The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-Chi

For me, this was one of those books you don't realize you already know so much about. I bought this chiefly because it was translated by Burton Watson, whose translations I had previously read and enjoyed, without thinking that I knew much about the book at all. In fact, Lin-Chi is perhaps better known outside China by his Japanese name Rinzai, the founder of one of the two main schools of Zen Buddhism which goes under the same name. For me, he was therefore familiar from having read The Way of Zen by Alan Watts.

While talking about names, I will mention that Lin-Chi is the name of the final monastery at which this person was master; it means "overlooking the ford". His personal name was I-Hsuan (pinyin YiXuan).

Lin-chi lived roughly from 810 to 866 A.D., in the Tang dynasty; this book was collated by his disciples soon after his death. He stands in the Ch'an (Japanese Zen) school of Mahayana Buddhism. This school emphasised immediate enlightenment over doctrinal concerns. The teaching goes something like this. The prime concern of Buddhism is to free the mind from clinging to the world. The root of this clinging is distinguishing sense experience into good and bad, desirable and undesirable. Such dualistic thinking needs to be transcended. Ultimate reality is wholistic, without distinctions. However, if there are no distinctions in ultimate reality, then the immediate world and our everyday life itself is part of this ultimate reality (for to distinguish it from this reality would itself be dualistic thinking). Put another way, the Buddha nature is not esoteric and other-worldly, but permeates everything. So our own Buddha nature or (in more Taoist terms) our True Human-ness is not something to be sought for, but something that already exists in us. We must be brought to realise this, but trying to realise this takes us further from this realisation. Instead, the realisation (enlightenment) must be immediate, unmediated, unreflected-upon. (I must apologise for this clumsy exposition. Both Watson and Watts explain this much more clearly)

Thus Lin-chi's teaching is concerned with exhorting his students to realise their immanent Buddhahood. For instance:

This realisation is not something that can be directly sought for; or at least, striving for it runs the risk of itself becoming a clinging, a distinguishing. Devotional practices and acts of self-discipline just accumulate karma if pursued in this spirit. So too does the study of scriptures and the sayings of men of old, and a striving to emulate patriarchs, saints, and the Buddha himself. Thus, "the really good friend is someone who dares to speak ill of the Buddha" (Section 18, Page 44)--for the attachment to such reverential attitudes is an obstacle to realising our own Buddha-hood. Indeed:

--doubtless the inspiration for the famous book title, If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him (written by Sheldon Kopp, 1972).

But even such teaching and exhortation to the immediate self-realisation of Buddhahood cannot achieve this, and indeed can become a trap for the student, holding them in intellectualisation. Therefore, Ch'an Buddhism developed teaching techniques intended to break through this intellectualisation and the dualism of the analytical mind. The most famous of these is the koan, or paradoxical statement intended to still the analytical mind. Lin-chi makes some use of paradoxical replies, which I guess are a sort of koan.

More frequently, however, Lin-chi replies to questions from students by hitting them or shouting at them. And the student often responds in the same way! These exchanges are at first sight baffling to the modern reader, but the point of such actions is to break through attachment to an analytical attitude and force the student to react to the this-ness of the blow or the shout. Watson expresses it better:

I admire Burton Watson's translations because of the naturalness of their English. Chinese writing, and particularly classical Chinese writing, differs from English not just in grammar and syntax, but in styles and conventions of broader construction. It is difficult to convey these conventions without falling into a translation style that is stilted and unnatural, a kind of "Confucius Says" style, in which the Chinese bones determine the form of the English flesh. At the same time, too loose a translation travels too far from these conventions, separating the reader too far from the original text, smoothing its edges too much and not requiring (or allowing) the reader to confront these original forms. It seems to me that Burton Watson is able to strike a happy balance between these conflicting imperatives.

That said, I myself am not at all familiar with this work in the original Chinese, nor with the prose style of the time. I understand that the Lin-chi Lu is written in a colloquial Tang style. I do not know what particular challenges this poses for a translation into natural English. But whatever they are, I feel that Burton Watson overcomes them.