Zen and the Art of Postmodern Philosophy Carl Olson
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Zen Books Reviewed
Zen And The Art Of Postmodern Philosophy: Ii Paths Of Liberation From The Representational Mode Of Thinking
by Carl Olson, New York: Country University of New York Press, 2000. 309 pp
reviewed by Robert Magliola, Buddhist - Christian Studies, Honolulu: 2004. Vol. 24 pg. 295
Carl Olson'southward Zen and the Art of Postmodern Philosophy compares 2 paths of liberation from the representational mode of thinking, namely, Zen Buddhism and postmodern philosophy. Olson is to be commended for encouraging this dialogue, especially since professors of religious studies usually marginalize Gallic postmodern thought. He is besides to be appreciated for the enormous effort that must accept been required to draw so much material. Olson treats Bataille, Baudrillard, Deleuze, Derrida, Guattari, Foucault, Kristeva, Lacan, Levinas, and Lyotard on the postmodern side; and Dogen, Hakuin, Nishitani, many Chinese Ch'anists, and some Indian Buddhists on the Buddhist side. His method is to accommodate the chapters according to topoi such equally "Language, Disruption, and Play," "Ways of Thinking," "The Body," and and then on, and to treat the pertaining ideas of the individual Buddhist and postmodern 
Considering Olson'south book assembles between 2 covers the names, selected works, and—at least in a general sense—the "key" ideas of the postmodern move and their grosso modo similarities/dissimilarities via-à-vis Zen Buddhism, I remember information technology serves an undergraduate readership well plenty. The trouble is that the volume as well ofttimes performs similar a crib canvass in the CliffsNotes manner, reducing so-chosen "key" ideas to misleading clichés. The book is at its best when information technology gives an author some length of attention, as it does with Dogen. Rather than reduce my review to a series of sound bites (impress bites?) corresponding to Olson's, I shall resort to what hermeneuts phone call an Auerbachian decoupage, that is, a close analysis of several passages that can be taken as indicative of an authors mode in general. I'll address three interpretations from Olson's book, one of Derrida, ane of a Chinese kung-an (koan), and one of Lacan.
Within his comparison of Derrida/linguistic communication/Buddhism, Olson cites (p. 46) a judgement from Derrida's Writing and Difference: "Speech is stolen: since it is stolen from language it is, thus, stolen from itself, that is, from the thief who has e'er already lost speech as property and initiative." Olson glosses equally follows: "Derrida claims that a speaking subject, representing an irreducible secondary condition, is no longer the person who speaks because his/her origin is elusive in an already established field of voice communication." Considering of glosses like this, Derrida is all also oftentimes subjected to the ridicule of nonspecialists, who exclaim, "Derrida denies that a person tin use speech communication instrumentally? Aren't his lectures the instruments of his own ideas?" Actually in the section Olson quotes, Derrida is appropriating Lacanian thought and mutating it for Derridean purposes. For Derrida, all life is stretched out in time and dicedout in infinite in such a style that phenomenological cocky-identity is an illusion. Physical writing is the best metaphor for this, in that written words (even Chinese ideograms) cannot, in the scientific sense, be perceived in one accented moment: it "takes time" and it "takes space" to recognize a word, that is, "build" a word-meaning. Derrida calls life a "text" or "writing" because life is like writing: life on the phenomenological level appears holistic (much as a give-and-take-meaning appears self-identical, i.e., arising all at once), but life is actually a time/space "migrate."1
In the sentence Olson quotes, what Derrida means has the following gist: Speech (spoken words) is stolen from language in that it belongs to language every bit writing and is really writing; and insofar as information technology is really writing, it is stolen from itself; speech has "always already" been lost to language in that the instrumentality of spoken communication is always undercut by language's nature equally writing. Speech communication is always undercut past an inevitable migrate that subverts intentionality and foils our attempts to make oral communication our absolute "property." This does not mean nearly of the intention fails to "become through"; it means, rather, that our intention never reaches our "purpose" in whatever absolute sense.
Olson's adjacent footstep is to compare his quotation from Derrida to what happens in Case 85 of the Pi-yen-lu (Blue Cliff Record). Olson simply paraphrases this kung-an, and omits the last two sentences, just I here supply the case in its entirety: "A monk came to the place of the hermit of T'ung Feng and asked, 'If you all of a sudden encountered a tiger here, what and so?' The hermit made a tiger'south roar. The monk then fabricated a gesture of fright. The hermit laughed aloud. The monk said, 'you lot erstwhile thief!' The hermit said, 'What can you do about me?' The monk gave up." Olson claims that "By means of his gesture, the hermit is adroitly able to steal the voice communication of the monk" (pp. 46, 47) and thus this Ch'an narrative "illustrates" an attitude "similar" to that in the quotation from Derrida. Actually the narrative does nothing of the kind, since the hermit cannot exist specifically identified either as Derridean "writing" or as speech stolen from writing. Juggle the case'southward "representations" as one will, there is no way they correlate here to the betoken Derrida is making.
And correlate they would take to, because instance 85 belongs to that mode of kungan that uses representational language to provoke the disciple into the sudden flash of enlightened operation. Come across S. Heine and D. Wright, The Koan (Oxford University Printing, 2000) for several essays showing that virtually kung-an are not instruments designed to "nullify" rationality; rather, at the moment of enlightenment the specifically representational "solution" to the kung-an coincides with its enlightened performance.2 Thus when Olson describes the kung-an as "nonsensical words" (p. 43), he is attributing an "applesauce" (p. 42) that is nigh oftentimes not the example/Example.
At that place are ever many ways to dispense a kung-an while notwithstanding correlating to its exact senses, since to "fix" a "solution" in advance would be to vitiate how a kungan works, viz., through improvised give-and-accept betwixt master and disciple. Still, the canonical kung-an are oft used, in a Zen-lecture setting, to demonstrate a particular Buddhist instruction.three In this vein, I propose the viability of the following reading: Information technology is the tiger's roar that the hermit steals, in society to teach the monk that all phenomenal forms are interchangeable since all phenomena are actually empty (of self-identity); this emptiness is, of class, simultaneously the Buddha-nature when accessed by the aware "Buddha-gaze." At that place is a whole category of kung-an that teaches this truth by playing with exchanges of identity. As a common Ch'an phrase declares, "Every voice is the voice of Buddha, every form is the Buddhaform." The monk first does not sympathise but then "gets it," declaring "You former thief!" The monk has passed a gate, just he fails to pass the 2d gate. When the hermit goes on to inquire, "What tin y'all do about me?" he is signaling he is at present the tiger. The monk is supposed to get the thief in turn, by roaring back, only instead he gives upwardly.
Given that Olson wants to show how Zen surpasses postmodernism, he has at least two choices: he tin can emphasize the opposition between Buddhism and postmodernism on key points, or he can emphasize possible Buddhist appropriations of postmodernism for the good of both. Olson most ever chooses the first course and I almost always choose the 2nd. Olson would do well to remember that Zen characteristically appropriates for itself the structure of its interlocutor. For case, when Olson tells the states Michel Foucault focuses on "the interrelationships of ability, cognition and the human being body" (p. 78), it seems to me that Buddhism can appropriate this Foucauldian scenario to explain the "3 Poisons" in contemporary terms, and thus better expose their clandestine operation in American society today.
When discussing the Lacanian "gaze," Olson grants that Lacan "wants to demonstrate the intersubjective nature of desire" (p. 3), and too that the Lacanian self "never attains wholeness, and there is no hope that it ever will gain integral wholeness" (p. 130), but what does Olson do with this schema? He comments, "From the Zen Buddhist perspective, this represents a condition of unenlightenment for the individual" (p. 130). Why not, instead, appropriate how Lacan organizes the "intersubjective nature of desire"? Lacan conceives of information technology as a necessarily empty chain of signifiers, an ongoing series of displacements. Lacan demonstrates its workings in his seminar on Poe's brusque story, "The Purloined Letter."4 Opportunely, it tin can exist coopted for our case 85, the Hermit and the Monk.
In Poe's story, the queen, while necessarily remaining in the presence of the king, must dispose of the letter, which she cannot allow him notice. To avoid arousing the rex's suspicion, she hides it by not hiding it: she "displaces" it past casually leaving information technology in full public view. The king thus ignores information technology just the government minister has seen all that has transpired. While the queen is watching but the king is non, the government minister displaces (steals) the letter of the alphabet, replacing information technology with another having the same appearance. The minister, at present having power over the queen, "displaces" information technology to his own house. The queen recruits the police force prefect to discover the letter: he cannot, but shrewd Detective Dupin insinuates himself into the government minister's home, finds the letter "openly" hidden in full view, and, stealing it back, displaces information technology with a like-looking letter.
Lacan exposes a triadic repetitive design with three loci: the "blind," the displacer who does not know s/he is seen, and the thief (who knows to imitate displacement). Lacan applies information technology to the 2 consecutive scenes. First scene: rex (blind), queen (naïve displacer), minister (thief). 2d scene: prefect (blind), minister (naive displacer), Dupin (thief). Arguing that the interchangeability of the content is crucial here, since only the repeating intersubjective pattern (and not its semantic signifieds) is of psychological import, Lacan interprets the "empty" chain of signifiers as actually reflecting the relations of unconscious (and empty) desire.
Adapting the Lacanian model to Case 85, I would suggest the following. It is a Zen truism that enlightenment recognizes and then realizes tamha ("thirst," desire) as really the emptiness that is the Buddha-nature. I would propose that in Case 85, the hermit succeeds in teaching the monk to pass through the first gate, that is, to motion from naïve displacement to a recognition of empty pattern ("interchangeability"), just not the second gate, realization of empty blueprint (whereby "interchangeability" is embodied). First scene: tiger (blind), monk (naïve displacer—he displaces the fear of the tiger's roar onto the fear of the hermit'south harmless roar), hermit (thief —steals the tiger'due south roar and diagnoses the monk'south 5 naïve displacement). 2nd scene: the monk recognizes the pattern, so he screams out, "You quondam thief!" just the Monk does not know how to occupy the 3rd locus, that is, to become a holy thief of emptiness himself.
In his introductory and concluding chapters, Olson engages several fellow-interpreters publishing at the Buddhist/postmodern intersection, including Dilworth, Glass, Loy, and myself. The critiques he delivers verge on the irresponsible. In my case, he claims that in Derrida on the Mend I merely assert a "straight equivalence between différance and emptiness" (Olson p. 211, besides p. 20), whereas my book makes clear that "the Derridean alternately celebrates and anguishes" because he does not have the Nagarjunist'due south "prajna-knowing" nor the "security which comes with liberation." Derridean deconstruction demonstrates that the logical arguments in support of the principle of identity plummet against/upon themselves (Nagarjuna performs a like deconstruction in his Mulamadhyamakarikas), and the issue of this deconstruction is philosophically conductive to that "differential" condition which is "devoidness." But Derrida can only admission devoidness "self-consciously and piecemeal,"vi because he does not realize Sunyata past way of Buddhism's aware cognition.vii
Olson goes on to say my "apply of the term logocentric with Zen Buddhism represents a misunderstanding of Zen philosophy" (p. 211). Olson does not understand that for Derrida "logocentrism" ways any formation that presents itself as enough of a unity that it claims to "frame" or "frazzle" all of its alleged content. Logocentrism does non necessarily mean "expressed in written or oral words." And considering equally human being beings we naturally depend on logocentrism, and necessarily deconstruction so much depends on it, deconstruction should ever be accompanied past an ongoing deconstruction of itself. Olson alludes (p. twenty) to my merits that Nagarjuna'south version of the Center Path surpasses Derrida in that it has a better way of justifying the provisional validity of logocentrism, but Olson does not explicate my argument. Though at that place is no space to discuss the matter here, much of my scholarship (in English and in Chinese) has been devoted to explaining how the Madhyamaka'south Ii Truths at once both deconstruct and legitimate logocentrism.
My work addresses 2 interwoven strands in Zen: the "axial" and the "differential." My example for the say-so of the axial strand "for quite some time now [in history]" 8 does not depend, as Olson says it does, on Suzuki (whose clarification of Zen experience I cite as one gimmicky example), but on the consensus among Buddhologists that Yogacaric influence (non necessarily from the Lankavatara Sutra) is stronger in Ch'an/Zen than the Madhyamikan influence.'' Zen often presents itself in terms of "oneness" and "True Mind," formulations having their provenance in Yogacaric trisvabhava theory. Contrarily, the Madhyamaka finds that "oneness" and "True Listen" are "frame-concepts" and "frame-experiences" and must exist cut off, too.
Information technology may surprise the reader that I wish to close this review with an earnest recommendation that Zen and the Art of Postmodern Philosophy exist purchased and read. But I do so recommend, and then long as the reader also knows to branch out from the book to its sources. Equally deconstructionists say, "The web always extends beyond its builder."
Notes
one. For sources in Derrida plus discussion, run across my Derrida on the Mend (Purdue University Printing., 1984; paperback rpt. 2000), pp. 21-48. For my refutation of H. Coward and C. W. Huntington on this and analogous issues, see my On Deconstructing Life-Worlds: Buddhism, Christianity, Culture (Scholars Press, 1997; Oxford Academy Press, 2000), pp. 141-154.
2. In The Koan, meet in item G. V. Due south. Hori, p. 294.
iii. Encounter Hori, p. 296.
iv. For Lacan's seminar, run across The Purloined Poe, ed. J. Muller and Due west. Richardson (Johns Hopkins, 1988).
five. Derrida on the Mend, p. 126; see also On Deconstructing Life-Worlds, pp. 143, 150.
half dozen. Derrida on the Mend, p. 126.
7. Madhyamaka much emphasizes the cerebral side of enlightenment: apropos, run across too my long essay in Jin Park, ed., Buddhisms and Deconstructions (Rowman and Littlefield, forthcoming).
8. Derrida on the Mend, p. 97.
9. Meet On Deconstructing Life-Worlds, pp. 145, 148, 154, 168-172.
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