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China Root: Taoism, Ch’an, and Original Zen
A beautifully compelling and liberating guide to the original nature of Zen in ancient China by renowned author and translator David Hinton.Buddhism migrated from India to China in the first century C.E., and Ch'an ( Zen) is generally seen as China's most distinctive and enduring form of Buddhism. In China Root, however, David Hinton shows how Ch'an was in fact a Buddhist-influenced extension of Taoism, China's native system of spiritual philosophy. Unlike Indian Buddhism's abstract sensibility, Ch'an was grounded in an earthy and empirically-based vision. Exploring this vision, Hinton describes Ch'an as a kind of anti-Buddhism. A radical and wild practice aspiring to a deeply ecological the integration of individual consciousness with landscape and with a Cosmos seen as harmonious and alive.In China Root, Hinton describes this original form of Zen with his trademark clarity and elegance, each chapter exploring in enlightening ways a core Ch'an concept--such as meditation, mind, Buddha, awakening--as it was originally understood and practiced in ancient China. Finally, by examining a range of standard translations in the Appendix, Hinton reveals how this original understanding and practice of Ch'an/Zen is almost entirely missing in contemporary American Zen, because it was lost in Ch'an's migration from China through Japan and on to the West.Whether you practice Zen or not, taking this journey on the wings of Hinton's remarkable insight and powerful writing will transform how you understand yourself and the world.
171 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 29, 2020
About the author
David Hinton
37 books87 followersDavid Hinton has published numerous books of poetry and essays, and many translations of ancient Chinese poetry and philosophy—all informed by an abiding interest in deep ecological thinking. This widely-acclaimed work has earned Hinton a Guggenheim Fellowship, numerous fellowships from NEA and NEH, and both of the major awards given for poetry translation in the United States: the Landon Translation Award (Academy of American Poets) and the PEN American Translation Award. Most recently, Hinton received a lifetime achievement award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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November 22, 2022
A Poet Tries Philosophy
A Review of David Hinton’s China Root: Taoism, Chan, and Original Zen
March 2021
For those of you who are new to these topics, the Zen Buddhism we know in the West is, for important world historical reasons, almost exclusively tied to its Japanese forms, practices, aesthetics, and ideas. What most people don’t know is that Zen originated in China as Chan Buddhism some centuries before it made its way to Japan where, over time, it lost its Chinese flavor and took on a completely Japanese style and flavor and became Zen. Zen flourished and developed in Japan (and in other Asian cultures) for 1,500 years before its introduction to the West by Japanese scholars and teachers but also by many curious Westerners who, because they could, went to Japan (not China, because it was closed and mired in chaos), studied it, and brought it back.
Hinton's basic idea has been developed elsewhere by many, namely that Chan/Zen, having been born in China, is deeply influenced by Daoism and by the long-established Chinese indigenous philosophical tradition. Chan is one of four main schools of Chinese Buddhism—the other three being Tiantai, Huayen, and Pure Land—all which were the outcome of mixing one complex foreign philosophy (Indian Buddhism) with the already well-established Chinese indigenous systems of Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, and others. I first learned of the Daoist roots of Chan/Zen from the 1970s book by Alan Watts, one of the early influential popularizers of Zen (The Way of Zen). The main idea of China Root intends to elaborate on this theme that much of this original Daoist influence was lost in Chan/Zen’s exportation to and development in Japan, and then further lost in its later transportation to the West where it came to be known as an essentially Japanese form of Buddhism.
I came to this book with high hopes but within a few hours I came away disappointed. There are many things wrong with this book, the main one being that Hinton is a poet, not a philosopher. The book is full of misleading generalizations based in ungrounded scholarship that entangle Daoist with Mahayana Buddhist and other Chinese philosophical concepts. If you’re familiar with the works of contemporary cross-cultural philosophy scholars such as (on the Buddhist side) e.g., Jay Garfield, Guy Newland, Jan Nattier, Matthew Kapstein, or (on the Chinese side) e.g., Brook Ziporyn, Stephen Angle, Roger Ames, or Chenyang Li, you know what serious scholarship looks like. But not here. Not only does Hinton not cite the work of other scholars, but he also refers to few classic texts, not just Daoist texts but particularly Buddhist texts (such as the Lankavatara-sutra, known to be central to Chinese Chan). China Root has no bibliography or footnote/endnote citations. Throughout the book Hinton relies instead on poetic analysis of Chinese characters and their parts to draw his own conclusions and substantiate rather generalized claims. Often his descriptions are historically and philosophically simplistic, if not just plain inaccurate, as in:
“…when Buddhism arrived in China during the first century of the current era, it was fundamentally reinterpreted and reshaped by Taoist thought, its more abstract metaphysical sensibility becoming grounded in an earthly and empirically based vision. The result of this amalgam, which began to take shape from the third to the fifth centuries C.E., is Ch’an. And in this transformation, Buddhism is so transformed by Taoist thought that, aside from a few institutional trappings, it is scarcely recognizable as Buddhism at all” (p6-7).
Not only does this devalue the Buddhist part of what became Chan, but SO MUCH MORE is going on in the cultural-historical encounter between Chinese indigenous philosophy and Indian Buddhism than what his treatment suggests. Don’t take my word for it – take some time to read up on what stands as world history’s most astonishing feat of one culture absorbing the thought of another – China’s long and mighty struggle with, adaption to, and eventual living in harmony with Indian Buddhism. A thorough and scholarly treatment of this great philosophical encounter is the two-volume set by Brook Ziporyn, Ironies of Oneness and Difference: Coherence in Early Chinese Thought; Prolegomena to the Study of Li and, Beyond Oneness and Difference: Li and Coherence in Chinese Buddhist Thought and Its Antecedents).
Hinton’s overall purpose comes across as sectarian, attempting to show that the Buddhist part of the Chan/Zen tradition (e.g., the Mahayana doctrine of Buddha-nature, tathagatagarbha) is essentially superfluous and that Chan’s wisdom and worth derives solely from Daoist ideas. But he also devalues other cultures (that were only indirectly influenced by Chinese Daoism) by ignoring the massive contributions of not only the Japanese but also of the Koreans and the Vietnamese to the great Chan/Zen tradition. The beloved Thich Nhat Hanh, for example, is a Vietnamese Chan teacher. It’s important to remember that, unlike Daoism, Buddhism is a universalizing tradition that has adapted itself to dozens of very disparate cultures all over Asia while retaining its essential core. It’s called Chan Buddhism for good reasons, not Chan Daoism.
Other annoyances
• Although the book was published in 2020, it still insists on using the antiquated Wade-Giles Chinese transliteration system (Peking, Taoism, Ch’an, T’ai Ch’i) instead of the now long-time standard Pinyin system (Beijing, Daoism, Chan, Taiji).
• Hinton decided to use awkward poetic names for (some) Chan teachers but provides no reference list for those of us who are used to the original names in Chinese transliteration. So, for example Huangpo is “Yellow-Bitterroot Mountain,” Hui Neng is “Prajna-Able,” Seng Chao is “Sangha-Fundament,” and Tao Sheng becomes “Way-Born.” But numerous other Chinese names are left in the original Chinese transliteration (the poets Wang Wei, Hsieh Ling-yun) or just left in Sanskrit such as the Bodhidharma.
• Relies on the current fashionable term of scorn, “cultural appropriation,” to suggest that Zen was stripped of its Chinese and Daoist clothing and redressed in Japanese garments and presented to the world as if it were solely Japanese: “This narrative involves a stunning project of cultural appropriation in which Ch’an is presented as if it were Japanese: the names of Chinese Ch’an masters have been widely rendered in Japanese, as have imported terminology including zen, koan, kensho, satori, mu” (p6). Rather than provide us with the very significant historical reasons why Japanese Zen came first to the West rather than Chinese Chan, we are supposed to instead feel disdain for all those nasty Japanese and Western scholars who were purposefully ignoring the true Chinese roots of Zen and instead forcing its Japanese version on us. Does anyone remember the decades of war, revolution, turmoil, chaos, conflict, humiliation, and isolation China went through in the 20th century right up until the late 80s/early 90s? Is it any wonder why Japanese culture was more poised to transfer to the West? While Chinese culture was embroiled in homemade chaos during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Japan was rebuilding, reconnecting, and exporting its cultural products to the world. Cultural appropriation? Right.
• Rather than teach us how cross-cultural scholarship has its own evolutionary history of greater accuracy and refinement over each subsequent generation of scholars, Hinton spends an enormous amount of effort showing how scholars past and present mis-translate and mis-interpret the Chan tradition… “Comparisons of those translations with the more philosophically accurate translations given in this book (all of which are my own) reveal how the earlier translations misrepresent Ch’an’s native cosmology” (p138). His Appendix, Lost in Translation, lists examples of these vague, mis-translated, misunderstood word-concepts along with HIS more definitive corrections. Item #6 in the list deserves mention as he claims that the classic East Asian Buddhist text we know as the Heart Sutra should instead be translated as the Mind Sutra, claiming that “Heart” was chosen for “emotional appeal.” Apart from the simple naming quibble, there is so much wrong with this appendix item that it would take a whole other review just to explain it. For starts, try these resources: 1) a scholarly blog on the Heart Sutra among many other Buddhist topics (https://jayarava.blogspot.com/) and, 2) Professor Jan Nattier's study on the Chinese origin of the Heart Sutra (https://tinyurl.com/32vh9eeh).
All in all, this book is a missed opportunity. The basic project of reclaiming and bringing forward the Chinese roots of the Chan/Zen tradition is a worthwhile one but is lost here in over-zealous poetic sectarianism. Try the following books instead and beware of poets who attempt to be philosophers.
Other Books on the Chinese Roots of Chan/Zen
1. The Way of Zen
2. From Chinese Chan to Japanese Zen: A Remarkable Century of Transmission and Transformation (recommended)
3. The Northern School and the Formation of Early Ch'an Buddhism
4. Inventing Hui-Neng, the Sixth Patriarch: Hagiography and Biography in Early Ch'an
5. Essential Chan Buddhism: The Character and Spirit of Chinese Zen
6. Zen's Chinese Heritage: The Masters and Their Teachings
7. How Zen Became Zen: The Dispute Over Enlightenment and the Formation of Chan Buddhism in Song-Dynasty China
8. Studies in Ch'an and Hua-Yen
A Review of David Hinton’s China Root: Taoism, Chan, and Original Zen
March 2021
For those of you who are new to these topics, the Zen Buddhism we know in the West is, for important world historical reasons, almost exclusively tied to its Japanese forms, practices, aesthetics, and ideas. What most people don’t know is that Zen originated in China as Chan Buddhism some centuries before it made its way to Japan where, over time, it lost its Chinese flavor and took on a completely Japanese style and flavor and became Zen. Zen flourished and developed in Japan (and in other Asian cultures) for 1,500 years before its introduction to the West by Japanese scholars and teachers but also by many curious Westerners who, because they could, went to Japan (not China, because it was closed and mired in chaos), studied it, and brought it back.
Hinton's basic idea has been developed elsewhere by many, namely that Chan/Zen, having been born in China, is deeply influenced by Daoism and by the long-established Chinese indigenous philosophical tradition. Chan is one of four main schools of Chinese Buddhism—the other three being Tiantai, Huayen, and Pure Land—all which were the outcome of mixing one complex foreign philosophy (Indian Buddhism) with the already well-established Chinese indigenous systems of Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, and others. I first learned of the Daoist roots of Chan/Zen from the 1970s book by Alan Watts, one of the early influential popularizers of Zen (The Way of Zen). The main idea of China Root intends to elaborate on this theme that much of this original Daoist influence was lost in Chan/Zen’s exportation to and development in Japan, and then further lost in its later transportation to the West where it came to be known as an essentially Japanese form of Buddhism.
I came to this book with high hopes but within a few hours I came away disappointed. There are many things wrong with this book, the main one being that Hinton is a poet, not a philosopher. The book is full of misleading generalizations based in ungrounded scholarship that entangle Daoist with Mahayana Buddhist and other Chinese philosophical concepts. If you’re familiar with the works of contemporary cross-cultural philosophy scholars such as (on the Buddhist side) e.g., Jay Garfield, Guy Newland, Jan Nattier, Matthew Kapstein, or (on the Chinese side) e.g., Brook Ziporyn, Stephen Angle, Roger Ames, or Chenyang Li, you know what serious scholarship looks like. But not here. Not only does Hinton not cite the work of other scholars, but he also refers to few classic texts, not just Daoist texts but particularly Buddhist texts (such as the Lankavatara-sutra, known to be central to Chinese Chan). China Root has no bibliography or footnote/endnote citations. Throughout the book Hinton relies instead on poetic analysis of Chinese characters and their parts to draw his own conclusions and substantiate rather generalized claims. Often his descriptions are historically and philosophically simplistic, if not just plain inaccurate, as in:
“…when Buddhism arrived in China during the first century of the current era, it was fundamentally reinterpreted and reshaped by Taoist thought, its more abstract metaphysical sensibility becoming grounded in an earthly and empirically based vision. The result of this amalgam, which began to take shape from the third to the fifth centuries C.E., is Ch’an. And in this transformation, Buddhism is so transformed by Taoist thought that, aside from a few institutional trappings, it is scarcely recognizable as Buddhism at all” (p6-7).
Not only does this devalue the Buddhist part of what became Chan, but SO MUCH MORE is going on in the cultural-historical encounter between Chinese indigenous philosophy and Indian Buddhism than what his treatment suggests. Don’t take my word for it – take some time to read up on what stands as world history’s most astonishing feat of one culture absorbing the thought of another – China’s long and mighty struggle with, adaption to, and eventual living in harmony with Indian Buddhism. A thorough and scholarly treatment of this great philosophical encounter is the two-volume set by Brook Ziporyn, Ironies of Oneness and Difference: Coherence in Early Chinese Thought; Prolegomena to the Study of Li and, Beyond Oneness and Difference: Li and Coherence in Chinese Buddhist Thought and Its Antecedents).
Hinton’s overall purpose comes across as sectarian, attempting to show that the Buddhist part of the Chan/Zen tradition (e.g., the Mahayana doctrine of Buddha-nature, tathagatagarbha) is essentially superfluous and that Chan’s wisdom and worth derives solely from Daoist ideas. But he also devalues other cultures (that were only indirectly influenced by Chinese Daoism) by ignoring the massive contributions of not only the Japanese but also of the Koreans and the Vietnamese to the great Chan/Zen tradition. The beloved Thich Nhat Hanh, for example, is a Vietnamese Chan teacher. It’s important to remember that, unlike Daoism, Buddhism is a universalizing tradition that has adapted itself to dozens of very disparate cultures all over Asia while retaining its essential core. It’s called Chan Buddhism for good reasons, not Chan Daoism.
Other annoyances
• Although the book was published in 2020, it still insists on using the antiquated Wade-Giles Chinese transliteration system (Peking, Taoism, Ch’an, T’ai Ch’i) instead of the now long-time standard Pinyin system (Beijing, Daoism, Chan, Taiji).
• Hinton decided to use awkward poetic names for (some) Chan teachers but provides no reference list for those of us who are used to the original names in Chinese transliteration. So, for example Huangpo is “Yellow-Bitterroot Mountain,” Hui Neng is “Prajna-Able,” Seng Chao is “Sangha-Fundament,” and Tao Sheng becomes “Way-Born.” But numerous other Chinese names are left in the original Chinese transliteration (the poets Wang Wei, Hsieh Ling-yun) or just left in Sanskrit such as the Bodhidharma.
• Relies on the current fashionable term of scorn, “cultural appropriation,” to suggest that Zen was stripped of its Chinese and Daoist clothing and redressed in Japanese garments and presented to the world as if it were solely Japanese: “This narrative involves a stunning project of cultural appropriation in which Ch’an is presented as if it were Japanese: the names of Chinese Ch’an masters have been widely rendered in Japanese, as have imported terminology including zen, koan, kensho, satori, mu” (p6). Rather than provide us with the very significant historical reasons why Japanese Zen came first to the West rather than Chinese Chan, we are supposed to instead feel disdain for all those nasty Japanese and Western scholars who were purposefully ignoring the true Chinese roots of Zen and instead forcing its Japanese version on us. Does anyone remember the decades of war, revolution, turmoil, chaos, conflict, humiliation, and isolation China went through in the 20th century right up until the late 80s/early 90s? Is it any wonder why Japanese culture was more poised to transfer to the West? While Chinese culture was embroiled in homemade chaos during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Japan was rebuilding, reconnecting, and exporting its cultural products to the world. Cultural appropriation? Right.
• Rather than teach us how cross-cultural scholarship has its own evolutionary history of greater accuracy and refinement over each subsequent generation of scholars, Hinton spends an enormous amount of effort showing how scholars past and present mis-translate and mis-interpret the Chan tradition… “Comparisons of those translations with the more philosophically accurate translations given in this book (all of which are my own) reveal how the earlier translations misrepresent Ch’an’s native cosmology” (p138). His Appendix, Lost in Translation, lists examples of these vague, mis-translated, misunderstood word-concepts along with HIS more definitive corrections. Item #6 in the list deserves mention as he claims that the classic East Asian Buddhist text we know as the Heart Sutra should instead be translated as the Mind Sutra, claiming that “Heart” was chosen for “emotional appeal.” Apart from the simple naming quibble, there is so much wrong with this appendix item that it would take a whole other review just to explain it. For starts, try these resources: 1) a scholarly blog on the Heart Sutra among many other Buddhist topics (https://jayarava.blogspot.com/) and, 2) Professor Jan Nattier's study on the Chinese origin of the Heart Sutra (https://tinyurl.com/32vh9eeh).
All in all, this book is a missed opportunity. The basic project of reclaiming and bringing forward the Chinese roots of the Chan/Zen tradition is a worthwhile one but is lost here in over-zealous poetic sectarianism. Try the following books instead and beware of poets who attempt to be philosophers.
Other Books on the Chinese Roots of Chan/Zen
1. The Way of Zen
2. From Chinese Chan to Japanese Zen: A Remarkable Century of Transmission and Transformation (recommended)
3. The Northern School and the Formation of Early Ch'an Buddhism
4. Inventing Hui-Neng, the Sixth Patriarch: Hagiography and Biography in Early Ch'an
5. Essential Chan Buddhism: The Character and Spirit of Chinese Zen
6. Zen's Chinese Heritage: The Masters and Their Teachings
7. How Zen Became Zen: The Dispute Over Enlightenment and the Formation of Chan Buddhism in Song-Dynasty China
8. Studies in Ch'an and Hua-Yen
February 22, 2021
The book's title should be Ch'an Root.
The content is mainly about etimology of key words on Ch'an tradition, and how (according to the author) the lost of translation of the words from original Chinese. Arguably the lost of teachings when adapted from China to Japan. But author gives explicit samples on English Zen literatures.
For English adaptation of Ch'an/Zen literatures, the author gives some lost in translation cases on Appendix section. The arguments on the books are using the appendix as the reference. So readers could read back and forth between the book's chapters and the appendix.
I read this book for Lunar New Year of 2021.
The content is mainly about etimology of key words on Ch'an tradition, and how (according to the author) the lost of translation of the words from original Chinese. Arguably the lost of teachings when adapted from China to Japan. But author gives explicit samples on English Zen literatures.
For English adaptation of Ch'an/Zen literatures, the author gives some lost in translation cases on Appendix section. The arguments on the books are using the appendix as the reference. So readers could read back and forth between the book's chapters and the appendix.
I read this book for Lunar New Year of 2021.
August 25, 2020
In China Root: Taoism, Ch’an, and Original Zen (Shambhala, 2020), translator/poet David Hinton makes two closely related arguments. The first, his strongest argument, is that English translations of Chán texts obscure, distort, and erase Chán’s significant debt to Daoist thought. The second, and somewhat weaker argument, is that Chán is an offshoot of Daoism that incorporated and subsequently remade Buddhist meditation in its own image, rather than being an authentic descendent of Buddhism in its own right. There can be no doubt that as Buddhism established itself in East Asia it underwent a significant process of sinicization as it was 1) initially understood through the lens of Daoism, and then, 2) as it was understood more thoroughly as the vast corpus of Buddhist literature was gradually translated into Chinese. There also can be no doubt that the authors of the great works of Chán literature—e.g., the Transmission of the Lamp, the Platform Sūtra, and the kōan collections—were at least as well-versed in Laozi, Zhuangzi, Kongzi, and Mengzi as they were in the Buddha, Nāgārjuna, Asaṅga, and Vasubandhu. The way that Chán practitioners and thinkers negotiated the mutual assimilation and accommodation of Buddhist to Daoist ideas with their simultaneous multiple similarities and incompatibilities is an endlessly fascinating topic.
A good deal of Hinton’s argument is philological. In other words, because the Chinese borrowed already existing Chinese characters from the Daoist lexicon to translate novel Sanskrit words, these words continued to mean what they meant for Daoists—no more, no less—even after centuries of use in their new Buddhist context. Hinton may very well be right, but it is also possible that the words developed new and slightly different meanings in their new context even as they continued to retain the penumbra of some of their older connotations. I suspect this is an issue scholars can (and will) debate endlessly without coming to a final universally agreed upon conclusion.
Having stated this reservation up front, let me say that Hinton presents a fascinating account of how English translations of the Chán literature really do a significant disservice to Chán’s Daoist heritage. He shows how certain characters that have clear Daoist meanings are simply left omitted, untranslated, or mistranslated in well-known English translations—for example, the characters “玄” (xuán) meaning “dark enigma” and 文 (wén) meaning “inner pattern,” referring respectively to the ungraspable nature of the Dao and its intricate inner pattern. Hinton also shows how words that have important double meanings are translated as if they only have one meaning. For example, the Chinese character 無 (wú, Chinese; mu, Japanese) is usually translated simply as “no” or “not” as in the kōan of Zhāozhōu’s dog, or in the long list of negations in the Heart Sutra. Hinton claims that 無 is also the character for the Daoist principle of “absence.” The movement of the Dao is a continuous movement from absence to presence and back again to absence. Absence is thus the fertile void from which the 10,000 things manifest and return, and parallels, in some respects, the Buddhist idea of śūnyatā (emptiness) in its implications for non-dual wholeness. Thus, when Zhāozhōu says “wú” in answer to the question of whether a dog has Buddha nature, he is not merely denying it, but also pointing to the Dao and its undivided wholeness. In fact, Hinton points out there is a bit of word play in the original Chinese version of this kōan, because the character 無 occurs twice, first as a particle at the end of the student’s question expressing negation (“A dog has a Buddha-nature, no?”) and then as Zhāozhōu’s answer, this time as an affirmation of the principle of absence. This double role of 無 as both a negation and as the principal of absence can also be seen in the Chán concept of “no mind” which could be understood as a mind without thoughts, but also as “absence mind,” an awareness of the undivided constantly emerging wholeness of reality, of which mind is just one more emergent phenomenon.
From here, Hinton goes on to view the quintessential Chán practices of sitting meditation and kōan practice from the perspective of Daoist wúwéi (無為, non-action or “absence action”). The effortful one-pointed meditation that is so common in early Buddhist practices is replaced with an effortless open attention to the constant arising of presence from absence and the undividedness of being. Solving kōans becomes a performative act in which solutions arise not from thinking, but from the spontaneous action of the universe as if manifests in individual thought and action. Meditation and kōan practice become the practice of oneness with all things here and now, and a way of experiencing/expressing wholeness rather than a means of attaining a transcendent nirvāṇa. When Chán speaks of “seeing one’s original nature,” (見性; jiànxìng, Chinese; kenshō, Japanese) it means discovering one’s already and always present unity with the unfolding of the Dao. For Hinton, there is no distinction between “Buddha-nature” and this constant emergence of presence from absence and back again. Hinton also addresses the influence of Chinese mountains-and-rivers landscape painting on the Chán sensibility, and how “mountains-and-rivers” are manifestations of the Dao in the same way that the emergence of thoughts and feelings are—inner and outer landscapes that reflect a single unitary process.
All of this is certainly there in Chán, but much is also left out in Hinton’s analysis. For example, Hinton’s analysis leaves out any mention of the bodhisattva vows, the precepts, karma, the four noble truths, the paramitas and brahmaviharas, dependent origination, and so much more. The Lamp transmission stories and kōan collections highlight Chán’s Daoist-inflected antinomian side, but fail to reflect the Chán masters equally deep grounding in the broader Buddhist and Confucian traditions—traditions they and their students could take for granted. Theirs was a special transmission beyond letters and words, but that transmission didn’t obviate the need for developing discerning wisdom, character, and compassion. We see this clearly, for example, in the later Japanese Zen of Dōgen who repeatedly said that all one had to do was just sit zazen—forget everything else—but who then also went on to prescribe in detail how to read sutras, burn incense, bow, wear one’s robe, make repentance, chant, prepare meals, and wash one’s face.
I have a few quibbles with some of Hinton’s editing decisions. First, he transliterates Chinese names using the Wade-Giles system rather than the Pinyin system most contemporary scholars use. Second, he refers to Chán masters by the English meaning of the Chinese characters that compose their names, rather than by their Chinese or Japanese transliterations. For example, he refers to Zhāozhōu as “Master Visitation Land,” and Linjī as “Master Purport Dark Enigma.” This is all right as long as you have the Chinese/Japanese transliteration equivalents in a footnote or appendix so one can easily line up their names with the names one is already familiar with, but it’s just plain annoying without them. My final quibble is the absence of footnotes to document research supporting claims he makes about Chinese and Chán history. Without them, it is impossible for the reader to know or guess what scholarship he is relying on. For example, Hinton asserts that the separation of self from Nature resulted from disruptions to paleolithic culture caused by the development of agriculture and written language, and by an accompanying shift from a gynocentric to androcentric world-view. That sounds good. For all I know, it may be completely true—but I would love to know how he knows this, and whether it is supported by scholarly research. This problem is compounded by the fact that there are no scholarly references in the works cited at the end of the book.
Despite these reservations, I found this book to be quite valuable. I learned much was new to me about the history and meaning of the Chinese characters used to express Chán ideas. The book helped me to more deeply appreciate the Daoist contributions to modern Zen practice, and better understand the reasons for some of the underlying discontinuities between Zen teachings and those of other Buddhist schools. The book is written at a level the average Zen practitioner will be able to appreciate and enjoy.
I just wish Hinton’s approach had been a bit more scholarly. As a non-scholar who is not fluent in classical Chinese, I wasn’t always sure how fully I could trust Hinton’s interpretations and alternative translations. When one is writing a book, there’s always a tradeoff between making the book enjoyable for the general reader, but also useful for scholarly types. There is never a perfect way to do this, but I wish Hinton had erred a little more on the scholarly side.
A good deal of Hinton’s argument is philological. In other words, because the Chinese borrowed already existing Chinese characters from the Daoist lexicon to translate novel Sanskrit words, these words continued to mean what they meant for Daoists—no more, no less—even after centuries of use in their new Buddhist context. Hinton may very well be right, but it is also possible that the words developed new and slightly different meanings in their new context even as they continued to retain the penumbra of some of their older connotations. I suspect this is an issue scholars can (and will) debate endlessly without coming to a final universally agreed upon conclusion.
Having stated this reservation up front, let me say that Hinton presents a fascinating account of how English translations of the Chán literature really do a significant disservice to Chán’s Daoist heritage. He shows how certain characters that have clear Daoist meanings are simply left omitted, untranslated, or mistranslated in well-known English translations—for example, the characters “玄” (xuán) meaning “dark enigma” and 文 (wén) meaning “inner pattern,” referring respectively to the ungraspable nature of the Dao and its intricate inner pattern. Hinton also shows how words that have important double meanings are translated as if they only have one meaning. For example, the Chinese character 無 (wú, Chinese; mu, Japanese) is usually translated simply as “no” or “not” as in the kōan of Zhāozhōu’s dog, or in the long list of negations in the Heart Sutra. Hinton claims that 無 is also the character for the Daoist principle of “absence.” The movement of the Dao is a continuous movement from absence to presence and back again to absence. Absence is thus the fertile void from which the 10,000 things manifest and return, and parallels, in some respects, the Buddhist idea of śūnyatā (emptiness) in its implications for non-dual wholeness. Thus, when Zhāozhōu says “wú” in answer to the question of whether a dog has Buddha nature, he is not merely denying it, but also pointing to the Dao and its undivided wholeness. In fact, Hinton points out there is a bit of word play in the original Chinese version of this kōan, because the character 無 occurs twice, first as a particle at the end of the student’s question expressing negation (“A dog has a Buddha-nature, no?”) and then as Zhāozhōu’s answer, this time as an affirmation of the principle of absence. This double role of 無 as both a negation and as the principal of absence can also be seen in the Chán concept of “no mind” which could be understood as a mind without thoughts, but also as “absence mind,” an awareness of the undivided constantly emerging wholeness of reality, of which mind is just one more emergent phenomenon.
From here, Hinton goes on to view the quintessential Chán practices of sitting meditation and kōan practice from the perspective of Daoist wúwéi (無為, non-action or “absence action”). The effortful one-pointed meditation that is so common in early Buddhist practices is replaced with an effortless open attention to the constant arising of presence from absence and the undividedness of being. Solving kōans becomes a performative act in which solutions arise not from thinking, but from the spontaneous action of the universe as if manifests in individual thought and action. Meditation and kōan practice become the practice of oneness with all things here and now, and a way of experiencing/expressing wholeness rather than a means of attaining a transcendent nirvāṇa. When Chán speaks of “seeing one’s original nature,” (見性; jiànxìng, Chinese; kenshō, Japanese) it means discovering one’s already and always present unity with the unfolding of the Dao. For Hinton, there is no distinction between “Buddha-nature” and this constant emergence of presence from absence and back again. Hinton also addresses the influence of Chinese mountains-and-rivers landscape painting on the Chán sensibility, and how “mountains-and-rivers” are manifestations of the Dao in the same way that the emergence of thoughts and feelings are—inner and outer landscapes that reflect a single unitary process.
All of this is certainly there in Chán, but much is also left out in Hinton’s analysis. For example, Hinton’s analysis leaves out any mention of the bodhisattva vows, the precepts, karma, the four noble truths, the paramitas and brahmaviharas, dependent origination, and so much more. The Lamp transmission stories and kōan collections highlight Chán’s Daoist-inflected antinomian side, but fail to reflect the Chán masters equally deep grounding in the broader Buddhist and Confucian traditions—traditions they and their students could take for granted. Theirs was a special transmission beyond letters and words, but that transmission didn’t obviate the need for developing discerning wisdom, character, and compassion. We see this clearly, for example, in the later Japanese Zen of Dōgen who repeatedly said that all one had to do was just sit zazen—forget everything else—but who then also went on to prescribe in detail how to read sutras, burn incense, bow, wear one’s robe, make repentance, chant, prepare meals, and wash one’s face.
I have a few quibbles with some of Hinton’s editing decisions. First, he transliterates Chinese names using the Wade-Giles system rather than the Pinyin system most contemporary scholars use. Second, he refers to Chán masters by the English meaning of the Chinese characters that compose their names, rather than by their Chinese or Japanese transliterations. For example, he refers to Zhāozhōu as “Master Visitation Land,” and Linjī as “Master Purport Dark Enigma.” This is all right as long as you have the Chinese/Japanese transliteration equivalents in a footnote or appendix so one can easily line up their names with the names one is already familiar with, but it’s just plain annoying without them. My final quibble is the absence of footnotes to document research supporting claims he makes about Chinese and Chán history. Without them, it is impossible for the reader to know or guess what scholarship he is relying on. For example, Hinton asserts that the separation of self from Nature resulted from disruptions to paleolithic culture caused by the development of agriculture and written language, and by an accompanying shift from a gynocentric to androcentric world-view. That sounds good. For all I know, it may be completely true—but I would love to know how he knows this, and whether it is supported by scholarly research. This problem is compounded by the fact that there are no scholarly references in the works cited at the end of the book.
Despite these reservations, I found this book to be quite valuable. I learned much was new to me about the history and meaning of the Chinese characters used to express Chán ideas. The book helped me to more deeply appreciate the Daoist contributions to modern Zen practice, and better understand the reasons for some of the underlying discontinuities between Zen teachings and those of other Buddhist schools. The book is written at a level the average Zen practitioner will be able to appreciate and enjoy.
I just wish Hinton’s approach had been a bit more scholarly. As a non-scholar who is not fluent in classical Chinese, I wasn’t always sure how fully I could trust Hinton’s interpretations and alternative translations. When one is writing a book, there’s always a tradeoff between making the book enjoyable for the general reader, but also useful for scholarly types. There is never a perfect way to do this, but I wish Hinton had erred a little more on the scholarly side.
October 10, 2020
This is an amazingly bad book (one star) that I'm not sorry to have read (so another star for that).
It barely advances its central thesis, that Zen/Ch'an are more Taoism that Buddhism, I was hoping for a good exploration of that. Each plausible bit of evidence is surrounded by mountains and rivers of twaddle, so even the things not obviously false would have to be confirmed somewhere else before you should believe them. Nothing is supported with any references, and many things are presented as "it is obvious that (ridiculous thing)". Did you know that because Chinese is not phonetic, but originally vaguely pictographic, that its words are more connected to the thing they represent than a phonetic alphabet? My wife - who is both a philosophy major and Chinese - made a snorting noise when presented with that gem.
It combines a few intriguing translations with willfully difficult translations - for example every teacher's name is rendered completely into English, rather than the Japanese you might be familiar with or the Chinese that is more accurate. Yes, their names were taken to mean something, that could be laid out the first time you see each master and then left in the Chinese so you could cross reference them with other readings. Similarly some terms are rendered into English so tortured ("existence-tissue") that the original would be much less pretentious.
Buried in this compost heap are a few notions worth the dig, so I'm not sorry to have bought this book and spent time with it. But I can't really recommend it to anyone else.
It barely advances its central thesis, that Zen/Ch'an are more Taoism that Buddhism, I was hoping for a good exploration of that. Each plausible bit of evidence is surrounded by mountains and rivers of twaddle, so even the things not obviously false would have to be confirmed somewhere else before you should believe them. Nothing is supported with any references, and many things are presented as "it is obvious that (ridiculous thing)". Did you know that because Chinese is not phonetic, but originally vaguely pictographic, that its words are more connected to the thing they represent than a phonetic alphabet? My wife - who is both a philosophy major and Chinese - made a snorting noise when presented with that gem.
It combines a few intriguing translations with willfully difficult translations - for example every teacher's name is rendered completely into English, rather than the Japanese you might be familiar with or the Chinese that is more accurate. Yes, their names were taken to mean something, that could be laid out the first time you see each master and then left in the Chinese so you could cross reference them with other readings. Similarly some terms are rendered into English so tortured ("existence-tissue") that the original would be much less pretentious.
Buried in this compost heap are a few notions worth the dig, so I'm not sorry to have bought this book and spent time with it. But I can't really recommend it to anyone else.
October 27, 2024
Excellent primer, almost a guide to the world of Zen, a book I was hoping and looking for for a long time, but as it seems it hasn't had that much attention given the number of Goodreads ratings; the author helpfully guides you through the myriad concepts, words, meanings of the Chan/Zen philosophy and way of life, in the process getting to the heart of the matter, a feature mostly absent in available popular writings on the subject; highly recommended; some excerpts;
"Ch’an is not simply about establishing a mind of tranquility: that happens, but in unexpected ways. Instead, by emptying consciousness of the isolated identity-center we take for granted in our daily lives, Ch’an intends to liberate us into a larger identity that is woven integrally into landscape, earth, and Cosmos. This is Ch’an awakening: a radical kind of liberation, a freedom that transforms everything from identity and immediate everyday experience to death itself. And it demands a wild and fearless mind."
"Presence is simply the empirical universe, which the ancients described as the ten thousand things in constant transformation; and Absence is the generative void from which this ever-changing realm of Presence perpetually emerges. Lao Tzu describes it succinctly like this: All beneath heaven, the ten thousand things: it’s all born of Presence, and Presence is born of Absence."
"There is no distinction between noun and verb in classical Chinese. Virtually all words can function as either. Hence, the sense of reality as verbal: a tissue alive and in process. This includes all individual elements of reality, such as mountains or people, and contrasts with our language’s sense that reality is nominal, an assemblage of static things. A noun in fact only refers to a temporal slice through the ongoing verbal process that any thing actually is."
"Ch’an is not simply about establishing a mind of tranquility: that happens, but in unexpected ways. Instead, by emptying consciousness of the isolated identity-center we take for granted in our daily lives, Ch’an intends to liberate us into a larger identity that is woven integrally into landscape, earth, and Cosmos. This is Ch’an awakening: a radical kind of liberation, a freedom that transforms everything from identity and immediate everyday experience to death itself. And it demands a wild and fearless mind."
"Presence is simply the empirical universe, which the ancients described as the ten thousand things in constant transformation; and Absence is the generative void from which this ever-changing realm of Presence perpetually emerges. Lao Tzu describes it succinctly like this: All beneath heaven, the ten thousand things: it’s all born of Presence, and Presence is born of Absence."
"There is no distinction between noun and verb in classical Chinese. Virtually all words can function as either. Hence, the sense of reality as verbal: a tissue alive and in process. This includes all individual elements of reality, such as mountains or people, and contrasts with our language’s sense that reality is nominal, an assemblage of static things. A noun in fact only refers to a temporal slice through the ongoing verbal process that any thing actually is."
June 1, 2024
David Hinton‘s breakthrough scholarship focuses on the philosophical fusion conjoining classical Buddhism with Taoism, in forging Ch‘an Buddhism, the ancestor of Zen varietals in Japan and the West.
While contemporary Zen has often been seen in the West as a therapeutic practice, its origins in China run far deeper, resting on the phenomenology of what Chinese poets described as the Dark Enigma, where the specifying delineation of the diverse fullness of Presence emerges dynamically from the selfless Absence of a delineated reality, only sensed by the unstructured raw experiences of the Awakened on the way to seeing and rationalizing raw experience into an orderly conceived reality.
As an accomplished translator, Hinton makes his case by criticizing the usual English translations of Chinese ideographic script. Each Chinese word draws a picture, rather than an alphabetically derived. concept. And instead of Indo-European etymologies, Hinton invites his readers to deconstruct the landscape of key Chinese ideograms, which are themselves compounds of pictures within pictures, drawing a layered scene out of the originating experiences that first drew these word-pictures into existence. So, instead of seeking word for word translations, as in alphabetic, phonetic languages, we can best approach ancient Chinese texts as art historians might interpret iconography. Every word paints a picture, revealing the pictures within each textual landscape.
In my 30 years of practicing Zen, this singular book brought me stellar clarity.
While contemporary Zen has often been seen in the West as a therapeutic practice, its origins in China run far deeper, resting on the phenomenology of what Chinese poets described as the Dark Enigma, where the specifying delineation of the diverse fullness of Presence emerges dynamically from the selfless Absence of a delineated reality, only sensed by the unstructured raw experiences of the Awakened on the way to seeing and rationalizing raw experience into an orderly conceived reality.
As an accomplished translator, Hinton makes his case by criticizing the usual English translations of Chinese ideographic script. Each Chinese word draws a picture, rather than an alphabetically derived. concept. And instead of Indo-European etymologies, Hinton invites his readers to deconstruct the landscape of key Chinese ideograms, which are themselves compounds of pictures within pictures, drawing a layered scene out of the originating experiences that first drew these word-pictures into existence. So, instead of seeking word for word translations, as in alphabetic, phonetic languages, we can best approach ancient Chinese texts as art historians might interpret iconography. Every word paints a picture, revealing the pictures within each textual landscape.
In my 30 years of practicing Zen, this singular book brought me stellar clarity.
April 29, 2022
China Root: Taoism, Ch’an, and Original Zen by David Hinton. Shambhala. 176 pp. $17.95. *****
This is a fascinating and important book. David Hinton is a long time—thirty-five years—translator of Chinese poetry and other texts. He has translated most of the great Chinese classics, including the Tao Te Ching, I Ching, Chuang Tzu, The Analects, Mencius, and the No-Gate Gateway. His contention in this book—which in some ways seems the culmination of all his writing—is that Zen is much more influenced by Taoism than it is by Buddhism, that Ch’an—the Chinese predecessor to Zen—is more an offshoot, or an extension, of Taoism than it is an adoption of Buddhism. He makes that argument primarily by means of translation, which he contends that other people have done badly and he has done correctly. Translation is his life’s work.
He seems to think—in a long appendix which I’m making my way through now—that most translators of Chinese texts are irresponsible and incompetent nincompoops. He doesn’t say that in so many words, but that’s the impression he gives. And it’s hard to argue with him. His translations are beautiful, and clear, and hang together from one work to another.
The words which we normally translate as form and emptiness, for instance (in the Heart Sutra, for instance, which he thinks should be called the Mind Sutra; he thinks Heart Sutra is a sentimental translation) he translates as Presence and Absence. Presence is the ten thousand things as we see them. Absence is the mysterious dark void out of which everything emerges. The Tao is “the generative ontological process through which all things arise and pass away.” So here is how he renders the first canto of the Tao Te Ching, which various commentators have said encompasses the whole work.
A Way called Way isn’t the perennial Way.
A name that names isn’t the perennial name.
the named is mother to the ten thousand things,
but the unnamed is origin to all heaven and earth.
In perennial Absence you see mystery,
and in perennial Presence you see appearance.
Though the two are one and the same,
once they arise, they differ in name.
One and the same they’re called dark-enigma,
dark enigma deep within dark-enigma,
Gateway to all mystery.
Presence and Absence aren’t really two different things, but more like two sides of one coin; Presence comes out of Absence and goes back into it, in a continual process. Dark-enigma is also an important term in this view of things, and is in general “equated with Absence, the generative ontological tissue from which the ten thousand things spring. Or more properly, it is Way before it is named, before Absence and Presence give birth to one another—that region where consciousness and ontology share their source.”[1]
All of this is intimidating for a moronic reader like me, who knows nothing about science or the Chinese language or the Chinese way of thinking. But it has always seemed to me that, if the universe began out of nothing with a Big Bang, that nothing wasn’t exactly nothing, but was full of potential and tremendous energy. As I understand what Hinton is saying, creation didn’t happen once; it is constantly happening, things coming out of absence and returning to it. But Presence isn’t good and Absence bad. They’re both aspects of the same process.
We can see this process in our own minds, in the act of meditation, which is why that is such an important practice for Taoists and subsequently for Ch’an Buddhists. In a certain way, mind (which does not reside in the brain, and is not separate from the body) is the same as Tao; it is the vast container in which this process of Absence becoming Presence continually happens. On the one hand, we all have mind, or all are mind, not the content (which is different for everyone) but the vast container of the content, in which this process continually happens. In a way the point of meditation is to see Mind in its pure form, but one doesn’t do that by stopping the process, but by allowing it to happen and seeing through it. However much we would like to stop the mind from producing thoughts, we probably can’t (I certainly can’t) and that’s not the point anyway. My favorite koan makes that point. And Hinton’s translation is unique. (Hinton translates the names of the protagonists; we knew these teachers better as Joshu and Nansen.)
“Visitation-Land asked Wellspring-South Mountain: ‘What is the Way?’
‘Ordinary mind is the Way,’ answered Master Wellspring.
‘Still, it’s something I can set out toward, isn’t it?’
‘To set out is to be distant from.’
‘But if I don’t set out, how will I arrive at an understanding of Way?’
‘Way isn’t something you can understand, and it isn’t something you can not understand. Understanding is delusion, and not understanding is pure forgetfulness.
‘If you truly comprehend this Way that never sets out for somewhere else, if you enter into it absolutely, you realize it’s exactly like the vast expanse of this universe, all generative emptiness you can see through into boundless clarity.’”
So meditation isn’t finally a process of doing anything, but of not doing, not “setting out.” Zen calls this practice shikantaza, just sitting, which is a way of bringing to meditation the practice of wu wei, which means “acting as a spontaneous part of Tzu-jan (‘the ten thousand things unfolding spontaneously from the generative source’) rather than with self-conscious intention.” You let things happen rather than trying to bring something about. You sit and watch the show, as my teacher Larry Rosenberg used to say. People find it terribly difficult to do nothing, of course. But that is the task of shikantaza.
The most fascinating translation in this book is of what Hinton calls the Mind Sutra, which I’ve been chanting in another form as the Heart Sutra for thirty years. Here’s his rendering:
And so, in emptiness this beautiful world of things is Absence,
perceptions absence, thoughts, actions, distinctions,
Absence eyes and ears, nose and tongue, self and meaning and ch’i mind itself,
Absence this beautiful dharma world,
its color and sound, smell and taste and touch,
Absence the world of sight
and even the world of ch’i mind, its meaning and distinctions,
Absence Absence-wisdom
and Absence Absence-wisdom extinguished,
Absence old-age unto death
and Absence old-age unto death extinguished.
I find Hinton’s argument convincing and enlightening. I’ve always been fascinated and enthralled by Taoist teachings, and thought there was more than a little Taoism in the Zen Buddhism I practiced. At the same time, as far as the actual practice goes, I don’t see any difference. Hinton believes the Japanese teachers distorted the Chinese teachings and didn’t translate them well, but in the end they taught me to just sit there, and that’s where Hinton arrives as well. And the aforementioned Larry Rosenberg, my first teacher, teaches vipassana meditation, but he always said that ultimate practice is sitting there doing nothing, and teaches that’s what vipassana actually is.[2]
As Henry Shukman says in an opening blurb that’s so long it’s practically a preface: “Oddly, perhaps, in spite of Hinton’s expert parsing out of missteps in the translation and transmission of this Dharma to the West, I can’t help feeling I’ve just read a staggeringly good account of the modern Zen training a contemporary Japanese-based lineage led me through.”
So in some ways I feel as if this book just explains very clearly how to do what I’ve already been doing, perhaps more clearly than anything else I’ve read. I nevertheless think it’s a book that every Zen practitioner would want to own. It is the clearest explanation of the rationale behind our practice that I’ve seen.
And it makes me want to continue to explore David Hinton’s work. He’s a dedicated and brilliant translator.
[1] My definitions come from Hinton’s glossary to the Tao Te Ching, which I bought along with China Root.
[2] https://tricycle.org/magazine/the-art...
www.davidguy.org
This is a fascinating and important book. David Hinton is a long time—thirty-five years—translator of Chinese poetry and other texts. He has translated most of the great Chinese classics, including the Tao Te Ching, I Ching, Chuang Tzu, The Analects, Mencius, and the No-Gate Gateway. His contention in this book—which in some ways seems the culmination of all his writing—is that Zen is much more influenced by Taoism than it is by Buddhism, that Ch’an—the Chinese predecessor to Zen—is more an offshoot, or an extension, of Taoism than it is an adoption of Buddhism. He makes that argument primarily by means of translation, which he contends that other people have done badly and he has done correctly. Translation is his life’s work.
He seems to think—in a long appendix which I’m making my way through now—that most translators of Chinese texts are irresponsible and incompetent nincompoops. He doesn’t say that in so many words, but that’s the impression he gives. And it’s hard to argue with him. His translations are beautiful, and clear, and hang together from one work to another.
The words which we normally translate as form and emptiness, for instance (in the Heart Sutra, for instance, which he thinks should be called the Mind Sutra; he thinks Heart Sutra is a sentimental translation) he translates as Presence and Absence. Presence is the ten thousand things as we see them. Absence is the mysterious dark void out of which everything emerges. The Tao is “the generative ontological process through which all things arise and pass away.” So here is how he renders the first canto of the Tao Te Ching, which various commentators have said encompasses the whole work.
A Way called Way isn’t the perennial Way.
A name that names isn’t the perennial name.
the named is mother to the ten thousand things,
but the unnamed is origin to all heaven and earth.
In perennial Absence you see mystery,
and in perennial Presence you see appearance.
Though the two are one and the same,
once they arise, they differ in name.
One and the same they’re called dark-enigma,
dark enigma deep within dark-enigma,
Gateway to all mystery.
Presence and Absence aren’t really two different things, but more like two sides of one coin; Presence comes out of Absence and goes back into it, in a continual process. Dark-enigma is also an important term in this view of things, and is in general “equated with Absence, the generative ontological tissue from which the ten thousand things spring. Or more properly, it is Way before it is named, before Absence and Presence give birth to one another—that region where consciousness and ontology share their source.”[1]
All of this is intimidating for a moronic reader like me, who knows nothing about science or the Chinese language or the Chinese way of thinking. But it has always seemed to me that, if the universe began out of nothing with a Big Bang, that nothing wasn’t exactly nothing, but was full of potential and tremendous energy. As I understand what Hinton is saying, creation didn’t happen once; it is constantly happening, things coming out of absence and returning to it. But Presence isn’t good and Absence bad. They’re both aspects of the same process.
We can see this process in our own minds, in the act of meditation, which is why that is such an important practice for Taoists and subsequently for Ch’an Buddhists. In a certain way, mind (which does not reside in the brain, and is not separate from the body) is the same as Tao; it is the vast container in which this process of Absence becoming Presence continually happens. On the one hand, we all have mind, or all are mind, not the content (which is different for everyone) but the vast container of the content, in which this process continually happens. In a way the point of meditation is to see Mind in its pure form, but one doesn’t do that by stopping the process, but by allowing it to happen and seeing through it. However much we would like to stop the mind from producing thoughts, we probably can’t (I certainly can’t) and that’s not the point anyway. My favorite koan makes that point. And Hinton’s translation is unique. (Hinton translates the names of the protagonists; we knew these teachers better as Joshu and Nansen.)
“Visitation-Land asked Wellspring-South Mountain: ‘What is the Way?’
‘Ordinary mind is the Way,’ answered Master Wellspring.
‘Still, it’s something I can set out toward, isn’t it?’
‘To set out is to be distant from.’
‘But if I don’t set out, how will I arrive at an understanding of Way?’
‘Way isn’t something you can understand, and it isn’t something you can not understand. Understanding is delusion, and not understanding is pure forgetfulness.
‘If you truly comprehend this Way that never sets out for somewhere else, if you enter into it absolutely, you realize it’s exactly like the vast expanse of this universe, all generative emptiness you can see through into boundless clarity.’”
So meditation isn’t finally a process of doing anything, but of not doing, not “setting out.” Zen calls this practice shikantaza, just sitting, which is a way of bringing to meditation the practice of wu wei, which means “acting as a spontaneous part of Tzu-jan (‘the ten thousand things unfolding spontaneously from the generative source’) rather than with self-conscious intention.” You let things happen rather than trying to bring something about. You sit and watch the show, as my teacher Larry Rosenberg used to say. People find it terribly difficult to do nothing, of course. But that is the task of shikantaza.
The most fascinating translation in this book is of what Hinton calls the Mind Sutra, which I’ve been chanting in another form as the Heart Sutra for thirty years. Here’s his rendering:
And so, in emptiness this beautiful world of things is Absence,
perceptions absence, thoughts, actions, distinctions,
Absence eyes and ears, nose and tongue, self and meaning and ch’i mind itself,
Absence this beautiful dharma world,
its color and sound, smell and taste and touch,
Absence the world of sight
and even the world of ch’i mind, its meaning and distinctions,
Absence Absence-wisdom
and Absence Absence-wisdom extinguished,
Absence old-age unto death
and Absence old-age unto death extinguished.
I find Hinton’s argument convincing and enlightening. I’ve always been fascinated and enthralled by Taoist teachings, and thought there was more than a little Taoism in the Zen Buddhism I practiced. At the same time, as far as the actual practice goes, I don’t see any difference. Hinton believes the Japanese teachers distorted the Chinese teachings and didn’t translate them well, but in the end they taught me to just sit there, and that’s where Hinton arrives as well. And the aforementioned Larry Rosenberg, my first teacher, teaches vipassana meditation, but he always said that ultimate practice is sitting there doing nothing, and teaches that’s what vipassana actually is.[2]
As Henry Shukman says in an opening blurb that’s so long it’s practically a preface: “Oddly, perhaps, in spite of Hinton’s expert parsing out of missteps in the translation and transmission of this Dharma to the West, I can’t help feeling I’ve just read a staggeringly good account of the modern Zen training a contemporary Japanese-based lineage led me through.”
So in some ways I feel as if this book just explains very clearly how to do what I’ve already been doing, perhaps more clearly than anything else I’ve read. I nevertheless think it’s a book that every Zen practitioner would want to own. It is the clearest explanation of the rationale behind our practice that I’ve seen.
And it makes me want to continue to explore David Hinton’s work. He’s a dedicated and brilliant translator.
[1] My definitions come from Hinton’s glossary to the Tao Te Ching, which I bought along with China Root.
[2] https://tricycle.org/magazine/the-art...
www.davidguy.org
July 3, 2022
Valuable discussion of early Ch'an (Zen) thinking and translation of Ch'an texts; less interesting for modern Zen practitioners.
Overview of the book
China Root addresses the influence of Taoist philosophy on Buddhism following its arrival from India during 200-500 C.E. By tradition, Bodhidharma introduced Ch’an to China fully-formed around 500 C.E.; Hinton argues, by contrast, that Chinese artist-intellectuals melded Buddhist and Taoist thinking around the fourth century C.E. They enriched Taoism using Buddhist meditation practices, resulting in the creation of Ch’an, largely Taoist with a Buddhist veneer. The term Ch’an derives from the Indian word dhyana (“meditation”).
Ch’an, in turn, spread to Japan, where it was translated as “Zen.” Early religious interaction between Chinese Ch’an monks and Japan occurred between 650 and 1100 C.E., but Ch’an found it difficult to establish because of opposition from the Japanese Tendai school. A durable Japanese Zen tradition came with visits to China by Eisai and Dogen in 1187 and 1215, respectively, and their subsequent return to Japan to establish the Rinzai and Soto Zen schools.
Hinton’s focus is on the Chinese Taoist philosophy that became embedded in the Ch’an tradition. Taoism views the universe in terms of the foundational concepts of Absence and Presence. “Presence is simply the empirical universe, which the ancients described as the ten thousand things in constant transformation; and Absence is the generative void from which this ever-changing realm of Presence perpetually emerges.”
Buddhist dhyana meditation cultivated the consciousness “as a selfless and empty state of “non-dualist” tranquility." Under Ch’an, the tranquil state of the mind in meditation became identified with the concept of Absence. The emergence and disappearance of thought within consciousness was, in turn, seen as the emergence of Presence out of Absence, and its return again back into Absence. At a more universal level, the constant movement of the universe in the forms of Absence and Presence was due to the unfurling of Tao or ch’i. Hinton describes Absence and Presence woven into a “single boundless tissue.” This “explains the wondrous fact that matter is so exquisitely organized into the intricate forms of this rivers-and-mountains world—forests and oceans, snakes and orcas, poppies and humans—that these forms somehow appear and evolve in an of themselves and for no apparent reason. And cast against the possibility of a patternless and therefore chaotic evolution of things, as it always was in the Chinese mind, that pattern is sheer miracle.”
A central thrust of China Root is Hinton’s thesis that modern writers have failed to understand the Taoist roots of Ch’an and have thus mistranslated key texts. In particular, they have not grasped the Taoist concept of “Absence” and thus mistranslate this as “no,” such as in the Heart Sutra (649 C.E.).
Thus, while a standard translation (Aitken) would be as follows:
“Therefore, in emptiness there is no form, no sensation, thought, impulse, consciousness;
No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind;
No color, sound smell, taste, touch, object of thought;
No realm of sight to no realm of thought; no ignorance and no ending of ignorance…”
Hinton, instead, proposes:
“And so, in emptiness this beautiful world of things is Absence,
Perceptions Absence, thoughts, actions, distinctions,
Absence eyes and ears, nose and tongue, self and meaning and ch’i mind itself,
Absence this beautiful dharma-world,
Its color and sound, smell and taste and touch,
Absence the world of sight
And even the world of ch’i mind, its meanings and distinctions,
Absence Absence-wisdom
And Absence Absence-wisdom extinguished…”
Critique
Hinton is clearly a profound linguist and scholar, but this is not an easy book. In a novel approach, Chinese writers are generally referred to by the English translations of their Chinese ideograms. Thus, China Root consistently refers to Lin Chi (Rinzai in Japanese) as Master Visitation Land; similarly, Huang Po (Obaku in Japanese) becomes Yellow-Bitterroot Mountain, while Ma Tsu becomes Sudden-Horse Way Entire! The book would have benefitted enormously from a concordance between the Chinese names and their English and Japanese counterparts. In addition, China Root includes no index and literary texts are commonly quoted without dates.
More fundamentally, this is an academic book about the translation of Ch’an texts not about Zen practice. When Hinton argues that modern writers have consistently failed to appreciate the Taoist roots of Ch’an and have mistranslated core texts, one might draw the inference that this has somehow undermined the Zen tradition. In practice, however, issues of translation are unimportant for practice. The founders of Japanese Zen (Eisai and Dogen) experienced Ch’an first-hand through long stays in Ch’an monasteries. Their mastery of Ch’an practice was transferred to and extended through the Zen schools in Japan. And in the early 20th century, Zen spread to the West through interactions between Japanese masters and Western students. This chain of transmission was rooted in the lived experience of Zen, independent of the written texts. Given this, the rediscovery by Hinton of the Taoist roots of Ch’an/Zen texts is historically interesting but seems unlikely to have any impact on Zen practice. Given this, I am not sure about Henry Shukman Roshi’s cover blurb for China Root: “May it echo through modern zendos for decades to come.”
Last, while Hinton’s writing about historical Taoism and Ch’an is persuasive, he writes with a degree of certainty that gave rise to reservations (at least on my part), given the clear challenges of understanding religious thinking dating back almost 1500 years. My doubts first arose during the introduction when Hinton confidently accounts for the alienation that has emerged between the broader universe and its constituent individuals, who take for granted that they are separate and independent “centers of identity.” In his view, the human condition was originally whole but this “began to fade during the Paleolithic, when people slowly became self-reflective and aware of themselves as separate from the rest of existence” while “the advent of alphabetic writing completed this transformation.” These are interesting conjectures but certainly do not merit the certainty accorded to them by Hinton.
My Zen reviews, ranked
Overview of the book
China Root addresses the influence of Taoist philosophy on Buddhism following its arrival from India during 200-500 C.E. By tradition, Bodhidharma introduced Ch’an to China fully-formed around 500 C.E.; Hinton argues, by contrast, that Chinese artist-intellectuals melded Buddhist and Taoist thinking around the fourth century C.E. They enriched Taoism using Buddhist meditation practices, resulting in the creation of Ch’an, largely Taoist with a Buddhist veneer. The term Ch’an derives from the Indian word dhyana (“meditation”).
Ch’an, in turn, spread to Japan, where it was translated as “Zen.” Early religious interaction between Chinese Ch’an monks and Japan occurred between 650 and 1100 C.E., but Ch’an found it difficult to establish because of opposition from the Japanese Tendai school. A durable Japanese Zen tradition came with visits to China by Eisai and Dogen in 1187 and 1215, respectively, and their subsequent return to Japan to establish the Rinzai and Soto Zen schools.
Hinton’s focus is on the Chinese Taoist philosophy that became embedded in the Ch’an tradition. Taoism views the universe in terms of the foundational concepts of Absence and Presence. “Presence is simply the empirical universe, which the ancients described as the ten thousand things in constant transformation; and Absence is the generative void from which this ever-changing realm of Presence perpetually emerges.”
Buddhist dhyana meditation cultivated the consciousness “as a selfless and empty state of “non-dualist” tranquility." Under Ch’an, the tranquil state of the mind in meditation became identified with the concept of Absence. The emergence and disappearance of thought within consciousness was, in turn, seen as the emergence of Presence out of Absence, and its return again back into Absence. At a more universal level, the constant movement of the universe in the forms of Absence and Presence was due to the unfurling of Tao or ch’i. Hinton describes Absence and Presence woven into a “single boundless tissue.” This “explains the wondrous fact that matter is so exquisitely organized into the intricate forms of this rivers-and-mountains world—forests and oceans, snakes and orcas, poppies and humans—that these forms somehow appear and evolve in an of themselves and for no apparent reason. And cast against the possibility of a patternless and therefore chaotic evolution of things, as it always was in the Chinese mind, that pattern is sheer miracle.”
A central thrust of China Root is Hinton’s thesis that modern writers have failed to understand the Taoist roots of Ch’an and have thus mistranslated key texts. In particular, they have not grasped the Taoist concept of “Absence” and thus mistranslate this as “no,” such as in the Heart Sutra (649 C.E.).
Thus, while a standard translation (Aitken) would be as follows:
“Therefore, in emptiness there is no form, no sensation, thought, impulse, consciousness;
No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind;
No color, sound smell, taste, touch, object of thought;
No realm of sight to no realm of thought; no ignorance and no ending of ignorance…”
Hinton, instead, proposes:
“And so, in emptiness this beautiful world of things is Absence,
Perceptions Absence, thoughts, actions, distinctions,
Absence eyes and ears, nose and tongue, self and meaning and ch’i mind itself,
Absence this beautiful dharma-world,
Its color and sound, smell and taste and touch,
Absence the world of sight
And even the world of ch’i mind, its meanings and distinctions,
Absence Absence-wisdom
And Absence Absence-wisdom extinguished…”
Critique
Hinton is clearly a profound linguist and scholar, but this is not an easy book. In a novel approach, Chinese writers are generally referred to by the English translations of their Chinese ideograms. Thus, China Root consistently refers to Lin Chi (Rinzai in Japanese) as Master Visitation Land; similarly, Huang Po (Obaku in Japanese) becomes Yellow-Bitterroot Mountain, while Ma Tsu becomes Sudden-Horse Way Entire! The book would have benefitted enormously from a concordance between the Chinese names and their English and Japanese counterparts. In addition, China Root includes no index and literary texts are commonly quoted without dates.
More fundamentally, this is an academic book about the translation of Ch’an texts not about Zen practice. When Hinton argues that modern writers have consistently failed to appreciate the Taoist roots of Ch’an and have mistranslated core texts, one might draw the inference that this has somehow undermined the Zen tradition. In practice, however, issues of translation are unimportant for practice. The founders of Japanese Zen (Eisai and Dogen) experienced Ch’an first-hand through long stays in Ch’an monasteries. Their mastery of Ch’an practice was transferred to and extended through the Zen schools in Japan. And in the early 20th century, Zen spread to the West through interactions between Japanese masters and Western students. This chain of transmission was rooted in the lived experience of Zen, independent of the written texts. Given this, the rediscovery by Hinton of the Taoist roots of Ch’an/Zen texts is historically interesting but seems unlikely to have any impact on Zen practice. Given this, I am not sure about Henry Shukman Roshi’s cover blurb for China Root: “May it echo through modern zendos for decades to come.”
Last, while Hinton’s writing about historical Taoism and Ch’an is persuasive, he writes with a degree of certainty that gave rise to reservations (at least on my part), given the clear challenges of understanding religious thinking dating back almost 1500 years. My doubts first arose during the introduction when Hinton confidently accounts for the alienation that has emerged between the broader universe and its constituent individuals, who take for granted that they are separate and independent “centers of identity.” In his view, the human condition was originally whole but this “began to fade during the Paleolithic, when people slowly became self-reflective and aware of themselves as separate from the rest of existence” while “the advent of alphabetic writing completed this transformation.” These are interesting conjectures but certainly do not merit the certainty accorded to them by Hinton.
My Zen reviews, ranked
November 14, 2020
Revelatory!
If only I had discovered this book prior to embarking on my journey with Zen, it might have cleared up so many questions I had and ones that even my teachers failed to clarify. True, Zen cannot be conceptualized, to do so would go against its spirit but prior to any ‘awakening’ a student (particularly a Western one) must understand the path on a certain intellectual level.
What David Hinton succeeds in here is to utterly clarify the deep roots that Zen (Ch’an in China) has with Taoism and to ignore this is to be led down path of misinterpretation and ultimately confusion - yes it is that important. Here you will recognize that even some familiar names in the Zen world simply got it wrong. Any student of philosophy or theology will understand the absolute cruciality in accurate translation, which means fully understanding the context and history of the text in order to transmit its subtlety and nuance, an any student of Zen will know how important this is.
I highly recommend this book to any student of Zen at any level, you will be surprised. I for one will be exploring more of Mr. Hinton’s books to deepen my comprehension and the joy of discovery!
If only I had discovered this book prior to embarking on my journey with Zen, it might have cleared up so many questions I had and ones that even my teachers failed to clarify. True, Zen cannot be conceptualized, to do so would go against its spirit but prior to any ‘awakening’ a student (particularly a Western one) must understand the path on a certain intellectual level.
What David Hinton succeeds in here is to utterly clarify the deep roots that Zen (Ch’an in China) has with Taoism and to ignore this is to be led down path of misinterpretation and ultimately confusion - yes it is that important. Here you will recognize that even some familiar names in the Zen world simply got it wrong. Any student of philosophy or theology will understand the absolute cruciality in accurate translation, which means fully understanding the context and history of the text in order to transmit its subtlety and nuance, an any student of Zen will know how important this is.
I highly recommend this book to any student of Zen at any level, you will be surprised. I for one will be exploring more of Mr. Hinton’s books to deepen my comprehension and the joy of discovery!
November 26, 2023
I've read many of David Hinton's translations and reflections, and many books on both Buddhism and Taoism, but this puts the pieces together better than anything else I've read. For nearly a half century I've contemplated why it is that despite my attraction to Buddhism, I continue to gravitate back to the Taoism of the I Ching and Tao Te Ching. China Root clarified the nature of the question, tracking the intertwined philosophies back to the transition from India to Chinese Taoism to Japanes Ch'an/Zen. The core insight that Hinton provides is the difference between Zen's search for tranquility and Taoism's acceptance of the ever-changing flow of the world. I'm not positive how this book would communicate to those who don't share my particular angle of entry, but if you've been thinking about how Zen and the Tao relate, there's nothing that comes close. At this point, I'd place this alongside Thich Nhat Hanh's Understanding Our Mind as the books that come closest to articulating the way I look at the world.
December 24, 2020
Buddhism would undergo profound changes as it was transmitted from its origins in India east into China, in the first century CE. Terminology had to be assimilated, for one thing. And when one language is translated and assimilated into another, it is inevitable that some conceptual connections will be lost and the meaning of ideas altered. Take Zen Buddhism. In his latest book, David Hinton says that we in the West are not just once-removed from the original Zen—but twice removed. This is because the Zen we know from Japan had already lost much of the original Daoist underpinnings of Chinese Zen—known as Chan—even before the religion traveled across the Pacific to America.
Rest of my review at Asian Review of Books https://asianreviewofbooks.com/conten...
Rest of my review at Asian Review of Books https://asianreviewofbooks.com/conten...
March 30, 2024
Fairly clear is a case put forward for Taoist ideas remolding Buddhism as it hit China.
More involved is a need to handle Chinese character etymology in order to help build it.
The key background notion is that of 'generative tissue' -- a metaphor that underlies Taoist belief in the source of existence.
This is a poetic appreciation of a philosophical notion. If this were strictly religious, one might substitute "faith" for "poetry" -- the need to accept that the (metaphoric) "ten thousand" varieties of empirical reality stem from this initial tissue, go back (at death/disappearance) to it, yet never 'leave' it, being attached to the greater rhythm of rising and lowering, leaving and returning.
A book well-written for an audience at a highly-academic level.
More involved is a need to handle Chinese character etymology in order to help build it.
The key background notion is that of 'generative tissue' -- a metaphor that underlies Taoist belief in the source of existence.
This is a poetic appreciation of a philosophical notion. If this were strictly religious, one might substitute "faith" for "poetry" -- the need to accept that the (metaphoric) "ten thousand" varieties of empirical reality stem from this initial tissue, go back (at death/disappearance) to it, yet never 'leave' it, being attached to the greater rhythm of rising and lowering, leaving and returning.
A book well-written for an audience at a highly-academic level.
June 28, 2021
I love this book. I like the breakdown / analysis of the pictographs and hidden meanings. I agree with some of the quibbles about the names of masters, more scholarly references and clearer annotations.
However, the thrust that mature Chan moves beyond Quietism and the explanation of Tzu-jan are insightful. There are some breathtaking passages and this book is helpful in the evolving translation of relevant texts/ scriptures/ koans.
The discussion on Absence/ Presence and Wu Wei are contemplative gems . It will be interesting to see if some of Hinton’s assertions are corroborated by other scholars / practitioners. Certain Zen “riddles” have been clarified here for me.
However, the thrust that mature Chan moves beyond Quietism and the explanation of Tzu-jan are insightful. There are some breathtaking passages and this book is helpful in the evolving translation of relevant texts/ scriptures/ koans.
The discussion on Absence/ Presence and Wu Wei are contemplative gems . It will be interesting to see if some of Hinton’s assertions are corroborated by other scholars / practitioners. Certain Zen “riddles” have been clarified here for me.
January 2, 2021
This book was a bit of a disappointment to me. Hinton's translations of Chinese poems are often lovely, but his essay/prose style in this book felt redundant. I believe he was endeavoring to make the paradoxical and somewhat difficult concepts of tao graspable by Western readers, and he succeeds in that to some extent; but the book's prose suffers as a result.
I did learn a great deal from this book, but it wasn't a fluent and engaging text.
I did learn a great deal from this book, but it wasn't a fluent and engaging text.
December 8, 2021
Interesting on the links between Taoism, Chan, and Zen, but a bit superficial. Generally relies on terminological connections with some philosophical discussion. As others have noted, the author's habit of translating the sages' names literally is unwelcome when he could have easily noted their concrete meaning once or twice or added them to an appendix.
July 7, 2023
I can't believe garbage like this is being churned out by a supposed scholar. This kind of work would be considered out dated if it was published 30 years ago. Chan is just redressed Daoism? Really? Even a cursory understanding of Daoism, Mahayana Buddhism, and Chan would reveal substantial differences. It's unfortunate the author chooses to ignore this.
May 25, 2024
Most of what is in this book is communicated more concisely/taken further in David Hinton's subsequent undertaking, The Way of Ch'an. Having discovered that book first, China Root was a breezy yet thorough review of many of the same concepts with some additional insight here and there. A lovely introduction to Taoist/Ch'an thought.
May 19, 2023
Although I disagree with Hinton's approximation of Buddhist terms to "indigenous" Daoist understandings of them and how he goes about their etymology, I nonetheless see value in how he has gone about bringing these terms to life in how own way.
March 28, 2021
There's some interesting info in this book, but the writing is a bit choppy, so it's difficult to always discern what the author is trying to share.
February 5, 2022
Perhaps Hinton's most difficult book.
August 14, 2023
I almost wanted to give this book 2 stars, because it is so interesting to see him basically making all this stuff up. Here's my review in the form of a tanka:
If he cited sources
this book would be shorter
than the Heart Sutra
His source: passing clouds
revealed a flower in the sky
If he cited sources
this book would be shorter
than the Heart Sutra
His source: passing clouds
revealed a flower in the sky
October 4, 2023
Lost in translation appendix 👌
January 31, 2021
I have enormous respect and admiration for the translations of David Hinton. To my ear, he is able to render Chinese poetry, particularly the Tang Dynasty Mountain masters, with a beauty and rhythm and organicity other translators cannot manage. My command of Chinese is, sadly, not sufficient to judge whether said translations are more or less accurate than, say, those of Red Pine (Bill Porter) but I can say my novelist's ear prefers them.
When it comes to Hinton's autobiographical work and his essays, such as those in this book, I have more reservations about the work, not because the thinking isn't good and not because they don't represent a substantial contribution to Academic Daoism (they do, thus the five-star review) but only because I wish he would write in more accessible and less word-drunk style. I say this because his insights and opinions are well hearing. There is real magic here and a new way of looking at things, particularly for serious students of Daoism, Ch'an Buddhism, and Zen.
When it comes to Hinton's autobiographical work and his essays, such as those in this book, I have more reservations about the work, not because the thinking isn't good and not because they don't represent a substantial contribution to Academic Daoism (they do, thus the five-star review) but only because I wish he would write in more accessible and less word-drunk style. I say this because his insights and opinions are well hearing. There is real magic here and a new way of looking at things, particularly for serious students of Daoism, Ch'an Buddhism, and Zen.
July 5, 2023
second read.
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