Tracing Back the Radiance (Robert E. Buswell Jr.)
A Fine Zen Text
[My 5-star Amazon review (NDA) of “Tracing Back the Radiance: Chinul’s Korean Way of Zen” by Robert E. Buswell Jr.]
When I put together my initial Recommended Spiritual Reading List in 2010 (included in my books “Beyond the Power” and “Electrical Christianity”), I debated whether to put “Tracing Back the Radiance” in the “Highly Recommended” category. I finally decided to put it in the lower “Recommended” category. It was a mistake. When I revise my Spiritual List, it will be in the Highly Recommended category of Zen books, along with “The Zen Teaching of Huang Po” and “The Diamond Sutra and the Sutra of Hui Neng.”
Now that I’ve just reread it, I recognize it for what it is: a unique, profound, and grossly underrated Zen text.
Chinul (1158-1210), the founder of the Korean tradition of Zen, was not just a great Zen master, he was also a penetrating thinker into deeply analyzing the Awakening process. And this text, by Robert Buswell, a professor East Asian languages and culture, and a Zen practitioner, is an elegant translation and presentation of his Dharma.
The book’s ninety-eight page introduction, The Life and Thought of Chinul, traces the development of both Korean Zen and of Chinul’s awakening and thinking. The remainder of the book consists of Chinul’s teachings.
What makes Chinul unique is that he had affinity for the scholastic sects and brought about rapproachment between these sects and pure Zen. He was a seminal integrator who emphasized the simultaneous cultivation of samadhi and prajna. His teachings removed “the dichotomy between the noumenal essence and the phenomenal function.” For him, essence and and function are nondual; two complementary aspects of Mind; and Bodhicitta (Enlightenment), in accordance with the revered Avatamsaka Sutra, is the achievement of “the uninterrupted interpenetration of nirvana and samsara.”
In contradistinction with the “Mc Donalds” Self-Realization proffered by modern neo-Advaita teachers, Chinul taught that after initial awakening to Mind, a long period of gradual cultivation was necessary before one could attain Buddhahood.
Chinul was a true “Dharma doctor” who prescribed different meditation practices for beginner, intermediate, and advanced students. He introduced the koan to Korean Zen, and emphasized the method of tracing back the mind to its Source; but his Dharma instructions were hardly limited to these two methods.
Chinul’s writings provide plenty of Dharma nuggets. Here are a couple of examples:
“He [the accomplished man] neither eliminates the unwholesome nor cultivates the wholesome. His character is straightforward and without deception.
“When I said no-mind, I did not mean that there is no mind-essence. It is only when there are no things in the mind that we use the term no-mind. It is like speaking of an empty bottle: we mean that there is no thing in the bottle, not that there is no bottle.”
In short, this is a fine Zen text, and I highly recommend it for students of Buddhadharma.
[My 5-star Amazon review (NDA) of “Tracing Back the Radiance: Chinul’s Korean Way of Zen” by Robert E. Buswell Jr.]
When I put together my initial Recommended Spiritual Reading List in 2010 (included in my books “Beyond the Power” and “Electrical Christianity”), I debated whether to put “Tracing Back the Radiance” in the “Highly Recommended” category. I finally decided to put it in the lower “Recommended” category. It was a mistake. When I revise my Spiritual List, it will be in the Highly Recommended category of Zen books, along with “The Zen Teaching of Huang Po” and “The Diamond Sutra and the Sutra of Hui Neng.”
Now that I’ve just reread it, I recognize it for what it is: a unique, profound, and grossly underrated Zen text.
Chinul (1158-1210), the founder of the Korean tradition of Zen, was not just a great Zen master, he was also a penetrating thinker into deeply analyzing the Awakening process. And this text, by Robert Buswell, a professor East Asian languages and culture, and a Zen practitioner, is an elegant translation and presentation of his Dharma.
The book’s ninety-eight page introduction, The Life and Thought of Chinul, traces the development of both Korean Zen and of Chinul’s awakening and thinking. The remainder of the book consists of Chinul’s teachings.
What makes Chinul unique is that he had affinity for the scholastic sects and brought about rapproachment between these sects and pure Zen. He was a seminal integrator who emphasized the simultaneous cultivation of samadhi and prajna. His teachings removed “the dichotomy between the noumenal essence and the phenomenal function.” For him, essence and and function are nondual; two complementary aspects of Mind; and Bodhicitta (Enlightenment), in accordance with the revered Avatamsaka Sutra, is the achievement of “the uninterrupted interpenetration of nirvana and samsara.”
In contradistinction with the “Mc Donalds” Self-Realization proffered by modern neo-Advaita teachers, Chinul taught that after initial awakening to Mind, a long period of gradual cultivation was necessary before one could attain Buddhahood.
Chinul was a true “Dharma doctor” who prescribed different meditation practices for beginner, intermediate, and advanced students. He introduced the koan to Korean Zen, and emphasized the method of tracing back the mind to its Source; but his Dharma instructions were hardly limited to these two methods.
Chinul’s writings provide plenty of Dharma nuggets. Here are a couple of examples:
“He [the accomplished man] neither eliminates the unwholesome nor cultivates the wholesome. His character is straightforward and without deception.
“When I said no-mind, I did not mean that there is no mind-essence. It is only when there are no things in the mind that we use the term no-mind. It is like speaking of an empty bottle: we mean that there is no thing in the bottle, not that there is no bottle.”
In short, this is a fine Zen text, and I highly recommend it for students of Buddhadharma.
