Cutting David Hinton Down To Size (for people WHO CAN ACTUALLY READ)
Hey folks. I have been away quite a bit. It’s foraging season, and I am out and about, and very busy, this month. (Which is okay—I write like shit in the summer. Fall brings content. Summer is better for resting and working.)
But I feel like I had to step in and say something after some stuff I saw in the feed today (after not having been following for a week or two).
In short: it is obvious that some people in this forum wish they were literate enough to properly lampoon David Hinton as the errant, upper-middle-class, Lysoled Radagast of Chinese poetry translation—and dime store philosopher—that he actually is.
Obviously pretending a guy who cooked up his own, garbled walking philosophy, while traipsing around in the “woods” wearing hi-end “Patagonia-grade” shells and (no doubt) several hundred dollar woolen sweaters—financed by grant after grant from wealthy east coast academic institutions—is even in the discussion on the history of Ch’an or the meaning of the Ch’an teachings is obviously taking the wrong off-ramp from the start.
Like…look at this:
> THE PRIMARY PROJECT OF THIS BOOK IS A DIRECT AND philosophical one: to describe the native conceptual framework of Ch’an in ancient China, to make it available to contemporary philosophical understanding and spiritual practice. This native understanding and practice of Ch’an is largely missing in contemporary American Zen because that conceptual framework was mostly lost in Ch’an’s migration from China through Japan to America.
See? This is a poet translator that is trying to write a book of philosophy for his philosopher friends (they of the official grant purse-strings) so they can “understand the deal with Ch’an” without using Buddhist terminology or framework…including slicing away the American Japanese Zen clap-trap that literally no one in Hinton’s “New England academic” jet set would tinker with.
But right out of the gate, he states: “This is a work of philosophy.” Not Ch’an. Not Zen. Philosophy.
This is what makes this book so geniusly lampoon-able by *any actual student of Ch’an.*
“We can see you are writing for a bunch of upper middle class academics who don’t have the literary background to know you’re full of shit.”
—respectful students of Ch’an to one David Hinton^1
Personally I suspect the animosity around here directed at Hinton comes from one source, as it makes little sense otherwise:
> “Indeed, that conceptual framework appears already lost in Japan, for little trace of it appears in the writings of the great Japanese scholar D. T. Suzuki, whose many books introduced Zen to the Western world.”
That’s right. Sounds like maybe a Hinton-Suzuki dust up?
Who could possible care about that? Would be my thought. DT Suzuki is a Japanese Zen Buddhist and as such has never applied to my study of Ch’an.
Moreover, when I encounter Suzuki readers who found their understanding of Zen from his books, I’m like—so okay obviously you didn’t actually study the Chinese Ch’an masters: check! Anyway, Suzuki is unrelated to the Chinese Ch’an masters and their texts. Whatever he did with Japanese and American Zen: fine. I know lots of people who like him. Just—have never seen a relationship to the Chinese Ch’an masters myself.
But this is what puts me in a funny place: *I* am qualified to criticize Hinton’s book and understanding of Ch’an *based on Chinese studies*. So obviously I’m not going to take a back-seat while a bunch of half-baked Japanese Zen addicts try to fight a prancing philosopher with a dung beetle in his hat using a samurai sword that has been “quenched in the blood of a million anti-zennists.” It’s just too macabre and bizarre to watch!
So let me have a go instead.
First of all…Hinton goes right after the fraudulence of what he calls “American Zen” in this book, and that should be noted. Everyone who is reading OPs on this book should at least read the introduction. Hinton sugar coats it—necessary with his readers—but his main thrust is defintiely that they are all frauds, and that *is* worth pointing out. He is *at least pretending to try* to get back to the actual Ch’an masters.
Except—he isn’t *really* trying. Look at this:
> “So Ch’an was less Buddhism than a rebellion against Buddhism. And in the end, it is most accurately described not as Buddhism reconfigured by Taoism, but as Taoism reconfigured by a Buddhism that was dismantled and discarded after the reconfiguration was complete. This is how ancient China’s artist-intellectual class saw it: Ch’an as a refinement and extension of Taoism. ”
Right there. He identifies with the *artist-intellectuals* of the T’ang and Song Dynasty. *Not* with the Ch’an masters—and says so. His entire philosophy, (made for high end kale *purchasing* philosophers), is exactly that: what he extracted from the Chinese artist-intellectuals. *Because he himself is an artist-intellectual writing for artist-intellectuals.*
As such, his philosophical system / conceptual framework basically *is* what he claims it to be: a fairly accurate representation of how Tang and Song artist-intellectuals would have likely conceptualized Ch’an.
Right? That is even what Hinton is *saying*.
“I’m an artist-intellectual writing for artist-intellectuals about artists-intellectuals in order to communicate the conceptual frameworks that artist intellectuals use.”^2
Not that he is a Zen master. Not that he is even a student of Ch’an. (Does he say that anywhere? “I study Ch’an” or “I practice Ch’an”? I forgot to check. Wouldn’t seem to jive with the stuff in his book, frankly…)
Anyway, so—already discarded.
And one notable thing about Tang and Song artist-intellectuals—other than they were not Ch’an masters, and had to invent a cockamemie philosophical paradigm to discuss Ch’an (which itself was already a break down of literature into superstition and snake oil, if ya ask me)—is that they are definitely not the people you want to go to in the Tang and Song dynasties if you want to study Ch’an, have a conversation about Ch’an, or read a book that contains Ch’an teachings. (Those would be the *Ch’an Masters*.)
(At heart is a category error, wherein some people think they are standing in front of the “Ch’an” section of the bookstore, when they are really standing in the “Silver Spoon Academics Pay For These Books To Be Published Because They Themselves Find Them Highly Gratifying And Affirming” section of the bookstore. Like I said—I got my copy in the poetry section.)
This is from a footnote:
> “*1 As with most originary figures of Chinese philosophy—Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Confucius—a number of seminal Ch’an figures appear to have evolved over time.”
Now, while the footnote goes on to share some valuable information, particularly about the evolution of Chinese texts—go read the book yourself if you want to.
No. I just want to show you all how illiterate our western artist intellectuals are—and why I study Ch’an and live in the fucking *real* woods.
Only Lao Tzu—or the text that is represented as that individuals book—can even *remotely* be termed a “philosopher”…and even that is pretty remote.
Confucius? Obviously a sage. A sage is a different thing than a philosopher. Joke is, philosophers don’t know that—and neither do illiterate artist-intellectuals (apparently). A sage is real thing. It is not at all like a philosopher…which is a type of thinker—but not a real thing, as far as I know. If this clown thinks Confucius is a “philosopher” he has already misunderstood the *bulk* of Chinese literature if ya ask me.
But what do I know, I’m just a scrub who lives in the woods and talks shit using funny animal stories and performance videos, amirite?
Chuang-Tzu? ***A fucking philosopher?!?***
See? This artists intellectual we are grappling with can’t see a folklorist for a folklorist even when that folklorist spits right in his own book’s face! *That* is the kind of illiteracy we have coming out of American educational institutions and ***funded by Wall Street*** these days!
You guys know Chuang-Tzu right? Of the “100” schools era? Those schools? Lao Tzu, Confucius, and then 98 brands of philosophy?
What did Chuang-Tzu do?
Annihilated the 98 brands of philosophy *single fucking handedly*.
Does that sound like a philosopher to you?
Nope. And every Ch’an student knows it, too. And that’s a fact. *Especially* around this joint.
*Chuang-Tzu was a folklorist*, and what he is *far and away the most famous for* is turning every philosopher who crossed his path *into an anecdote they could never escape*.
Every student of Zen knows that is *way* cleverer than being a philosopher!
He was like the *only* name to survive the *Warring Sates* period. (Lao Tzu and Confucius preceding it.) He was a *fucking buzz saw for philosopher necks*.
There is very little chance I could “engage an academic debate” with David Hinton over Chuang-Tzu that would get published in an academic journal. I’m being honest about that.
But if David Hinton thinks he has any idea what he is talking about, I dare him to come to Alaska and tell me Chunag-Tzu was a philosopher, and see what happens when we have a conversation about it.
I will drag him around my neighborhood and scramble his damn brain just by asking him to talk to different backcountry people—and I won’t even have to say a word myself, other than to keep pointing out how awesome my dog really is, when you really look at him, every time Hinton looks like he’s getting dazed or confused or about to query me philosophically.
“Well you know what Joshu didn’t always say!” ::pats dog affectionately::