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“Cole offers an original, innovative, and compelling history of Tang-Song Chan literature that challenges and corrects many of the more long-standing misrepresentations of the tradition. Patriarchs on Paper’s great strength and originality is in taking Chan literature seriously as literature and allowing readers to access this world with all of the excitement of a literary detective story. With an extremely high degree of analytic sophistication, Cole has rendered this large and often contentious body of secondary scholarship into a coherent narrative of literary and institutional history intelligible and meaningful to the nonspecialist. The manuscript is exemplary in presenting a critical history of deeply complex material that is at once rigorous and engaging."—D. Max Moerman, Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures at Barnard and Columbia University
"Using lively, provocative, and accessible prose, Alan Cole provides his readers with a compelling behind-the-scenes look at the emergence of Chan as a literary tradition. In Patriarchs on Paper, Cole retraces the steps of some of Chan's most celebrated authors to show how they tried to secure legitimacy, patronage, recognition, and much more through their creative use of new models of authority, brand consciousness, conspiracy theories, and playful dialectics. This book is a must-read for anyone looking to take a brisk and refreshing stroll through the forest of conceptual thickets known as Chan or Zen."—Juhn Y. Ahn, University of Michigan
List of contents
Preface
A Note on References to the Chinese Buddhist Canon
Introduction: Chan—What Is It?
1. Making History: Chan as an Art Form
2. Plans for the Past: Early Accounts of How Perfect Truth Came to China
3. Portable Ancestors: Bodhidharma Gets Two New Families
4. More Local Buddhas Appear: Jingjue, Huineng, Shenhui
5. Truth, Conspiracy, and Careful Writing: A New Version of Huineng
6. The Platform Sutra and Other Conspiracy Theories
7. Chan “Dialogues” from the Tang Dynasty
8. Chan Compendiums from the Song Dynasty
9. Rules for Purity: Handbooks for Running Chan Monasteries
10. Koans and Being There
Conclusions: Chan, a Buddhist Beauty
Bibliography
Glossary
Index
About the author
Alan Cole is an independent scholar who has taught at Lewis & Clark College, Harvard University, the University of Illinois, the University of Oregon, and the National University of Singapore.
Summary
The truth of Chan Buddhism - better known as "Zen" - is regularly said to be beyond language, and yet Chan authors - medieval and modern - produced an enormous quantity of literature over the centuries. To make sense of this paradox, this book explores several genres of Chan literature that appeared during the Tang and Song dynasties (c 600-1300).
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"As perceptive as it is erudite, and [Cole's] prose is uncommonly readable.... This gem of cogent, provocative scholarship belongs in all collections."
