There exists a widely accepted opinion in Chan/Zen 禪 studies that Chan enlightenment is a mysterium ineffabile, impenetrable by human intellect. Reviewing the debate between Hu Shi 胡適 and D. T. Suzuki over Chan enlightenment and accounts of testimony by Chan masters and practitioners in history, this essay argues that Chan enlightenment can be understood rationally and intellectually. By analyzing the time-honored Chan practices that have led to enlightenment, it seeks to understand the mystery as an extraordinary mental condition in (...) which an enlightened person temporarily blocks thinking in terms of language, consciousness, and intellect, and experiences a momentary “erasing” of what has been impressed on the psyche since birth. (shrink)

A work of and about comparative philosophy that stresses the importance of language in intercultural endeavors.

This paper discusses the idea of "pure experience" within the context of the Buddhist tradition and in connection with the notions of emptiness and dependent origination via a reading of Dale Wright's reading of 'Huangbo' in his 'Philosophical Meditations on Zen Buddhism'. The purpose is to appropriate Wright's text in order to engender a response to Steven Katz's contextualist-constructivist thesis that there are no "pure" (i.e., unmediated) experiences. In light of the Mahayana claim that everything is empty of substance, i.e., (...) originates dependently through conditions, contingencies, and contexts, what does the "purity" of the Enlightenment experience mean for Chan/Zen Buddhism? (shrink)

Huntington ; argues that recent commentators err in attributing to Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti a commitment to rationality and to the use of argument, and that these commentators do violence to the Madhyamaka project by using rational reconstruction in their interpretation of Nāgārjuna’s and Candrakīrti’s texts. Huntington argues instead that mādhyamikas reject reasoning, distrust logic and do not offer arguments. He also argues that interpreters ought to recuse themselves from argument in order to be faithful to these texts. I demonstrate that (...) he is wrong in all respects: Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti deploy arguments, take themselves to do so, and even if they did not, we would be wise to do so in commenting on their texts. (shrink)

Despite the fact that Chan, especially koan Chan is highly unconventional and perplexing, there are still some principles with which to interpret and appreciate the practice. Each of the five houses or lineages of Chan has its idiosyncratic hermeneutic rules. The Linji House has Linji si liao jian, si bin zhu and si zhao yong among others while the Yunmen House follows Yumen san ju as one of its house rules. Moreover, there is a general inner logic that seems to (...) apply to understanding Chan encounters across lineages. The opportune moment (Chan Ji) of responding swiftly and skillfully and yet always grounding oneself in the openness and flow of the mind highlights the inner logic of the cognition and behavior of Chan Buddhists. This paper attempts to read koans from The Blue Cliff Record in the light of Chan Buddhist hermeneutics. Some aspects and patterns of Chan encounters may appear as rituals that serve either as a provisional means for common people or as an embodiment of enlightened behaviors. Routinized ritualization of Chan life, however, runs counter to the fundamental spirit of freedom and spontaneity of Chan way of life. Much can and needs to be elucidated about the mystified koan Chan experience before we finally resort to the transpersonal experience of noble silence. (shrink)

_A work of and about comparative philosophy that stresses the importance of language in intercultural endeavors._.

This paper evaluates several recent efforts to interpret the work of Nāgārjuna through the lens of modern symbolic logic. An attempt is made to uncover the premises that justify the use of symbolic logic for this purpose. This is accomplished through a discussion of (1) the historical origins of those premises in the Indian and Tibetan traditions, and (2) how such assumptions prejudice our understanding of Nāgā rjuna’s insistence that he has no “proposition” (pratijñā). Finally, the paper sets forth an (...) alternative interpretation that takes into account the literary dimensions of Nāgārjuna’s writing. (shrink)

This essay discusses the meaning of embodied spirituality—based on the integration of all human attributes, including the body and sexuality—and contrasts it with the disembodied spirituality—based on dissociation and/or sublimation—prevailing in human religious history. It then describes what it means to approach the body as a living partner with which to co-create one’s spiritual life, and outlines ten features of a fully embodied spirituality. The article concludes with some reflections about the past, present, and potential future of embodied spirituality.

Wright maintains that tradition (including language) plays a fundamental role in the origins and shaping of the monastic world that made a unique Chan mind possible. Through a creative application of the Buddhist idea of dependent origination, Wright has broadened the hermeneutic concept of historicity in that it is more than a linear and causal relationship of contextuality (that is, the person is always a person-in-community, and the text is always a text-in-context). Instead, contextuality refers to a (w)holistic network of (...) associations and re-associations. The word tradition thus becomes an open tradition that is constantly shaped and reshaped, formed and transformed. The meaning of tradition as such is always a trace of that other which is forever absent. In this sense, Wright is quite Derridean. Like Derrida’s deconstruction, Wright’s interpretative endeavor, as part of the tradition of linguistic turn, seems to become separated from the real world of flux and takes on an independent status, that is, the realm of reading, explaining, and understanding (perhaps mis-understanding, sometimes). Wright’s project fits the need of those who have a passion for doing things with words, and those who prefer meditative reading to meditative practice (in a Buddhist sense). Though Wright keeps reminding us that the effort to play language in relation to Chan experience does not imply that Chan enlightenment/mind is in any sense reducible to language; it still remains a question whether his critical philosophical meditations are fully out of the spell of conceptuality of the hermeneutical circle. Wright might say that there is no need to be out of the circle, or there is no such circle in the first place. (shrink)

(2006). The Normative Justification of Traditional Chinese Authoritarianism. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 379-397.