Rethiking Transendence

·期刊原文
RETHINKING TRANSCENDENCE: THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE IN ZEN EXPERIENCE
By Dale S. Wright
Philosophy East and West
(c) by University of Hawaii Press
Volume 42, no.1
January 1992
p. 113-138

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p. 113

I. Introduction

The object of this essay is to present an
alternative to what I take to be a fundamental
component of Western-language interpretations of Zen
experience--the idea that Zen enlightenment is an
undistorted, "pure experience" of "things as they
are" beyond the shaping power of language. This
alternative will consist in an interpretation of Zen
practice and enlightenment that acknowledges numerous
ways in which language and linguistically articulated
social practice have shaped and made possible
distinctively "Zen" modes of experience. The essay's
critical focus will be restricted to the normative
status of "our" (Western-language) claim that Zen
experience transcends language, a position either
developed or assumed, so far as I can see, in all
English language works on Zen that attempt to
articulate what "enlightenment" is. The essay is not,
therefore, grounded in a text-based descriptive claim
about what East Asians have thought or said about the
relation between language and Zen experience. Instead
it asserts that regardless of how East Asians have
understood the role of language in Zen experience,
"we" are no longer justified in thinking that this
kind of religious experience (or any other) stands
altogether beyond the shaping power of language and
culture.

The essay begins with an account of modern
Western interpretations of the role of language in
Zen, a critical exploration of presuppositions and
cultural origins in the West. Although the assertion
that Zen enlightenment transcends language is
ubiquitous to English language works on Zen Buddhism,
I will characterize the position and outline my
argument against it by focusing on two influential
versions of that position: first, Erich Fromm's
seminal essay "Psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism" and
second, T. P. Kasulis' important book, Zen Action:
Zen Person. This section is followed by a four-part
articulation of ways in which language can be thought
to have a role in the Zen experience of "awakening."

II. Modern Western Theories of the Role of Language
in Zen

A. Enlightenment as the Transcendence of
Language: Erich Fromm. Erich Fromm's well-known
essay, "Psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism," presented
at a conference in 1957 and then published in
1960,(1) is interesting for our purposes because, in
formulating his interpretation of "enlightenment" in
both the Zen and Psychoanalytic traditions, he takes
up the question of language. Moreover, while
acknowledging at the outset that his understanding of
Zen has developed primarily through the
English-language works of D. T. Suzuki, Fromm goes on
to present a considerably

p. 114

more thorough, more systematic position on the issue
of language than Suzuki ever did. This surplus of
articulation beyond his source inspires us to ask:
What are the origins and genealogy of this
influential understanding of the relation between
language and experience that Fromm so naturally
attributes to Zen? More importantly, though, this
section seeks to outline Fromm's position as the
mainstream position for English-language works on
Zen, and to get it into critical view.

The focal point of Fromm's position is a sharp
contrast between the mediating, conditioning effects
of language and "enlightenment," understood as an
"immediate, intuitive grasp of reality" (PZB, p. 94).
Although he discusses at some length the role that
language plays in "conditioning" the mind, Fromm's
emphasis is on the extent to which this influence is
a negative one. Because the conditioning power of
language "prevents awareness of reality" (p. 98), the
goal of both humanistic psychology and Zen Buddhism
is a liberation from linguistic and cultural
conditioning.

A whole series of connected metaphors shape this
understanding. Language is figured as a "filter," a
"veil," a "screen," an "obstruction," a "distortion,"
a form of "alienation," a system of "fictional"
"categories, " and "clothing" placed upon naked
reality. On these terms, language is taken as an
interpolation between the knowing subject and
objective reality which inevitably causes distortion.
The implication here is that although linguistic
mediation is very common, it can and ought to be
avoided. In the rare and liberating cases where
language is circumvented, as in Zen, there is an
"immediate, undistorted grasp of reality." We "see
reality as it is" (pp. 128-129). Having adopted this
point of departure, Fromm holds that the goal of Zen
must be to "rid myself of this social filter of
language" (p. 127) and to overcome the "false
consciousness" (p. 98) that it generates.

Presupposed in this account, and therefore
neither articulated nor argued for, is the belief
that language is an avoidable and optional element in
human experience. Language is taken to be independent
of and separable from both subject and object in the
same way that a tool or instrument is separate from
the worker and what is worked upon. Here Fromm draws
upon metaphors of utility and the "instrumental"
theory of language, the dominant understanding of
language in modern Western thought. Because of the
extent of its dominance, this theory's applicability
to Zen seemed "natural" to Fromm and others.(2) My
argument, however, will be that this way of locating
language in relation to human experience is incorrect
and that the kind of pre-linguistic experience based
upon it and valorized by Fromm is neither possible
nor desirable.

A second presupposition that supports Fromm's
position on language is the modern dichotomy between
thought and feeling or, in

p. 115

his words, between "cerebration" and "affection."
Although the precise terms of the relation are not
worked out, language is exclusively associated with
the domain of "thought" and not with "feelings."
Enlightenment, however, "the intuitive grasp of
reality" (p. 94) is a felt experience that cannot be
thought. Although the concepts embedded within
language may be useful tools, more often than not
they are "misused" in such a way as to hide reality
behind a conceptual "screen" beyond the reach of
unmediated feelings, Fromm's imagery in the
development of this dualism between directly felt
reality and linguistically "filtered" thinking is
drawn from a particular reading of Plato:

The cerebrating person is the alienated person,
the person in the cave who, as in Plate's allegory,
sees only shadows and mistakes them for immediate
reality....The full experience [of reality] actually
exists only up to the moment when it is expressed in
language...words more and more take the place of
experience. (PZB, p. 109)

Enlightenment is therefore "not an intellectual
act, but an affective experience" (p. 110) , a
difference that

... constitutes one of the basic difficulties the
Western student has in trying to understand Zen. The
West, for two thousand years,... has believed that a
final answer to the problem of existence can be given
in thought. (P. 118)

What Fromm has left out of this account of
"Western thought, " however, is precisely the
tradition in which he stands, the tradition from
which most of his ideas about language and
experience, feeling and thought have been drawn.
Attributing his reflections to Zen, he neglects to
locate their diverse origins in eighteenth-century
pietism, in the nineteenth-century relegation of
"religion" to the domain of "feeling, " in
Romanticism, and in the existentialist appropriation
of romanticism not only current but dominant when
Fromm's essay was written.

Regardless of its origins, however, several
contemporary realizations throw Fromm's independent
domain of "feeling" into question. First, language
extends far beyond the domain of thought. Feelings,
like thoughts, are shaped and molded by the language
that we have (instrumentally) taken merely to
"express" them. Feelings and the language of feelings
always interfuse. To know one is to have some kind of
acquaintance with the other. If we did have feelings
to which no complex of words could ever apply in any
sense, we would neither know what those feelings were
nor that we had them. Second, "cerebration" and
"affection" are not independent domains that can be
so easily juxtaposed. Feelings are inevitably
associated with thoughts and thoughts with feelings.
Language, concepts, and feelings interpenetrate each
other such that none is independent of the others,
each incorporating the effects of the others within
its very "essence."

p. 116

As the essay continues, however, Fromm backs off
from the position he has been developing. Changing
metaphors, he says that enlightenment involves the
"whole person," which presumably would include other
dimensions of human experience, together with
feelings, in a more complex relationship than Fromm
has assumed. If this kind of interrelationship
prevails, then no "domain" could be entirely innocent
of language and the shaping effects of culture and
history.

Finally, it seems that Fromm's views on language
are linked to his views on the relation between the
self and society. On this view, enlightenment
requires that the individual transcend society
because

... most of what is in our consciousness is
"false consciousness" and it is essentially society
that fills us with these fictitious and unreal
notions. But the effect of society is not only to
funnel fictions into our consciousness, [it is] also
to prevent awareness of reality. (P. 98)

If this is true then the goal of practitioners in
both Zen and Psychoanalysis must be to "transcend the
limits of... society and... become a citizen of the
world, a cosmopolitan" (p. 105). Both traditions of
practice would seek to produce "... the whole
man--minus that part of man which corresponds to his
society" (p. 106).

The viability of Fromm's understanding of Zen
"enlightenment," and of the relation between language
and human life generally, turns on the possibility of
making the act of subtraction just mentioned. If "the
social" is already there in the "essence" of the
human, then the subtraction of one from the other
would not be possible without destroying what is
basic to human experience.

Fromm's hierarchical dichotomy between the
"universal" and the "particular" sets the stage for
his placement of language in Zen. Enlightenment is
identification with the "universal" in "human
nature," the attainment of which requires that the
particular must be transcended. And since languages
are unique--particular to each society--the
differences they structure into particular cultures
must be renounced in order to attain the depth of
"universality." The character of Zen "satori, "
therefore, would not be related in any significant
way to the histories, cultures, and languages of East
Asian societies. This point is so central to Fromm's
enterprise that his final sentence confirms it in the
form of a rhetorical question:

How could such [Western] understanding [of Zen]
be possible, were it not for the fact that the
"Buddha Nature is in all of us," that man and
existence are universal categories, and that the
immediate grasp of reality, waking up, and
enlightenment, are universal experiences. (P. 141)

Without devaluing many of the important
"humanistic" consequences of this "universalist"
thought, it would be difficult today not to be aware

p. 117

of its shortcomings. Most decisively, it eliminates
what is valuable and interesting in cultural
studies--the particular institutions, beliefs, and
practices of a culture. In refusing to acknowledge
experiential difference between cultures, it fails to
understand Zen enlightenment as a unique and
impressive cultural achievement particular to East
Asian societies. In effect, this prevents Fromm from
learning anything new from Zen--he already
understands the universal experience to which it
aspires. The guiding thought of this essay is that
the attainment of what Alasdair Maclntyre has called
"tradition-free individuals"(3) is an unworthy goal--
East or West--and that for us to improve upon it
would require greater attentiveness to the role
that language plays in the pursuit of excellence in
any culture.

B. Transcending Language Relatively: T. P.
Kasulis. Sensitivity to Zen language and to the
particularity of Japanese culture is precisely what
T. P. Kasulis brings to his important book, Zen
Action: Zen Person.(4) The text opens with a
discussion of the unique character of Japanese
language, moves into a philosophical discussion of
Buddhist theories of language, and demonstrates a
well-cultivated appreciation of Japanese poetic
language all the way through. lust two decades later,
Kasulis had an access to Zen that Fromm did not.

Kasulis' version of the relation between language
and Zen experience is more complex, partly because he
is working out of original Buddhist sources, partly
because his account has attained a greater
philosophical rigor, and partly--perhaps most
importantly--because he is working back and forth
between two quite different views of language. One
view follows the basic structure of Fromm's
understanding: the Zen master is free of the
screening effects of language so that his experience
is direct and unmediated. The second view, inspired
by a different set of sources, argues convincingly
that being human means being fully situated within a
particular cultural milieu and that full
transcendence is not possible. Working between these
two positions both deepens Kasulis' account of
language in Zen, and, in the end, undermines it.

Under the constraints of Kasulis' first position,
most of Fromm's metaphors reappear. Language is a
"filter," a "screen," a "tool," an "overlay," a
"covering," a "distortion," an "obstruction," and
extra "baggage." As for Fromm, these metaphors carry
with them traditional associations with some form of
dualism. In Kasulis' case, the essential dichotomy,
which sometimes carries temporal connotations, is
between an initial moment of unmediated contact and
subsequent "filtering" through linguistic categories.
The specific terms of the dichotomy are as follows:
"raw data" versus "meaning" "pure experience" versus
"conceptual overlay, " "original image" versus
"blurring through conceptual filters," "prereflective
awareness" versus "reflective categories, "
"primordial given" versus "linguistic construct," and
so on.

p. 118

Given this dichotomy as background, how does
enlightenment come to be construed in Kasulis'
account? If language and concepts "cover over" the
"raw data" of "pure experience," enlightenment would
require that "one must overcome the tendency to
filter experience through previously learned
categories..." (ZAZP, p. 113). In the moment of
"awakening" we "return to the state before we put on
the first filters" (p. 56) . Having made this
"return," "the master does not immediately filter his
direct experience..." (p 134) . For him, things
"...manifest themselves just as they are" (p. 134),
without labels, distinctions, judgments, or meaning.

The alternative account offered in this essay is
based upon the thought that this foundational
dichotomy between the "primordial given" and a
subsequent attribution of meaning is untenable. In
support of this claim it will be argued that human
perception is always--even for the Zen
master--already linguistically shaped, and that there
is no human access to a pre-linguistic, objective
"given."

Kasulis' claim here is based on a temporal
distinction: "... the Zen master does not immediately
filter his direct experience" (p. 134, emphasis
mine). He does that later, if and when the situation
requires it. First, there is

... immediate, non-verbal intuition of Praj~naa.
Then, if one finds it necessary to describe or
analyze phenomena, one will be cognizant of which
aspects of the primordial experience are being
highlighted and which hidden by distinctions. (P. 61,
emphasis mine)

The irony of this account is that it attributes
nondualistic, undichotomized experience to the
unenlightened and a cumbersome bifurcation to the Zen
master. Whereas the unenlightened experience meaning
right in the things themselves, the Zen master
experiences in succession both the "things in
themselves" and their socially ascribed meaning and
is, therefore, charged with the constant task of
comparing them. The point here, however, is that this
division within the Zen master cannot hold.

One way to locate the problem is to notice in the
previous quote that the movement from primordial
experience to linguistic articulation cannot occur
without presupposing distinctions, judgments, and
meanings already present within the primordial. One
would only "find it necessary to describe or analyze
phenomena..."(p. 61) if there were some distinction,
some criterion of "necessity," already present in the
primordial. Necessary with respect to what? In
contrast to what? In terms of what context of
meaning? The impetus to make the move from
nonconceptual to corceptual shows the prior presence
of the conceptual in the supposed preconceptual. The
claim that the enlightened "... will be cognizant of
which aspects of the primordial experience are being
highlighted and which hidden by distinctions" (p. 61,
emphasis mine) already implicitly recognizes the
presence within the primordial of both

p. 119

"cognition" and differentiated "aspects."
Furthermore, the portrait of the Zen master as
needing to hold one access to the world up against
another for comparison(5) must render problematic any
claim to "immediacy" and "spontaneity."

But what is really rendered problematic
throughout is the adequacy of modern epistemology as
the background in terms of which Zen experience can
be understood. This background is what modern Western
interpretations of Buddhism have consistently
assumed. Kasulis' understanding of Naagaarjuna, drawn
from the best interpretations available, shows this
most clearly. Here the issues of representation and
subject/ object relations, the central issues in
modern philosophy, are introduced. Naagaarjuna is
taken to demonstrate that "there is an unbridgeable
gap between the concepts and their supposed
referents" (p. 23). Concepts or

... language structures do overlap with
structures found in our experience of concrete
phenomena, but the overlap is fortuitous, not
necessary. (P. 22)

Although, as Kasulis puts it, "the gap between
such concepts and their referents is not so great
that language is to be avoided entirely" (p. 23), the
enlightened know that it is "not to be totally
trusted" (p. 23). Trusted for what? For accurate
representation, the representation of the
primordially given within the domain of the
conceptually constructed. But if, as many
contemporary thinkers now conclude,(6) language and
concepts are already there deeply involved in the
very "presentation" of "things as they are, then
accuracy of representation and related problems in
epistemology are not the primary issues at stake.

It may also be the case that this epistemological
framework is problematic for understanding Buddhist
thought generally. When we assume this framework we
imply that Buddhists arrived at the same intellectual
crossroads as their Western counterparts but, at that
point, came to a different conclusion. Western
thinkers responded to the problem of the "gap" by
seeking well-grounded bridges between subjective
concepts and objective referents, whereas Buddhists
rejected that line of thought, deciding, for example,
that the gap is unbridgeable and, therefore, requires
the abandonment of the project of accurate
representation. Although the purpose of this essay is
not to assert it, it is entirely conceivable that
Buddhists did not in fact arrive at this same
intellectual impasse, and that, beyond coming to a
different answer to the same basic question, they
weren't even asking that question. To treat Buddhists
as "skeptics" is to make their texts respond to
problems they never had.(7)

At the beginning of this section I wrote that
Kasulis' text is complicated by the fact that he is
working between two different and contrasted views of
the relation between language and experience. While
the first view aligns with Fromm's, the second
position goes in a different direction, not only
qualifying and adding depth to the first, but
undercutting

p. 120

and subverting it. The second dimension of Kasulis'
text points toward the understanding of Zen language
that this essay will offer as an alternative to the
theory that has dominated modern interpretation. At
the time of writing, it would appear that Kasulis
stood between two different paradigms of thought on
this issue--one fully structuralist and another
poststructuralist(8)--and his text tries to reconcile
them by bringing the insights of the second within
the framework provided by the first. Although that
reconciliation is not, in my opinion, successful,
Kasulis' attempt to work with an alternative view of
language may in the end be the decisive significance
of his text.

The focal point of Kasulis' second, qualifying
account is the finitude and historicity of all human
life--including enlightened life. Unlike Fromm's
"universal" person, "who must transcend the limits of
his society" (PZB, p. 105), Kasulis' account of
enlightenment proceeds under the realization that
human beings are always situated in particular time,
space, and culture. Whereas Fromm takes a
transcendental state as the goal, Kasulis concludes
that "we cannot find our full sense of personhood by
totally rejecting our historical conditions and
seeking an ahistorical original face" (ZAZP, p. 138).
Kasulis' Zen master

... does not transcend the world--he is firmly
implanted in it.... [He] does not undo his
conditionality; rather, he understands its nature and
its limits. (ZAZP, p. 134)

This realization, inspired, according to the
text, by Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Dogen, will
ultimately undermine Kasulis' overall account of the
place of language in Zen experience. This can be seen
not just in the tensions that it introduces into his
text, but also in another look at his sources.
Setting Dogen aside, since his Zen view is at issue
in our interpretations, we notice that, in
articulating their positions, both Heidegger and
Wittgenstein were working out an explicit rejection
of the overarching epistemological framework to which
Kasulis' text still appeals. What Heidegger and
Wittgenstein have to say about language either argues
against this modern (Cartesian) paradigm, or assumes
its demise. At present, it is hard to see how the two
points of departure for reflection on language could
be reconciled and united. Because of the incongruity
of these two frameworks, Kasulis' excellent chapter,
"The Person as Act, " ends up arguing in two
directions. The first sets out the transcendental
goal: the Zen master is "without presuppositions"
(ZAZP, p. 141) . Undetermined by the past, he
encounters everything as if for the "first time" (p.
141). The second line argues convincingly that this
ahistorical, uncontextualized ideal is neither
possible nor in keeping with the worldensconced
character of the Zen master. Aware of the tension
between them, Kasulis negotiates a compromise which
acknowledges human finitude while at the same time
maintains the transcendental framework:

p. 121

enlightenment means being relatively less determined
by language and cultural inheritance.

III. Resources for an Alternative Theory

In what follows I attempt to work out, in four
steps, an alternative account of the relation between
language and Zen experience. Like others, this
account stands within a tradition of thought and,
from that perspective, seeks to be influenced and
informed by the best contemporary thinking on the
matter. It is well known that the issue of language
has been central to late twentieth-century thought.
Picking up on the insights of Heidegger and
Wittgenstein, poststructuralist theories of language
are at the forefront of current discussion in most
academic fields from Kuhnian philosophy of science to
"deconstruction." Drawing upon this discussion, the
contribution of this essay is, therefore, to ask:
What would it mean for our understanding of Zen to
have undergone the transformation in perspective
afforded by the "linguistic turn" in contemporary
Western thought. The foregoing discussion of the
dominant (modern Western) model of the role of
language in Zen has staked out how the critique of
that model would proceed and how an alternative to it
would be initiated. The force of both critique and
alternative is the realization that language is
embedded in all human experience, even at the
primitive level of perception.

A. Language in Perception and Understanding. As we
have seen, our understanding of Zen experience has
presupposed a structural dichotomy between the
immediately given data of experience and a subsequent
interpretation that we (knowingly or unknowingly)
place upon that data. Contemporary thinkers, however,
deny this dichotomy by exposing the "myth of the
given."(9) They claim that even the most immediate
perception is already structured by some
linguistically constituted cognitive context and that
there is no human access to a world prior to
interpretation.(10)

The first to make this assertion was Heidegger in
section 32 of Being and Time.(11) There the claim is
made that whenever we encounter something, we
encounter it "as" something in particular. We see
this as a book, that as a door, and so on. Anything
not experienced as something in particular (or in
general) is simply not experienced. Because this
hermeneutical "as" is linguistically shaped, language
is always implicated in our experience. Language, and
its entire history of involvement in thought and
practice, functions to set up a context of
significance within which perception occurs. By means
of language, the world (the given) is focused and
organized in advance of every encounter with
entities, persons, or situations. Thus, when we see
something, we have already interpreted
it--immediately--as whatever it is. Assigning it an
interpretation is not something we do after seeing
it. It is the very shape that

p. 122

seeing has already taken. On Heidegger's terms then,
interpretation is not an additional procedure that we
conduct upon the "given." Instead, it constitutes the
basic structure of our "being in the world."

Two qualifications are important here. First,
this is not to say, as some do, that everything is
language. It is rather to claim that we experience
everything that is through the medium of language.
Although what a particular word or sentence refers to
may be extra-linguistic, it appears to us as the
reality it is through language. Second, this is not
to say that there is no such thing as nontheoretical
experience. The simple, perceptual seeing something
as what it is in the midst of our activity in the
world does not require our thinking about it. No
reflective mediation is required. The point, however,
is that the results of past reflection--the formation
of concepts--get passed along to all participants in
a culture through its language. You don't have to
reflect on the concept of a door, or define it, in
order to experience that shape as a door and to use
it in accordance with its appropriate "sense."
Language, therefore, is not to be located only at the
level of concept and predication. It is also present
at the level of perception in such a way that
perception, language, and thinking are all
interdependent.

Without this linguistically shaped sense that
informs our direct awareness of things, the daily
life of a Zen master would be problematic at best.
One must be able to perceive those lines on the wall
as a door in order to know how to exit the meditation
hall. Inability to understand these sounds as a
question, that sound as a meditation bell, and so on
would render even the most basic functions of the Zen
master impossible. Inability to experience a
monastery fire "immediately" as a fire, as a threat,
as a demand for action, as requiring the evacuation
of others, as extinguishable by water, and so on
would render the Zen master helpless and incapable of
spontaneous, Zen-like response. No Zen text disputes
this; in fact they all assume it. They assume the
everyday function of distinctions and understanding
by means of which things are experienced as what they
are, fully laden with meaning and significance. It is
on the basis of this background that distinctively
Zen actions and discourse are performed.

The instrumental theory of language is not wrong
in asserting that language functions as an instrument
or tool that we use for our own purposes. We do, in
fact, use language. But this theory is insufficient.
insofar as it sees this as the only location of
language and insofar as it understands human beings
to have an independent and controlling relation to
language. Every act of use or control, whether
discursive or not, is already structured for us by
the linguistically shaped contours of our cultural
inheritance. Moreover, transcending these contours,
getting back behind them, is no more desirable than
it is possible. Not only are we mistaken when we
understand the Zen master to have achieved this

p. 123

state, we also render him incapable of the worldly
"function" for which he is famous.

One implication of this theory for our
understanding of the "self" is that "individuality"
comes to be situated upon the foundations of
community, culture, history, and language. The
individual self develops upon this foundation as an
inheritor of the cultural achievements that have come
to fruition in that tradition. Thus situated, the
individual develops a capacity for involvement within
the socially structured world. Language and culture
function to make human experience what it is by
structuring, in advance, a perceptual field of
relevant features, self-evident relations, possible
responses, and so on. Upon this foundation, the Zen
master thinks and acts "naturally"--without abstract
reflection--in response to the immediate situation.
But in contrast to Kasulis' image of the Zen master
as relatively less "determined," let us entertain the
opposite possibility. Because he is a perfect
instantiation of the cultural ideal, the Zen master
can be understood to be "relatively more" determined
and shaped by the Zen community's linguistically
articulated image of excellence." The behavior,
perception, and understanding of any Zen practitioner
is, in this way, internally structured by the
language and culture of Zen. Since this is true of
all participants in a culture, it is a further,
derivative task to decide how the "excellence" of the
Zen master is to be distinguished from the competence
level of the ordinary practitioner. Both, however,
share this (ultimately ungrounded) foundation in
cultural history. If this is true, then understanding
the awakened Zen master will require as much
sensitivity as possible to the Zen community within
which he stands and to the role that language plays
in the constitution of that community.

B. Language in Zen Community. Because language is
a communal or social practice, one consequence of a
reassessment of the role of language in Zen will be
that "community" is granted a greater significance
than it has in modern interpretations. Rather than
grounding meaning and experience in the private
sphere of the individual subject (personal
intuitions, intentions, desires, and so forth), our
effort will be to stress the fundamental importance
of the shared language of the Zen Buddhist monastic
world. More basic than individual subjectivity is
communal intersubjectivity, in this case the
linguistically shaped sense of Zen that held monks
together as a community in pursuit of common goals.
On this interpretation, therefore, language is taken
to be the power to form that commonality and to shape
and sustain the monks' shared concern for the
possibility of "awakening."

This way of proceeding-understanding Zen personal
experience by way of the linguistically shaped world
of the monastery--stands in sharp contrast to early
interpretations of Zen like Fromm's. Recall that for

p. 124

Fromm, authentic Zen experience entailed the
transcendence of one's society. Consequently, Fromm
shows no interest in Zen monastic life nor in the
discursive practices that organize it. These would be
figured as elements needing to be transcended rather
than as the undergirding context that has made some
form of enlightened transcendence possible.(13) Early
interpretations of Zen, guided as they were by the
modern valorization of individualism in its many
forms, could not appreciate the significance of this
sociolinguistic background. Indeed, American "Beat
Zen" was commonly understood as a radical rejection
of communal participation in stark contrast to the
collective character of the Zen literature that
served as its inspiration. Only recently has interest
in Zen's communal background taken hold, both among
Western practitioners of Zen and among academic
analysts.

The two Western thinkers that Kasulis draws upon,
Heidegger and Wittgenstein, are precisely the ones to
have initiated this interest in the communal
background of thought. Heidegger's critique of modern
individualism focused on language.(14) Communication,
he claimed, is not the transmission of individual
thoughts and desires from the interior of one
autonomous person to another. It is rather a
reciprocally influential interaction within shared
contexts of significance established and maintained
in language. Similarly, Wittgenstein understood
discourse as participation in diverse "language
games."(15) On this model Zen monks would be pictured
as participating in the shared concerns of the
monastic community which were constituted and
presented in the language they spoke and in the
linguistically shaped practices and activities that
held them together in their game--the pursuit of
"awakening." Their language provided a medium within
which this common enterprise could take shape and
directed each of them toward the always evolving
image of excellence that it projected.

We saw earlier how Fromm's modern understanding
of the self led him to assume that Zen must be
another form of individualism that rejects social
influence. For him, the true self eschews what others
think and say, taking upon himself what Harold Bloom
has aptly called the romantic "anxiety of
influence."(16) Although no adequate interpretation
could deny the critical, subversive dimension of Zen,
what this account will stress is the extent to which
that dimension rests upon a much more basic
submission to the tradition of Zen. The accomplished
monk is a repository of the community's purposes,
values, practices, and beliefs, and only secondarily,
upon that basis, an individual agent who takes the
tradition up into critical scrutiny. The capacity for
critical distance, however, is based upon and derived
from a prior mastery of the monastic language game.
Through the process of Zen training, the language and
practice of the institution become the very ground of
the mind, upon which the monk as individual agent can
function fluently and meaning-

p. 125

fully. Understood in this way, language is far more
than a tool for use in expression and communication.
The language that the Zen master "uses" to teach his
students would also be what he is teaching. Learning
"Zen" would depend upon learning Zen language and the
appropriate distinctions built into it. Some degree
of fluency in this language would be prerequisite to
experiencing what Zen is about.

If this is true, then Zen experience would be
dependent upon prior education or socialization in
the skills, customs, and beliefs valued by the Zen
monastic community. The novice monk who enters this
context of training is gradually formed into the kind
of self for whom Zen experience is a possibility.(17)
Our modern inclination has been to understand the Zen
monastery as a voluntary community of individuals who
come to that institution in personal pursuit of a
goal that they already essentially understand. What
further study of Zen history has shown, however, is
that we have overlooked the extent to which
monasteries served as educational and vocational
institutions for boys. Upon entrance to the
monastery, postulates might neither understand nor
value the pursuit of "awakening." That understanding
and that valuing were precisely what they were there
to acquire. Acquiring them entailed a gradual
restructuring of the monk's desires, behaviors, and
beliefs. Zen concerns and Zen practices would slowly
take shape in the novice's mind, replacing or
reshaping whatever concerns and practices were there
before. The process of acquisition, furthermore, was
a lengthy and in-depth education in the language and
practice of Zen that placed great priority on the
imitation of role models. Because the abbot and
senior monks embodied the purpose of the institution,
the pedagogical method of imitating their gestures,
speech, and concerns could hardly be improved upon.

From the point of view of Fromm's work, it would
be unimaginable that the pursuit of Zen "freedom"
would result from the acquisition of socially
accepted, institutionally mandated conventions and
practices. Yet so it now seems. Understanding-even
Zen understanding -- is a social and linguistic
practice into which participants must be initiated.
This is true even of Zen's most radical
conventions---the critique and disruption of
conventions, a skill acquired only at the most
advanced stages of Zen training.

A new set of metaphors are involved in our
thinking that language might have such a role in Zen
experience. H. G. Gadamer's hermeneutical inquiries
are a rich source for many of these.(18) In his
terms, language is not a barrier, obstructing access;
it is a "reservoir" of possibilities which it holds
open to those who participate in it. Language is not
a "clothing" which hides the truth; it is a "medium"
through which truth becomes manifest. Language is not
a "veil" preventing vision; it is a "window" which
opens vision. Following the suggestions evoked by
these metaphors, James Boyd White outlines the domain
of language as follows:

p. 126

Language, after all, is the repository of the kinds
of meaning and relation that make a culture what it
is. In it... one can find the terms by which the
natural world is classified and represented, those by
which the social universe is constituted, and those
terms of motive and value by which action is directed
and judged. In a sense we literally are the language
that we speak, for the particular culture that makes
us a "we" -- that defines and connects us, that
differentiates us from others--is enacted and
embedded in our language.(19)

C. Language in Zen Rhetoric. Within the
foundational context of the Zen monastic world, laid
out in broad but specific terms by the language of
that time and place, a very unusual, precise, and
exclusive language game was played. This discursive
game was so exclusive--and so difficult to play ---
that only advanced members of the Zen monastic world
could participate. This extraordinary rhetoric was
clearly separate from other ways of speaking common
to the everyday life of the monastery, such as the
"normal" language of daily monastic operations, the
socioeconomic language that enabled the monastery to
remain in functional relation to the nonmonastic
world, and even the mythical-narrative language that
had given rise to Zen and that had been appropriated
into ritual practices. Beyond all these modes of
communication, there is a kind of Zen rhetoric that
was incorporated into explicit Zen practice. This
unique rhetoric was closely linked to the experience
of enlightenment, not just as its presupposed
background, but as its initiating source and
consequential outcome.

The essential feature of this rhetoric is its
strictly emancipatory intention. By means of its
"otherness" to ordinary discourse, and therefore to
ordinary "mind," Zen rhetoric sought to free its
speakers and hearers, writers and readers, from the
constraints of conventional modes of human
comportment. The otherness of Zen rhetoric was
typically twofold, juxtaposing itself both with the
classical language of established Buddhist
institutions and with the conventional language of
everyday East Asian life. Identifiably "Zen" rhetoric
was marked by a persistent refusal to talk about
ordinary matters in ordinary ways. Indeed, the
discursive practice of "talking about," that is,
propositional, representational discourse, was
resolutely avoided. This reversal of priorities can
be seen historically in the gradual movement away
from both mythical/confessionaI and theoretical
discussions of enlightenment. The earliest Zen texts
still attempt to propose true statements about
"enlightenment." Later texts have abandoned this
effort. In later, classical texts, if enlightenment
figures into the text at all, it does so obliquely
and often with irony. While enlightenment could be
rhetorically evoked, it could not be discussed.
Increasingly, the language of Zen masters embodied
the "ungraspability" of the matters about which they
spoke.

This close relation between Zen rhetoric and the
experience of "sudden awakening" is evident virtually
everywhere in classical Zen texts,

p. 127

perhaps most prominently in the Transmission of the
Lamp texts, which narrate accounts of the experience
of "awakening."(20) The phrase "at these words, so
and so was awakened" is one of the most common in
those texts. "Awakening" occurs, not in the absence
of language, but fully in its presence as the focal
point of its evocation and emergence. In the famous
example of Lin-chi's enlightenment account, the
narrative reports: "At these words, Lin-chi attained
great enlightenment."(21) Now awakened, Lin-chi is
anything but silent. Words give rise to the
experience and then issue from it immediately and
spontaneously. Rinzai's "discourse of awakening" is
so powerful, in fact, that his teacher, Huangpo,
predicts that he will "sit upon the tongue of every
person on earth."(22) Lin-chi's practice is heavily
focused on language, which, in both spoken and
textual form, served to disseminate throughout the
East Asian Buddhist world a particular kind of
religious rhetoric.

One of the most common contexts for the
experience of awakening as given in these texts is
the context of narrative accounts of "encounter
dialogue" between practitioners of Zen. These
linguistic events, transmitted to all subsequent
practitioners through classic texts, supplied the
basic models for Zen rhetoric. Expertise or fluency
in dialogical encounter was taken to be demonstrative
of depth in Zen experience. One had to be so agile --
so prereflectively quick in response--that the dialogue
could continue of its own accord without "faltering."
"Argument" in this context was clearly subordinate to
the act of demonstration. One sought to have the
language of the event show or demonstrate the point
rather than to argue for it syllogistically.
Presupposed here is a view that language works on the
mind, brings about effects, and transforms
experience. The crucial or focal word in a dialogue
came to be called a "turning Word,"(23) the word upon
which the point of the encounter "turns" and the word
carrying the power to turn the mind of participants,
audience, or reader. The Record of Lin-chi calls this
"speaking a word apropos of the moment,"(24) a word
perfectly suited to exposing the depth of the present
moment and situation.

Some Zen texts describe the "dialogical
encounter" between two Zen masters, or between
student and master, as coming to conclusion in a
nonverbal act -- a gesture, a shout, or a kick.
Having come to the limits of language, the final
stroke of the dialogue is pure act, a "direct
pointing" to the point of Zen. This dimension of Zen
practice was retroactively traced back to
Bodhidharma, the legendary founder of Zen, who,
having dispensed with linguistic signs, taught
directly through act and silence. But from the
perspective of this interpretation, direct pointing
still falls within the domain of language. Acts of
"pointing" are potentially readable signs; they point
beyond themselves to something present but hidden
from ordinary view. Pointing is not direct contact.
It make direct contact possible and therefore always
entails whatever indirection

p. 128

or mediation the pointer itself introduces.
Nevertheless, the practical emphasis of nonverbal
signs in Zen enhances the effective "otherness" of
Zen rhetoric.

Released from the conventions of "using" language
for the purposes of literal representation, a Zen way
with language is necessarily "unusual." Zen texts and
the masters who are credited with having spoken them
are famous for their improvisation along
unconventional lines. Instead of following
conventional discursive patterns, they wander off in
inventive and creative ways. These ways are meant to
be disruptive for the reader or hearer. Their sense
is hard to locate, and it is precisely in the search
for it that the commonly held sense of things is
dislodged. Zen discourse of this sort fulfills its
function precisely as a transgression on everyday
language and common sense. In the disorientation that
results from it, the interlocutor or reader is
himself thrown into question, sometimes by upsetting
his normal position as the one who understands and
acts on the world as subject. The "otherness" of Zen
language is most powerful in the pressure that it
places upon subjectivity. It introduces radical
discontinuities into the subject's world and seeks
some kind of significant disclosure as a result.

This "discontinuity" can be overstressed,
however. Zen rhetoric was, indeed, a radical
departure from the East Asian Buddhist scholastic
tradition, but that departure was as much a
connection to the tradition as a disconnection.
Radical Zen discourse extends and maintains the
tradition by drawing upon its previously latent
resources. Only romantically, following Fromm, can we
conceive of a transformation in a tradition as so
radical a break that all connections are severed to
the previous history of that culture. The invention
of new ways of speaking and of new ways to understand
speaking can only occur within the parameters of the
existing vocabulary any language has at its disposal.
Romantic doctrines of creativity ex nihilo, when
applied to Zen, will inevitably fail to account for
the extent to which "training" is the essence of Zen.
Figuring Zen as a liberating rejection of tradition,
we fail to appreciate the extent to which the
enlightening effects of Zen are themselves the result
of an in-depth submission to this tradition. Entering
the monastery was itself an act of submitting the
mind to a lifetime of reshaping that occurs through
the language and social practices of Zen. Having
trained in this way, true creativity is possible --
not before. One can speak the language of Zen freely
only after having learned it and having taken into
oneself, its purposes and intentions. Training in
this rhetorical practice provides the background out
of which the Zen master's freedom can be performed.

This suggests a re-statement of the point of this
section -- that if Zen rhetoric both evokes awakening
and is, in turn, evoked by it, then there is an
important and interesting correspondence between this
discursive practice and the goal of Zen.
Understanding this correspondence, however

p. 129

will require a departure from the romantic and
transcendental grounds that have guided our reading
of Zen texts thus far.

D. Language in Meditation and Silence. If there
is one place in Zen where we would most expect to
find that language has indeed been circumvented, this
would be within the central practices of meditation
and contemplative silence. Western interpretations of
Zen have typically taken this nondiscursive dimension
of Zen practice as the basis for the claim that
"realization" in this area transcends language and
avoids its mediating function. A strong textual basis
for this understanding of the matter can be easily
located throughout Zen literature from the Chinese
classics through contemporary Zen manuals. Many of
the founding narratives of Zen and many of the
tradition's primary symbols juxtapose the immediacy
of meditative silence with the mediating functions of
discourse and concept. The Zen tradition traces its
sacred lineage to the Buddha's silent transmission of
the "dharma" to Mahakasyapa, through Vimalakirti's
"thunderous silence" to Bodhidharma's nine years of
silent, "wall-gazing" meditation. The founding
formula of classical Zen, describing Bodhidharma's
"wordless dharma," valorizes "direct experience" as a
remedy for the Buddhist tradition's dependence on
language and text. In its terms Zen is:

A special transmission outside the sutras, not
dependent on language and texts, direct pointing to
mind, one sees the true nature of things and becomes
the Buddha.(25)

From the perspective of this understanding of
language in Zen, what evokes particular interest are
the rhetorical practices entailed in making this
claim to linguistic transcendence, especially the
irony generated when you speak against speaking or
when you write an antitextual text. On rare
occasions, in fact, this irony emerges into the
text's reflexive awareness as, for example, when a
Zen text is able to see that "saying that there is no
dharma that can be spoken is called speaking the
dharma."(26) But whatever connections East Asians
have or have not been able to make between language
and silence, our Western interpretations have been
naive in taking their antilanguage rhetoric literally
and have failed to appreciate the ironic fact that
this was their most powerful religious language.
Becoming more attentive to this dimension of Zen, we
would learn to look behind what is said (the
antilanguage doctrine) to the discursive practice of
saying it. Reading in that way we would notice that
every effort to relegate language to a subordinate
position is itself linguistically articulated,
thereby placing language in a more fundamental
position than its particular message.

But aside from the critique of language and the
conceptual dichotomy between language and silence. we
are still tempted to claim that the

p. 130

practice of nondiscursive meditation, at its deepest
levels, is independent of language and that the
experience of the accomplished meditator is
thoroughly nonlinguistic. Yet this is not so for the
same kinds of reasons that have been presented for
the presence of language in perception and for the
role that communal intersubjectivity plays in the
constitution of individual subjectivity. In fact it
might be possible to make the opposite case, that,
given the range and the subtlety of their vocabulary
of meditative silence, the experience of silence in
Zen is the most highly nuanced, linguistically
articulate -- that is, "significant" -- such
experience in the world.

What does a "vocabulary of silence" have to do
with its experience, besides supplying the terms for
its communication? Initially, it makes silence
noticeable. Although "silence" was available for
experience long before Zen, only when the "teaching
of silence" was generated and regenerated did it
really become interesting. Before its articulation in
language, silence wasn't much of anything; no one
attended to it (at least not in view of Zen
interests).

Moreover, whatever linguisticality there is to
the various "doctrines" of silent "immediacy" is also
present in the contours of the experience of
"immediacy." The voluminous presence within the Zen
tradition of symbols and myths of silence, of
instructions and manuals on meditation, and of
continuous discussion of these sacred artifacts
"frames" the experience of silence in Zen as the
particular kind of experience that it is. Silence in
Zen is not just the absence of sound. It is "symbolic
of awakening," "highly profound," "the foundation of
any authentic practice, " "the atmosphere most
treasured and cultivated in monastic life, "
"unnerving," "capable of evoking insight," and so on.
All of these elements of understanding and many more
set the stage for the experience of silence in Zen;
they make it what it is. Change them and you change
the experience. All of this is to say, once again,
that a reciprocal, interdependent relationship exists
between direct experience (perception), language, and
concepts. The actual contour of the experience of
silence is dependent in part on the vocabularies and
theories that relate to it, and vice versa.

Although modern interpretations have generally
taken traditional Zen meditative claims as a
rejection of language, my own hypothesis is that
these claims are not directed at language so much as
they are at reflection. The traditional assertion
that Zen experience is "direct" appears to be bound
up with the Zen critique of other, more scholarly,
branches of Buddhism. That the early, foundational
rhetoric of Zen was thoroughly connected to the
ongoing political competition between Buddhist sects
for prestige and patronage has been fully documented
in recent years.(27) Early Zen literature intends to
stake out a convincing alternative to prominent
competitors and takes as its critical target their

p. 131

grounding in intellectual, textual practices.
Juxtaposed with these literary, philosophical
practices then, is the Zen practice of silence and of
prereflective spontaneity. Serious practitioners
defined themselves in terms of a concern for the
cultivation of prereflective experience--an
experience and responsiveness not requiring explicit
cognitive mediation.

On the terms of this essay, the claim to have
transcended language is distinct from the claim to a
kind of experience that is prior to conceptual
reflection. Understood in this way, the experience of
"sudden awakening" in Zen is immediate, but only in
the sense that it is not mediated by self-conscious
reflection on the part of the experiencer. It is,
however, thoroughly interpenetrated by the forces of
linguistic shaping that are communicated through the
institutions, practices, and beliefs of the community
and its underlying tradition. While a great deal of
experience is, in fact, prior to conceptual
reflection, none is prior to the norms, values, and
language of the culture within which the experiencer
has been raised.

It seems to me that Zen writers have not denied
the role that linguistic, conceptual categories play
in the formation of prereflective experience,
because, given what other intellectual issues they
seem to have faced, the question would simply not
have come up. If this is true, then the premodern Zen
tradition should not be taken to have made either
assertion or denial on this issue."(28) The focus of
this essay, however, is on the modern Western
understanding of Zen experience, for which that
question not only came up but has received a
unanimous and consistent answer. In this case both
question and answer have much more to do with what
has been going on in Western culture than it does
with Zen.

To understand the status of the modern claim that
Zen meditative experience is beyond the shaping power
of language and culture, one would need to study the
language of this claim in relation to its content.
Although this language would typically go unnoticed,
when examined, it dismantles its own basis. If Zen
experience is "signless," then no sign of any sort
derives from it--not even "the signless." If, in the
experience, something is experienced as absent, such
as signs, then a distinction is, in fact, present as
are the signs that enable its emergence. On the other
hand, if nothing is experienced as either present or
absent, then no experience has taken place and no
assertions of any kind would be made. Because an
experience of the "uninterpreted" must be interpreted
in order to be experienced as such, a claim about it
deserves no special status. It would be judged on
terms similar to other assertions, on grounds of who
said it, how, with what support, and so on. Partly
because of its firm background in Buddhist thought,
the Zen tradition seems always to have had a
well-developed understanding of the fact that
whatever is said about the experience of "awakening,"
whether

p. 132

descriptive, doctrinal, or practical, has no greater
status than any other assertion and is no less
subject to critical scrutiny. Indeed, criteria in
this area may have been more rigorous.

It is also worth noticing that claims about
"otherworldly" kinds of experience seem to have been
relatively unimportant in Zen, claims, for example,
about "ultimate unity, " "pure consciousness, "
"contentlessness," "transcendence," and so on. The
focus in Zen is more often on worldliness -- on
action, function, and immediate response. As Kasulis
makes very clear, the Zen master is "firmly implanted
in the world" (ZAZP, p. 134). This kind of experience
obviously presupposes a solid world of clear
distinctions within which spontaneous action can
confidently be performed. Moving freely, without
reflection, requires that one be fully familiar with
the world and thoroughly at home in it.

The fact that this particular familiarity -- a
Zen orientation within the world -- results from a
radical process of disorientation also shows us
something important about the relation between
language and silence in Zen. Silence served in Zen as
the "other" of discourse. It functioned to bring its
opposite -- language -- into view by providing a
perspective on language that is as distanced as it
could be. It seems to me, therefore, that acute
awareness of silence in Zen goes hand in hand with
the awareness of language. The voluminous Zen
vocabulary concerned with language, and the range of
ways in which it enters into discourse, indicates a
highly refined sense of language in that tradition.
Understood in this way, it is not surprising that the
tradition of "silent meditation" is also East Asia's
most interesting and complex rhetorical tradition.

IV. Conclusion: Language in Enlightenment

Having described the role that language might
play in various dimensions of Zen experience, it now
remains for us to ask: If Zen enlightenment is not
literally an unmediated, nonlinguistic awareness of
"things as they are" in themselves, then what kind of
experience is it? And, if a relation to language is
essential to the life and experience of a Zen master,
what kind of relation is that and how does it differ
from the language use of the "unenlightened?" This
final section aspires only to suggest directions in
which promising answers to these questions might be
found.

Anyone familiar with descriptions of the
character of the great masters in Zen texts will
recognize that their most noticeable feature of
distinction is an unusual way With language.
Therefore, many of these classic texts consist in
"recorded sayings" and in descriptions of the Zen
masters' "dialogical encounters" with other great
practitioners. Given this fact, it now seems
important to recognize that the crucial difference
between the enlightened and the unenlightened is a
discursive, linguistic difference -- a distinction
between very different ways in which the en-

p. 133

lightened and unenlightened participate in their
language. If the experience of awakening is mediated
through the symbols, texts, instructions, and
linguistically shaped social practices of Zen, then
perhaps the outcome of this educative process ought
to be conceived as a transformation of how one dwells
in the linguistically shaped cultural world that is
the practitioner's inheritance. In this case,
awakening would consist, among other things, in an
awakening to rather than from language. Focus on this
dimension of "awakening" would help make sense of the
ever-present connection made in classical Zen texts
between "radical rhetoric" and "awakened vision."

On this model, Zen monastic training would be
understood to require a fundamental reorientation of
one's sense of language. Initially, this would be
experienced by the novice as a transgression upon,
and subversion of, everyday language and the "common
sense" that issues from it. Among other things, one's
linguistically structured self-under-standing would
be radically thrown into question. The effects of
this process would vary, of course, depending on what
background of understanding was being called into
question. Any process of disorientation will be
dependent in character on a prior orientation. But
whatever the background, this desocialization and
concurrent resocialization work on the practitioner
by disturbing his conventional sense of self and his
ordinary comportment in language. This would be, in
effect, a contemplative estrangement from ordinary,
worldly language games which, in addition to being
disrupted, are being replaced through the process of
hearing and imitating the Zen master's unusual
rhetoric. Far from being a transcendence of language,
this process would consist in a fundamental
reorientation within language.

A Zen reorientation in language would require
training to a level of fluency in distinctive,
nonobjectifying, rhetorical practices. Only from
within these practices could one come to experience
the point of Zen. Moreover, we see that new
rhetorical practices gave rise to new rhetorical
categories --- new ways of talking about discourse.
Zen monks became attentive to "turning words," words
upon which the point of a speech act turned and which
were thought to have the power to "turn" the mind of
properly trained practitioners. They distinguished
between "live words" and "dead words." "Dead words"
were thought to lack the power of transformation
because they tend to presuppose, and therefore to
encourage, ordinary modes of experience. "Live words"
were a disruptive force. They functioned to break
down and to dislodge assumptions that were essential
to ordinary, worldly discourse and experience. They
did violence to common sense and so, from the
perspective of noninitiates, often failed to make
sense. But in addition to their deconstructive force,
they were constructive, and what they constructed was
a transformed relation to language and world.

p. 134

More important than whatever doctrinal content
was being taught in Zen discourse, then, was a
particular mode of being in and with language. The
"means" of Zen teaching was in fact a significant
"end," a particular way with words. Awakening was
characteristically judged by the extent to which a
practitioner could participate in this new discursive
milieu. "Excellence" in Zen, therefore, was measured
primarily in the extent that one could successfully
"do things with words" within the monastic community.
What sets enlightened monks off from the others is
the power and the relative ease with which they are
able to work, to perform, and to accomplish the
emancipatory purposes of the discursive community.

Given larger East Asian cultural contexts, it
would not be appropriate to call this "discourse of
awakening" "natural." Acquiring it typically called
for a whole life of mental training. Old linguistic
habits, and the sense of self and world that
accompanied them, had to be systematically dislodged
from the mind. While this training did indeed entail
a critical rejection of tradition, more importantly,
it required an in-depth appropriation of the
tradition, including traditional modes of "critical
rejection." To enter the monastery was to surrender
the mind to a lifetime of reshaping that occurred
through Zen language and social practice. Only upon
this background was Zen freedom and spontaneous
discourse possible.

The effort of this.essay to place language in
relation to Zen enlightenment does not imply that Zen
enlightenment is in any sense reducible to language.
The intention, rather, is to understand the extent to
which language is both actively manifest and
presupposed in the constitution of this experience.
We have found, first, that language is involved in
the linguistic stage-setting and shaping of
enlightened experience, and, second, that the effects
of enlightenment are most clearly manifest in their
linguistic form. Upon a Zen cultural-linguistic
foundation, and often with a discursive impetus, Zen
"awakening" is commonly conceived as a "sudden,"
"overpowering," "breakthrough" experience. Its power
is precisely its "otherness," its inability to cohere
perfectly with any conventionally established form,
linguistic and otherwise. Its most decisive metaphors
figure it as an experience of the "void" at the heart
of all things, as emptiness, openness,
groundlessness. Moreover, it is not, strictly
speaking, a voluntary experience. No one has control
over it -- it befalls the practitioner; it overwhelms
and transforms beyond all subjective intention. The
condition of its possibility is receptivity, a kind
of openness, however, that is not without the finite
form and shape of a particular tradition.

Given the sense of the "extraordinary, " or
"otherness" in the experience, it was commonly
claimed to be "ineffable." One could not communicate
or say exactly what it was about. But this experience
of linguistic

p. 135

inadequacy should not deceive us into thinking that
the experience has no significant relation to
language. The awareness that language is not in
direct correspondence to experience is not, in fact,
uncommon and not restricted to religious matters
(although the domain of the "wholly other" is
certainly its primary area of application). East
Asian poets and painters would, drawing on the
development of Zen vocabulary, make the same claim
for love, suffering, landscape vistas, and the taste
of persimmons. No set of metaphors could reproduce an
extraordinary experience in the uninitiated. Language
is always in some way inadequate to experience.

Two points help us to put this realization in
context, however. First, the claim that language
cannot fully communicate or describe an experience
does not require the additional claim that language
had no role in the cultural shaping of that
experience. These assertions are distinct, and the
position of this essay is that while the former is
common and legitimate, the latter is mistaken. The
second point is that there is a close relation
between the awareness of the "inadequacy" of language
and the language that structures this particular
awareness. In the case of Zen this would entail that
the experience of linguistic inadequacy and its
articulation were both shaped and made possible by
the extensive and highly nuanced vocabulary of
"ineffability" as it became established and evolved
in East Asian culture.

It is also worth observing that the focus in Zen
was less on moments of "sudden, ineffable
breakthrough" than on what this breakthrough made
possible -- the kind of intraworldly freedom that
issues forth from it in paradoxical sayings,
spontaneous dialogue, and unusual acts. What was of
greatest interest was a new kind of correspondence to
the world that could be observed in the Zen master's
comportment, in his actions and discourse. The thesis
of this essay has been that not only is language
present in the enactment of the Zen master's
enlightened bearing, it also plays a fundamental role
in the origins and development of the monastic world
that made a uniquely "Zen" experience of "awakening"
possible. Realizing this, we find ourselves in a
better position, first, to appreciate Zen Buddhist
experience as one of the monumental achievements of
East Asian culture, and second, to learn what we can
from it.

NOTES

1. Published in Erich Fromm, D. T. Suzuki, and
Richard DeMartino, Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis
(New York: Harper and Row, 1960). Hereafter cited
in text as "PZB" followed by page number.

p. 136

2. For an excellent discussion of the instrumental
theory of language, and a full critique, see
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York:
Seabury Press, 1975), Part III.
3. Alasdair Maclntyre, Whose Justice? Which
Rationality?(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1988) p. 334.
4. T. P. Kasulis, Zen Action: Zen Person (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1981). Hereafter
cited in text as ZAZP followed by page number.
5. For a critique of this possibility see Gadamer,
Truth and Method, p. 405; and Richard Rorty,
"Pragmatism and Philosophy," in Kenneth Baynes,
et al., After Philosophy (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1987), pp. 32-33.
6. See note number 10.
7. Along similar lines, the modern philosophical
problem of "freedom and determinism," which is
closely linked to modern epistemological
concerns, may be misleading as a framework for
the interpretation of Zen enlightenment. At
present, however, it is difficult to see how the
kind of use Kasulis makes of these categories
could be avoided.
8. Where by "poststructuralist'' I mean no more than
the view that we begin our reflection within the
realization that the structures we discover to be
true are historical and contingent. Note that
this position does not imply that there are no
structures nor that there is no truth but rather
that the structures and truths that govern our
experience are open both to transformation and to
being seen otherwise.
9. This "myth" is first named and criticized by
Wilfrid Sellars in Science, Perception and
Reality (New York: Humanities Press, 1963).
10. For the most influential articulations of this
position, in the "analytic" tradition, see the
works of Davidson, Kuhn, Maclntyre, Sellars, and
Wittgenstein; among American "pragmatists," see
the works of Fish, Rorty, and Stout; and in
"continental" thought, see the works of Derrida,
Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur.
11. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John
Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper
and Row, 1962).
12. This should not be taken as a criticism of
Kasulis' point, however, because what we mean by
"determination" is in each case quite different.
13. Robert Gimello has in two earlier essays argued
similarly about the relation between "mystical
experience" and the Buddhist cultural tradition.
See "Mysticism and Meditation, in Steven T. Katz,
ed.,

p. 137

Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1978), and "Mysticism in
its Contexts," in Steven T. Katz, ed., Mysticism
and Religious Traditions (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1983).
14. See Being and Time, section 34.
15. Wittgenstein first introduces the idea of the
"language game" in the Blue Book (p. 17) and
develops it further in the Brown Book and in
Philosophical Investigations.
16. Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of influence (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1973).
17. Maclntyre develops the theme of "acquiring a
conception of the good' throughout Whose Justice?
Which Rationality?
18. In addition to Truth and Method, see H. G.
Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1976), and Reason
in the Age of Science (Cambridge, MIT Press,
1981), as well as Joel C. Weinsheimer, Gadamer's
Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), and Georgia
Warnke, Gadamer: Hermeneutics, Tradition and
Reason (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1987).
19. James Boyd White, When Words Lose Their Meaning:
Constitutions and Reconstitutions of Language,
Character, and Community (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1984) p. 20.
20. It is also true that the centrality of discursive
practice in the overall scheme of classical Zen
practice can be seen in the centrality of the
"Dharma Hall" within the monastic institution.
The dharma hall is figured in classical Zen texts
as the most common setting for the "dialogical
encounter" between Zen masters and Zen monks as
well as for the experience of awakening. See
Martin Collcutt, Five Mountains: The Rinzai Zen
Monastic institution in Medieval Japan, Harvard
East Asian Monographs, no. 85 (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1981),
p. 194.
21. Ruth Fuller Sasaki, trans., The Record of Lin-chi
(Kyoto: The Institute for Zen Studies, 1975), p.
51 (Taisho shinshu daizokyo, volume 47 (1985), p.
504c).
22. Ibid., p 56 (Taisho 47 (1985), p. 505c).
23. Ibid., p. 40 (Taisho 47 (1985), p. 503a).
24. Ibid., p. 60 (Taisho 47 (1985), p. 506b).
25. This slogan appears in numerous classical Zen
texts from Sung dynasty Chinese texts on into
later publications. By the mid-Sung

p. 138

it seems to have taken on central significance as
the phrase most definitive of the
self-understanding of Zen.
26. Taisho 48 (No. 2012A), p. 382a. Iriya Yoshitaka
takes this line from the Ch'uan-hsin fa-yao to be
traceable to the Diamond suutra in Denshin hoyo
(Zen no goroku, no. 8 ( Chikuma Shobo, 1969),
p. 54).
27. See especially the works of Yanagida Seizan,
Philip Yampolsky, John McRae, Carl Bielefeldt,
and T. Griffith Foulk.
28. Due in part to its encounter with Western
thought, the modern Japanese Zen tradition does,
in fact, have a great deal to say on this issue.

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