Book Recommendation: The Way of Ch’an

a new David Hinton release on Shambhala Publications

Greetings Good Travelers and Wayfarers,

I’ve just completed reading David Hinton’s newest work, The Way of Ch’an: Essential Texts of the Original Tradition (Shambhala Publications). It is the much-anticipated companion text to his prior work entitled China Root: Taoism, Ch’an and Original Zen.

If you have an interest in poetry, meditation, Nature, cosmology, spirituality, Taoism, Ch’an, or Zen, and the tradition of the Wayfarers, I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Mirroring and extending the original premise of China Root, The Way of Ch’an elaborates upon three core assertions, what we might call True Origins, Cosmology-Embodied-in-Practice, and Diversity of Wayfarers.

The assertions are as follows:

Assertion #1: Ch’an — what would eventually come to be known as Zen in Japan and the West — is not an isolate (“pure”) religion hailing from India’s Dhyana school of Buddhism (as many have assumed due to mistranslation, mischaracterization, and other lore) but rather is a philosophical and spiritual extension of Taoism; an infusion of certain perennial elements of Taoism’s Paleolithic roots and the cosmological/ontological vision and Nature-oriented meditation path of a neo-Taoist tradition known as “Dark-Enigma Learning”, resulting in an utterly unique tradition (radically distinctive from orthodox Buddhism) that is an alchemical byproduct of Taoist sages being in dialogue with, adopting in certain instances, and actively deconstructing incoming Buddhist concepts.

Assertion #2: Given the reality of Assertion #1 (which Hinton spells out thoroughly through informed direct translation of vital Chinese language characters and Taoist and Ch’an source texts), original Ch’an practice, informed by and infused with Taoist cosmological underpinnings (which Hinton suggests was not transmitted to Japan or the West in complete form), is not simply a human-centric meditation tradition transmitted from India (working only with heart-mind in pursuit of an internal psychospiritual transformation a.k.a. enlightenment), but rather a profound gateway of directly experiencing (and confirming), somatically and empirically, the inseparability of human consciousness and Cosmos.

In a nutshell, where orthodox Buddhism has its sutras, rituals, teaching frameworks, compassion-generation practices, and elaborate pantheon of deities (many lifted from earlier Hindu antecedents), Tao-and-Dark Enigma-infused Ch’an — in its primal or original form — is “a separate transmission outside all teaching and nowhere founded in eloquent scriptures” (a quote attributed to Dá Mó a.k.a. Daruma a.k.a. Bodhidharma). In Ch’an’s earliest expression, Nature is seen as the ground of practice, Nature is experienced as the teacher, heart-mind interfacing with Nature is perceived as the vehicle, namely, Nature-as-Way through which one realizes one’s original nature (and, thus, everyone else’s original nature) as part of the Loom-of-Origins.

As Hinton says: “Mountains are great Ch’an teachers. Those vast forces of generative Cosmos are most dramatically manifest in mountain landscapes, and they possess a resounding silence. Ch’an put the wisdom of mountains at the heart of its practice…and mountain landscapes reinforces meditation practice because its dramatic differences and visual drama opened the same mirror-deep empty-mind clarity.”

Assertion #3: Unlike orthodox Buddhist traditions at that time in history, wherein the religious intelligentsia were the keepers and dispensers of commentary, teaching, and praxis, in original Ch’an it was a path of practice and self-cultivation expressed and embodied by more than a monastic or priestly “caste.” In original Ch’an (which, again, was the simmered ontological/cosmological nectar brewed from certain Dhyana Buddhist concepts being poured into a Dark-Enigma Taoist cauldron, so to speak) the tradition included a whole cadre of mountain-revering artist-intellectuals and hillwalking poets who existed outside of any institutionalism. As Hinton puts it: “These artist-intellectuals saw Ch’an not as a religion, but as a philosophical practice that cultivates profound insight into the empirical nature of consciousness and Cosmos, and their poetry was deeply influenced by [Tao-infused] Ch’an.”

In essence, in The Way of Ch’an, Hinton walks us through key excerpts from the I Ching (“The Classic of Change”), the Tao Te Ching (“The Classic of Tao and Integrity”), the Chuang Tzu, two primary exponents of Dark-Enigma Learning, various early Ch’an masters, Tang Dynasty Ch’an masters, later-stage Sung Dynasty Ch’an texts, and a plethora of Wayfaring poets and painters who dwelled (and wandered) outside any formalized structures.

As I said to a couple of Wayfarers recently, the glossary alone is well worth one’s time.

Happy Wayfaring.

Hidden Mountain