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 well-known paradox, Patriarchs on
Paper explores several genres of Chan literature that appeared
during the Tang and Song dynasties (c. 600-1300), including
genealogies, biographies, dialogues, poems, monastic handbooks, and
koans. Working through this diverse body of literature, Alan Cole
details how Chan authors developed several strategies to evoke
images of a perfect Buddhism in which wonderfully simple masters
transmitted Buddhism's final truth to one another, suddenly and
easily, and, of course, independent of literature and the
complexities of the Buddhist monastic system. Chan literature,
then, reveled in staging delightful images of a Buddhism free of
Buddhism, tempting the reader, over and over, with the possibility
of finding behind the thick facade of real Buddhism-with all its
rules, texts, doctrines, and institutional solidity-an ethereal
world of pure spirit. Patriarchs on Paper charts the emergence of
this kind of "fantasy Buddhism" and details how it interacted with
more traditional forms of Chinese Buddhism in order to show how
Chan's illustrious ancestors were created in literature in order to
further a wide range of real-world agendas.
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