No! We have Buddha Nature.â In addition, there are cross-references between the historical material of koÌan texts and contemporary Western literature and poetry (e.g.: âThe significance of the Mu KoÌan might also be examined in light of other instances of Western cultural expressions of nothingness or the de-centeredness of the universe in the schools of thought of American Transcendentalism, Dadaism, and Existentialism,â p. 71), and ranging to âWhiteheadâs holistic metaphysicsâ and âEinsteinâs quantum physics.â Whereas cross-references to more contemporary discourses might be useful for addressing a Western readership, these references remain too fragmentary and blurry, and do not really add anything substantial to the understanding of the topic discussed. As a consequence, when reading the book, at times it was difficult for me to figure out for what audience the book was written: although providing a wealth of interesting material, the treatment of it is often too unfocused and âjumpyâ for a specialized reader. On the other hand, a more general audience might have difficulties in dealing with the overload of methodological reflections andâoccasionallyâvery detailed discussions of koÌan features . As such, I regard the publication as a brave attempt of âperformative scholarshipâ by a very accomplished scholar who got a bit too much carried away by the subject he was dealing with (sometimes even adopting the rhetorical features of the koÌan texts discussed), and occasionally overloading it with too ambitious methodological endeavors. Based on my subjective reading of the publication, this approach was not quite convincing for me. CHRISTOPH ANDERL Ghent University STEVEN HEINE, Zen Koans. Dimensions of Asian Spirituality. Honolulu: University of Hawaiâi Press, 2014. ix, 195 pp. US $17 (pb). ISBN 978-0-8248-3974-1 Even though Steven Heineâs Zen Koans seems not to be written for specialist readers with a background in Chinese religionsâit provides no diacritical marks for Japanese words like koÌan (gongâan ć
ŹæĄ) and no Sinitic logographs, for exampleâthis short monograph is an important book that ought to be read by anyone with an interest in the literary and philosophical history of Zen Buddhism. But let me make one point very clear: Steven Heine knows Zen. By Zen, I mean the Zen traditions in Japan (SoÌtoÌshuÌ æčæŽćź, RinzaishuÌ èšæżćź, and OÌ bakushuÌ é»æȘćź), the thriving discourse of Zen studies in Japan (at universities such as Komazawa é§æŸ€ ć€§ćž and Hanazono è±ć性ćž), and Zen literatureâespecially collections of koÌans, or public cases. In Zen Koans, Heine uses more than 26 of the 48 cases of the seminal Gateless Gate (Wumen guan, Mumonkan çĄéé) collection from Chinaâin addition to thirty-two references to other normative Zen texts (see pp. 189-192)âto provide the target audience of non-specialist readers with a condensed overview of the philosophical, historical, intellectual, and institutional contexts of a koÌan tradition in East Asia (China, Japan, Korea). Heine accomplishes this feat in two chapters and in only 70 pages. The remainder of this short monograph is where Heine seems to distill decades of prolific study of Zen, chiefly focused on either SoÌtoÌshuÌ Zen in Japan or DoÌgen éć
(1200-1253), into another 90 pages and three chapters. Heine can do this with relative ease because he has published 82 BOOK REVIEWS (or coedited, with Dale S. Wright) more than a dozen books on the topic of koÌans, and another seven on DoÌgen studies. The last chapter of Zen Koans, chapter 6 (âWhither Koans, or Wither? Current Trends and Possible New Directions,â pp. 160-188), is perhaps the most thought provoking of this densely packed monograph , because Heine addresses at least three rousing issues intimately connected to Zen (and koÌans) in the 21st century. First, what are we to make of the fact that Japan remains the stimulus for academic research on Zen while South Korean SoÌn and Chinese Chan communities, respectively, grow by leaps and bounds in rapidly changing societies where corruption, both within and beyond the monastic grounds (e.g., gambling in Korea, p. 171), is as much of an issue as practice-based matters related to reading koÌans? Second, how are koÌans read today by East...