Abstract
Many Chan texts impute to humour a central role, linking our unequivocal attachment to linguistic concepts to a kind of intellectual paralysis. At the same time, they recognize that we can never escape the paradoxes of language because we cannot do without the anchors that concepts provide. But these anchors can become linguistic straightjackets that we need to extricate ourselves from. The movement between using linguistic concepts and undoing them through humour and/or non-verbal gestures leads to a continuous sparring in Chan texts. Texts attributed to Huangbo and Linji offer penetrating analyses of Buddhist texts, but on the other hand they poke fun even at the activity of reading, claiming that it gives us indigestion if we try to gobble up too many texts. Humour and physical violence are some of the ways in which language is undone in Chan texts. The Wumenguan consists of a set of gongan or koans, send our logical mind into paroxysms of confusion. Sense becomes non-sense; non-sense becomes sense. The manner in which the gongan can tie our brains into knots using language highlights the arbitrary nature of all language.
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Notes
- 1.
As Dale Wright points out, the text attributed to Huangbo has gone through “more mediations than anyone can count” and borrows “language and ideas from other texts without acknowledgement.” See Dale Wright, Philosophical Meditations on Zen Buddhism. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 2, 4. Wright notes that Huangbo’s wealthy disciple Pei Xiu in all likelihood rationalized and systematized the “oral ramblings” of his teacher. He points out that Huangbo’s portrayal in the Linji Lu is much different, and presents Huangbo as a rather coarse figure.
- 2.
Richard Gardner points out that Northern Chan practitioners, apparently led by Shen Xiu, favoured the Lankavatara Sutra which encapsulated the mind-only school of Yogacara Buddhism and searched for the true reality behind illusions. Southerners, favoured the Diamond Sutra which was not metaphysical and even anti-metaphysical in its orientation. He notes that the “final outcome of the southern revolution was an integration of Chan Buddhism with daily life. See Richard T. Gardner: “The Deconstruction of the Mirror and Other Heresies Ch’an and Taoism as Abnormal Discourse.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 12 (2), 1985, p. 137.
- 3.
John McCrae notes that encounter dialogue did not develop until the eighth century, and suggests that at this point decisions were made to preserve the oral anecdotal history of Chan. He warns us that the translation of these sayings into a literary Mandarin genre were not necessarily direct recordings of the stories circulating in the Chan community, but were a literary technique, since they were transcribed into a written form. The Song dynasty was the period during which this literary style blossomed. John McCrae, “The Antecedents of Encounter Dialogue in Zen Buddhism” in Stephen Heine, Koan: Texts and Contexts in Chan Buddhism. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
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Froese, K. (2017). Laughing for Nothing in Chan Buddhism. In: Why Can’t Philosophers Laugh?. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55044-2_7
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