Best regards,
Andrew Stewart
Begin forwarded message:
> From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW <h-rev...@lists.h-net.org>
> Date: June 23, 2021 at 8:51:36 PM EDT
> To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org
> Cc: H-Net Staff <revh...@mail.h-net.org>
> Subject: H-Net Review [H-Buddhism]: Shields on Braak, 'Reimagining Zen in a
> Secular age: Charles Taylor and Zen Buddhism in the West'
> Reply-To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org
>
> Andre van der Braak. Reimagining Zen in a Secular age: Charles
> Taylor and Zen Buddhism in the West. Leiden Brill | Rodopi, 2020.
> 252 pp. $64.00 (paper), ISBN 978-90-04-43507-0.
>
> Reviewed by James M. Shields (Bucknell University)
> Published on H-Buddhism (June, 2021)
> Commissioned by Ben Van Overmeire
>
> With _Reimagining Zen in a Secular Age_, André van der Braak has
> written an engaging--if flawed--reflection on contemporary Zen in the
> West. His "hook" is the work of Charles Taylor, in particular
> Taylor's _A Secular Age _(2007), a massive and massively influential
> work in which the Canadian philosopher delineates the development and
> various implications of secularism/secularity in the modern West. As
> someone who was a student of Taylor at McGill in the early 1990s, who
> once considered using his 1997 opus_ Sources of the Self_ as a lens
> with which to reimagine modern Buddhism, and who has since written
> about Japanese Buddhist modernism in relation to Taylor's
> understanding of the "immanent frame," these connections make perfect
> sense to this reader.
>
> Van der Braak sets up his argument by noting a "very real tension"
> between traditional Asian and modern Western forms of Buddhism.
> Although this could (and sometimes does) degenerate into a
> superficial East-West or traditional-modern distinction that
> bypasses, among other things, the various ways in which "Western"
> Buddhism was informed by the work of Japanese Buddhists of the late
> nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the author usefully
> complicates matters early in the introduction. One of the principal
> burdens of this book is to argue against a pat delineation of
> "immanence" and "transcendence"--and, by extension, the "secular" and
> the "religious"--when it comes to understanding modern Zen. That
> said, I am not entirely convinced by the contrast Van der Braak goes
> on to draw between the "religious" aspect of Zen ("the bodhisattva
> work of liberating all sentient beings") from the "secular" aspect
> ("a toolkit for contemplating fitness") (p. 17). This seems an odd
> distinction to make, as it effectively takes "ethics" out of
> secularity entirely, a move that many Buddhist modernists (especially
> those associated with Engaged Buddhism) would surely oppose! Overall,
> however, I appreciate and concur with van der Braak's method, rooted
> in (Gadamerian) cross-cultural hermeneutics, within which the goal is
> to seek not what Zen "is" in some essentialist or transhistorical
> sense but rather: "what Zen has been and _can be_ to the citizens of
> secular modernity in the twenty-first century" (pp. 11-12, my
> emphasis).
>
> The initial two chapters of the book introduce to the reader the two
> primary discourses the author seeks to bridge: modern Zen and
> Taylor's _A __Secular Age. _For scholars and students of either,
> there is little new here; but then, the Venn diagram that contains
> those conversant with both the history of Chan/Zen and the work of
> Taylor is likely small. Van der Braak's rapid-fire survey of the
> origins of Chan/Zen pays particular attention to the various
> "negotiations" and "reimaginations" that occurred over the 1,500-year
> transmission from Bodhidharma to Jon Kabat-Zinn. Toward the end of
> this chapter, the author usefully highlights some aspects of the
> "two-way transmission" of Zen to the West, and how these have
> affected its "hermeneutic horizons" (p. 42). In chapter 2, as well,
> the final few pages (pp. 64-72) offer some helpful critiques of
> Taylor's argument--including the whole question of the
> transcendent/immanent distinction--though these are mainly reliant on
> the critical work of other scholars. These first two chapters set the
> tone for the book as a whole: wide-ranging and ambitious in scope,
> but also heavily reliant on secondary scholarship on both Zen
> modernism and (albeit less so) Taylor's thought. The bulk of the
> argument is relegated to the "Discussion" sections concluding each
> chapter.
>
> Utilizing several key Taylorian concepts, the third chapter
> summarizes the various "Zen cross pressures" that buffet Taylor's
> "immanent frame"--that is, the secularist assumption of a "natural
> order" to the world that has emerged as a result of
> "disenchantment"--focusing again on the question of whether (and
> how?) we need to go beyond the transcendent/immanent distinction in
> speaking of Buddhism/Zen. (At this point, the answer seems clear:
> _yes, of course_...) This is followed in chapter 4 by an analysis of
> the various ways that Buddhism--particularly Zen--has been
> interpreted as a form of "universal mysticism." Here the argument of
> the book really begins; albeit, once again, it is an argument heavily
> reliant on the work of contemporary scholars like David McMahan, Dale
> Wright, and Hee-Jin Kim. Chapter 5 provides an analysis of
> "psychologization"--that is, the modern tendency to think of religion
> in psychological terms. Here the author highlights the value of
> Dōgen's (and more generally, Sino-Japanese) epistemology in thinking
> through the "contact theories" of knowledge proposed by Taylor and
> Dreyfus. As the book progresses it becomes clear that, as with the
> Japanese Critical Buddhists, Dōgen will emerge as the "hero" of van
> der Braak's quest for a reimagined modern Zen.
>
> Chapter 6 extends the analysis of the previous chapter with a more
> specific look at modern Zen in light of Taylor's "therapeutic turn"
> in modern religious discourse. The discussion here makes sense,
> though van der Braak's invocation of controversial mid-twentieth
> century "master" Sawaki Kōdō (p. 152) raises the specter of the
> rhetoric used to justify Zen nationalism in the twentieth century.
> And this is even more so the case with Sanbō Kyōdan founder
> Yasutani Hakuun (not Yasuun, p. 156), now notorious for his
> imperialistic leanings. Even if one doesn't fully accept the critique
> of Sawaki and Yasutani offered by Brian Victoria, this seems like an
> issue that needs to be addressed.[1]
>
> Chapter 7 turns to the rise of (Romantic) "expressive individualism"
> as another "cross pressure" on modern, secular forms of Zen,
> particularly as this relates to an understanding of Zen as a
> "transtraditional, global spirituality" (p. 158). Within this chapter
> we find one of the author's most interesting arguments: that some
> contemporary forms of Buddhism--particularly, it would appear,
> "engaged" forms that prioritize the "other-oriented" self--provide
> resources for a "postmodern" critique not only of Western
> individualism but also of the Buddhist "status quo" (pp. 163-64). The
> basic premise is that classical forms of Buddhism, with deep roots in
> doctrines of "no self" and interdependence, "constitute[] a critique
> of consumerism and neoliberal ideology" (p. 163). At the same time,
> however, the radical "other-oriented self" promoted in texts such as
> the _Vimmalakirti Sutra_ also challenges the Buddhist status
> quo--that is, the residual conservatism of premodern Buddhist
> institutions. Here Dōgen returns as a potential resource, with the
> promise of more to come.
>
> The book concludes by looking at three possible paths for any
> contemporary Zen that aims to "overcome modernism," using the work of
> Stephen Batchelor, David Loy, and Dōgen as respective touchstones
> and, it would seem, progressive stages of Zen awakening. As always,
> the Discussion sections of each chapter are where we find the bulk of
> the analysis and critique--the reader is tempted to skip to those
> pages and bypass the summaries. Van der Braak first interprets
> Batchelor's "secular Buddhism" in relation to Taylor's "immanent
> frame" and "exclusive humanism." After arguing that Batchelor is
> actually proposing something like an "existential Buddhism," one
> which flips between exclusive humanism and antihumanism but leaves at
> least some space for "religion" in the Romantic/Tillichian sense of
> "re-enchantment" and "ultimate concern," the author concludes that
> Batchelor's approach remains limited in being "purely this-worldly"
> and thus, it would seem, not allowing for belief in bodhisattvas or
> "the radicality of the bodhisattva vow" (pp. 195-96). While I, too,
> have concerns with Batchelor's approach to secularism, I do not find
> this last charge particularly compelling, given the way that the
> bodhisattva vow was interpreted as _both_ existentially
> transformative and radically "material" by twentieth-century
> progressive Buddhists like Seno'o Girō. In short, while I concur
> that Batchelor's "existential Buddhism" lacks a strong political
> element, I do not think this has much if anything to do with his
> "immanentism."
>
> As if the terrain of Zen and modernity were not already broad enough,
> chapter 9 invokes the thought of several major figures of the Kyoto
> School in addition to the prolific David Loy. Much of this chapter is
> culled, as noted, from earlier works by Van der Braak. While this is
> fine in principle, one wonders whether the section on the Kyoto
> School does any real work here in terms of the author's argument.
> With regard to Loy--an engaged Buddhist thinker who could hardly be
> more different than Nishitani Keiji--van der Braak concludes that in
> his work we see a higher stage of thinking beyond the
> immanent-transcendent divide (p. 216), one that only lacks the
> "specific practices that will help us engage in a reimagined
> transcendence" (p. 219).
>
> And this brings us back, once again, to Dōgen, the subject of the
> final chapter. In reconstructing Zen as a form of "contextualized
> practice," van der Braak leans into an interpretation of Dōgen's Zen
> as being rooted in social ethics--that is, "collective bodhisattva
> work" (p. 224). While the points here are reasonable and well
> qualified, the author does tend to oversimplify "Western materialism"
> or "immanence" (p. 237)--arguably, in the work of, say, Spinoza, one
> finds Western precedents for the "overcoming" of these same
> dichotomies. Moreover, the Japanese New Buddhists of the early
> twentieth century had made at least halting steps toward a similar
> understanding of Buddhism (albeit, not usually Zen) as a
> "pantheistic" tradition with clear ethical (and even political)
> resonance. And finally, on a related point, I might have liked some
> recognition of the role played by Dōgen within Critical Buddhism,
> where he similarly plays a foundational role in a reimagining--albeit
> a very different reimagining--of Zen/Buddhism for our contemporary
> age.
>
> As should be obvious by now, I have mixed feelings about this book.
> On the one hand, I admire van der Braak's ambitious attempt to bring
> Taylor's complex and multilayered work on the secular to bear on the
> various issues surrounding modern Zen (and Zen modernism). There is
> unquestionable value in this connection, and the author frames his
> project in such a way as to forestall criticism of superficial
> comparativism. That said, the book relies rather too much on the work
> of others, including McMahan and Loy, and doesn't pay quite enough
> attention to the complexities of "secular"--and ostensibly
> pan-sectarian--Buddhist modernism as it emerged in Japan. With these
> caveats, _Reimagining Zen_ is a recommended read for anyone
> interested in Western Zen, Buddhist modernism, secularism, and the
> work of Charles Taylor.
>
> Note
>
> [1]. Brian Victoria, _Zen at War,_ 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman &
> Littlefield Publishers, 2006), "Zen Masters on the Battlefield, Part
> I," _Japan Focus: The Asia__-Pacific Journal _11, 24.3 (June 16,
> 2013), "Zen Masters on the Battlefield, Part II," _Japan Focus: The
> Asia-Pacific Journal _11, 27.4 (July 2, 2013), and "Sawaki Kodo and
> Wartime Zen: Final Pieces of the Puzzle," _Japan Focus: The
> Asia-Pacific Journal_ 13, 8.3 (May 4, 2015).
>
> Citation: James M. Shields. Review of Braak, Andre van der,
> _Reimagining Zen in a Secular age: Charles Taylor and Zen Buddhism in
> the West_. H-Buddhism, H-Net Reviews. June, 2021.
> URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=56335
>
> This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
> Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
> License.
>
>
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