The Nature and Rationale of Zen/Chan and Enlightenment

This book initiates a paradigm shift away from Zen/Chan as quintessentially Buddhist and examines what makes Chan thought and practice unique and original through an interdisciplinary investigation of the nature and rationale of Chan and its enlightenment.

Exploring how enlightenment is achieved through Chan practice and how this differs from other forms of Buddhism, the book offers an entirely new view of Chan that embraces historical scholarship, philosophical inquiry, textual analysis, psychological studies, Chan practice, and neuroscientific research and locates the core of Chan in its founder Huineng?s theory of no thinking which creatively integrates the Taoist ideas of zuowang (forgetting in seated meditation) and xinzhai (fast of heart-mind) with his personal experiences of enlightenment. It concludes that Chan is the crystallization of an innovative synthesis of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism as well as other resources of somatic and spiritual cultivation, and that enlightenment is a momentary return to the mental state of a baby before birth.

This book will appeal to students and scholars of religion, philosophy, and neuroscience. It will also offer new insights to thinkers, writers, artists, therapists and neuroscientists as well as those practicing Zen, Mindfulness, and psychotherapy.

"This book constitutes an ambitious, refreshingly new, intensely personal, and intellectually stimulating approach to Chan/Zen. By examining the presuppositions of traditional scholarship and Orientalist interpretations, the author reintroduces Chan into Western philosophical discourse and opens it to recent developments in neuroscience. His central argument, namely that Chan enlightenment is a momentary return to the prenatal mental state prior to language, may explain the importance of embryological discourse in Buddhism. Readers will definitely leave the book with a new understanding of Chan/Zen thought and practice." - Bernard Faure, Columbia University, USA

"In his distinguished career, Ming Dong Gu has startled the academy with his rare ability to wed scholarly rigor with bottomless originality and novel insight. This monograph on Chan gives us a window on the capacious oeuvre of Gu as one of the world's most prolific scholars in comparative literature and thought. Gu argues that once born, we have lost the pre-natal, cosmic unconsciousness which is the original source of enlightenment, but various forms of Chan cultivation can return us to momentary experiences of the fetal unconscious. But asks Gu: Is such mental state Buddhist or that of the dissident Chan? With the iconoclastic spirit of Chan, Gu locates the ultimate source of enlightenment in the Taoist Way of No Thinking. In reading this meaningful and systematic exploration of the nature and rationale of Chan, we are treated to Gu's revolutionary tour-de-force in which the prenatal mind takes us back to a distinctively Chinese understanding of the ground of all philosophy and religion." - Roger T. Ames, Peking University, China

"This book is a deliberately revisionist study of Zen/Chan. It takes stock of and takes to task existing studies of Chan, and as such, it is a thorough review as well as a rigorous critique. What distinguishes the book is that it locates Chan in the matrix of varied strands of cognate Chinese thoughts, most notably Daoism, revealing how Chan developed as a distinctly Sinitic form of Buddhism. In light of this intellectual history and milieu, the book offers its own interpretation and understanding of the nature and rationale of Chan "enlightenment"." - On-cho Ng, Penn State University, USA

"Mindfulness, allegedly extracted from Buddhism, is now a popular mainstream vehicle for enlightenment. ?In this wonderful book, Ming Don Gu argues with great scholarly care and authority that Chan is distinctive among the varieties of Buddhism in achieving enlightenment and mental well-being through "mindlessness," a philosophy and set of practices that aim to experience mind and world in a pre-conceptual way, perceived by a baby in the womb. ?I?ve always known that Chan/Zen is distinctive. ?Now I know in detail how it is distinctive. ?A most important and necessary book." - Owen Flanagan, Duke University, USA