The Linji Lu and the Creation of Chan Orthodoxy: The Development of Chan's Records of Sayings Literature Review

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The Linji Lu and the Creation of Chan Orthodoxy: The Development of Chan's Records of Sayings Literature ReviewJudging from this fine monograph, the historically critical study of Chan and Zen Buddhism would seem to be attaining a mellow maturity. That is, while Welter avoids accepting Linji/Rinzai orthodox pronouncements at face value with the best of them, he also exhibits none of the deconstructive sarcasm and barely-disguised malice and overreaction that often somewhat poisons otherwise useful works in this field. It's perhaps inevitable to quip that Welter has hit upon the Middle Way between the two extremes, but that's what we have here.
In and of itself this is a fine textual study, carefully and meticulously analyzing the "Linji Lu"/"Rinzairoku" and its many textual layers and differing versions. Sounds dry, but it isn't. Welter writes in a finely polished scholarly voice that is clear and engaging rather than pedantic, and he sifts through the relevant details to argue far-reaching conclusions in an utterly convincing manner. The upshot more or less is that the eccentric and spontaneous monk Linji/Rinzai as found in this key text is not a historically reliable and accurate contemporary portrait of the man himself but an imaginary figure carefully contrived to exemplify emerging concepts of orthodoxy and authority within the context of early Song culture. In other words, the so-called "Record of Linji" tells us precious little about the monk Linji but a whole lot about the Chan monks who crafted his image for their own purposes centuries later.
Given the influence of this school of Chan/Zen Buddhism in China, Japan, and now America and Europe, the startling nature of this discovery is a bit understated in the book. Here we have the very prototype of the image of the dynamic, spontaneous, crazy yet profound Zen Master that's even worked its way into the common American popular consciousness (courtesy of D.T. Suzuki among others)--and it's mostly made up from scratch so as to appeal to Song literati elites. In the process we learn a lot about the development of Chinese religion and Buddhism, social history and literature, not to mention Zen's modern repackaging in the twentieth century.
If the book has one shortcoming, it's that it shows a few too many traces of having been patched together from separate conference papers and journal articles. Whole multi-paragraph chunks get repeated verbatim in different chapters (compare pages 135-136 and pages 88-89 or pages 81-82 and pages 3-4, for example), a bit ironic for a textual study of this nature, actually. This is probably less Welter's fault than it is a symptom of the increasingly demanding knee-jerk stringent "publish or perish" atmosphere of academia rushing him to get a book out as soon as possible. These are minor nitpicks, though. The book still mostly coheres well enough structurally as a single study, and the analysis it has to offer the reader about this influential key text is far too important and interesting to get distracted by such quibbles. Indeed, this is a significant book in many ways, one that should make quite an impact in the study of Chan and Zen Buddhism as well as Chinese religion and Song Dynasty history more generally. It would also obviously go well accompanying a reading of The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-Chi, and I for one wish it had been around when I first did so.The Linji Lu and the Creation of Chan Orthodoxy: The Development of Chan's Records of Sayings Literature Overview

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