetic ideals remains open. In East Asia, exploring that openness
historically proved to be a powerful means of addressing the
predicament of culture and the discomforts of cultural difference.
Similar explorations are now ongoing elsewhere as Chan, Zen, Son
and Thien traditions of thought and practice have begun taking
root in other parts of the world. In this new global context, engaging
in philosophical conversation with Chan signals distinctive
opportunities for exploring the means-to and meanings-of truly
intercultural philosophy.