Liberating Intimacy

Peter D. Hershock is Project Fellow of the Asian Studies Development Program at the East-West Center.

"This is the best book I have ever read on the Ch'an Buddhist tradition. Hershock articulates and defends his thesis with insight, power, and elegance. Enlightenment is ultimately about intimacy, sociality, and virtuosity. It is a central, yet heretofore ignored, aspect of not only the Ch'an Buddhist tradition in China, but also the Soto (Zen) tradition in Japan. If you understand Hershock on Ch'an, you are well on your way to understanding Zen Buddhism according to Dogen Kigen as well. Moreover, you will leave this work with an enriched understanding of an entire tribe of unsuspecting kindred spirits; specifically, you may want to reread the works of Watsuji Tetsuro Dogen Kigen, Aristotle, Alisdair MacIntyre, Jurgen Habermas, and Richard Rorty. This book ranks with those of Chung-yuan Chang whose early classics on Ch'an Buddhist philosophy introduced western philosophers to the rigor, complexity, and logic, if you will, of the most interesting of all Chinese Buddhist traditions." — David E. Shaner, Furman University"This work makes us re-think our views of the history, philosophy, and practice(s) of Ch'an; and it makes us re-think a number of other fundamental philosophical issues as well. It offers an original and important interpretation of the nature and scope of enlightenment in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition in general, and as found in Ch'an (Zen) in particular. It is a significant work, and will take a place alongside Collins' Selfless Persons and Griffith's On Being Mindless as a major contribution to twentieth-century Buddhist philosophical thought." — Henry Rosemont, Jr., St. Mary's College of Maryland/Fudan University, Shanghai

• AcknowledgmentsPreface Part I. Theoretical Foundations of Ch'an Enlightenment 1. Suffering: Divergent Conceptions of the Context of Enlightenment2. Culture and the Limits of Personhood: Common Rituals and Uncommon Tales3. Dramatic Interdependence and Improvisation: Sociality as Orientation4. Communicative Conduct: The Paradigmatic Locus of Ch'an Enlightenment Part II. Practice: The Embodiment of Enlightenment 5. Intimacy and Virtuosity: Entering the Gate of Ch'an Practice6. Opening the Field of Virtuosity: Practicing Tun-wu, Wei-hsin, and K'ung7. The Techniques of Unmaking: Energy and Awakening in Ch'an8. Morality and Character in the Mastery of Ch'an Notes References Index