How Zen Fought the Cold War - Seeing Through John McRae
By Adrian Chan-Wyles PhD
‘The periodization of any set of past events represents an act of reconstruction – not the mere reorganization and ordering of information, but the total remaking of the past as the structured image of our imaginations. Now, there is nothing wrong with creating an image of the past – indeed, I believe it is our task as historians, both professional and occasional, to visualize the past in the best ways we know how.’
(John McRae: Seeing Through Zen (2003), Page 14)
(John McRae: Seeing Through Zen (2003), Page 14)
Author’s note: I find the academic work of John McRae, with regard to his study of Chinese Ch’an Buddhism, to be shallow, inconclusive, and lacking in any substantiality. How could so many words be used in his book entitled ‘Seeing Through Zen’, and yet say so little of relevance toward assisting the reader to gain an authentic understanding of China and her culture? John McRae’s narratives are hopelessly ‘muddled’, as he is never sure whether he is assessing Japanese ‘Zen’ or Chinese ‘Ch’an’, and perhaps this confusion is deliberate, as McRae would have his readership believe that the (often hostile) Japanese interpretation of Chinese history, is exactly the same understanding that the Chinese people use to understand themselves (when it most certainly is not). Japanese Zen, although having its historical roots within Chinese Ch’an, nevertheless has developed in quite different, and incompatible directions from its Chinese precursor. The atrocities committed by the Japanese imperial army during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) in China, for instance, are believed by many Chinese commentators to have arisen from the lack of Buddhist morality within the Japanese Zen tradition (as monks and nuns, as well as lay practitioners, do not follow the Vinaya Discipline). With the US actively encouraging Japanese nationalism and race-hate toward ‘Communist’ China after WWII, Japan as a nation has never had to come to terms with its barbarous past, or its misrepresentation of Zen, many lineages of which, subsequently became popular in the West (taught by ‘masters’ considered war criminals by many). Of course, none of this is personally the fault of John McRae, but his work is the product of the US Cold War project designed to demean, belittle, and invalidate China’s traditional past, and modernistic present, and it is this participation that this article reveals. John McRae appears to know his facts, but remains either unable or unwilling to present those facts in any meaningful way within the context of Chinese history. In effect, this observation means that McRae excludes China as a contemporary nation, from his assessment of China in the ‘mystical’ past. It seems incredible to think that he did not know what he was doing, but at any rate, his narrative lacks any true or genuine knowledge, as well as understanding about China and her people. Modern China, for McRae, simply does not exist and remains permanently ‘excluded’ from inclusion within the consideration of the history of humanity. This might well be considered the essence of inherent ‘racism’.
ACW 20.8.2016
ACW 20.8.2016
John McRae (1947-2011) was the Associate Professor of East Asian Buddhism in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University, USA. His academic work, specialising as it does upon the subject of Chinese Ch’an (which he invariably refers to as ‘Zen’ whilst conflating the very different ‘Japanese’ and ‘Chinese’ meditative traditions), offers a rational deconstruction of the ‘faith-based’ mind-set that has inexorably manifested around ‘Western’ Ch’an and Zen groups, which has served as the dominant narrative for decades (at least since the advent of the Theosophical Movement in the late 19th century), and in many ways still does. However, McRae’s work is not primarily aimed at these home-grown distortions of Asian Buddhist culture, but is rather justified as an expose of apparent ‘falsehood’ and ‘fabrication’ that is implicitly assumed (by McRae) to permeate all Asian spiritual and religious culture. Although McRae’s work remains currently relevant in the West (as it presents often obscure aspects of Chinese culture in the English language), it has no relevance in Mainland China, and reads very much like an already well-known list of ‘basic’ and ‘limited’ statements about the history of Chinese Ch’an Buddhism, presented through a Western filter of political and cultural bias. Within the Chinese cultural milieu, McRae’s work appears out of context, and missing important and essential interpretive elements, that are otherwise common-place within Chinese language narratives. At other times his assumptions are just wrong, being more informed by a Eurocentric ‘imagined’ China, than a true insight into Chinese spiritual culture. As McRae makes ‘authoritative’ statements about Chinese culture for a living, but never alludes to the socio-economic context from within which he obviously operates, his work must be subjected to the most rigorous of assessments and analyses. Just as Chinese scholarship is naturally a priori from a Sinocentric perspective, the work of John McRae is naturally from a Eurocentric perspective. This observation, in and of itself, is not a problem providing the cultural bias is ‘free’ of any racial connotations. The work of John McRae, that is his intellectual output, does not contain any overtly racist language or concepts, but the underlying paradigm through which he operates, pursues a US Cold War foreign policy, that certainly contains a bias attitude toward ‘Communist’ China, and toward Chinese culture in general. As this US Cold War attitude is deep-rooted in the racialised antipathy the US system has historically expressed toward the presence of Chinese people in America, it is an obvious fact that this ‘racist’ antipathy pervades all systems of thought (including academia) that fall into its orbit of influence. Although John McRae makes no overtly racist statements in his academic work concerning his analysis of Chinese Ch’an Buddhism, nevertheless, the fact that he unquestionably ‘excludes’ Mainland China from his narrative, whilst quoting sources from the US colony of Taiwan, and heavily relying upon the distorted (and ‘anti-Chinese’) Buddhist scholarship of Japan, an inadvertently ‘anti-Chinese’ and ‘racialised’ context serves as the backdrop to McRae’s otherwise interesting work, and this observation alone renders its conclusions academically ‘sullied’, particularly as his ‘re-imagining’ of China’s past is a direct attack upon a country’s right to exercise self-determination and follow its own and distinct cultural course. An attack on China’s past, is of course, an attack on China’s present. As McRae fails to see this limitation in his own work, the results of that work must be questioned, particularly in these modern times of ‘direct’ and ‘sustained’ communication with Mainland China and her Chinese Ch’an Buddhist lineages that are becoming ever more well-known in the West, and are slowly rolling-back the Japanese and Eurocentric nonsense that has misrepresented Chinese spirituality for decades. In turn, this process of re-engagement with Mainland China, has created a ‘new’ generation of Western scholars specialising in Chinese Buddhist studies, that have thrown-off the biased analysis of the past.
The deconstructive work of the American academic John McRae presents a number of false paradigms as ‘fact’ regarding the ‘modern’ assessment of the history of Chinese Ch’an Buddhism. His work has at its core, the fallacy that it is presenting a ‘higher knowledge’ that cannot be legitimately questioned, and that if its assumptions are questioned, then it automatically follows that the questioner is ‘supporting’ the opposite argument to everything McRae is stating. However, the problem that McRae represents is not necessarily the observations he makes about the spiritual and religious practises of a non-European culture, (although, of course, these observations should be open to rigorous and robust questioning), but lies in the distinctly ‘Eurocentric’, and more specifically, the ‘late’ 20th century ‘Americentric’ attitude of perceiving the world, that he employs throughout his work. This essentially ‘Cold War’ attitude of US bias against Communist China creates a bizarre and almost schizophrenic pseudo-academic climate, where a central element of Chinese spiritual culture (in the form of Ch’an Buddhism), is assumed to be authoritatively assessed by a non-Chinese academic from the West, through a flawed method of analysis that ‘excludes’, the very country (i.e. ‘Mainland China’) this spiritual culture has historically emerged from. To give an analogy that McRae might have appreciated, this is like attempting to scientifically study the moon through observing its reflection in a bucket of water – whilst simultaneously ignoring the bucket, its water, and the reflection.
The ‘lie’ that underlies McRae’s work in this area (regarding Chinese Ch’an Buddhism) is that it is ‘rational’ and ‘objective’, when in fact it is neither. McRae’s academic analysis reflects the inherently racist US anti-China policy, and it does this specifically by ignoring Mainland China completely, and observing the development of thousands of years of Chinese history through the distorting lens of Japanese academia. This biased and flawed foundation is further cemented with the occasional reference to ‘Taiwanese’ academia, an island that was occupied and colonised by the Japanese imperial army from 1895-1945, and invaded and annexed from the Chinese Mainland by the rightwing ‘Nationalist’ regime in the late 1940’s. Whilst accepting everything without question the Taiwanese academics have to say about Chinese Ch’an Buddhist history, McRae has nothing to say about the Nationalist’s ‘anti-Buddhist’ policy since 1911, or the fact that its armies attacked and destroyed the famous and iconic Shaolin (Ch’an) Temple in Henan, in 1928, as part of a continued pursuance of this policy. Taiwan, of course, was a fascistic state up until the late 1980’s, but since 1949, has remained an area of US political and military activity intended to confront Mainland China. Therefore, the academia emanating from this US colony cannot be taken at face value, and until proven otherwise, assumed to be in the service of US anti-China imperialism. This is exactly the same situation associated with Japan, a rightwing nationalist entity since the Meiji Restoration of 1868, which whilst pursuing a ruthless militarised racism (premised upon a sense of ‘spiritual’ superiority), went to war with China and eventually with the US in the 20th century. The Japanese, whilst pursuing their nationalist fervour, attempted to historically eradicate all reference to their Chinese cultural past, and create the false impression that ‘Japanese’ culture was not only ‘unique’, but also ‘pure’ when viewed in comparison to the ‘corrupt’ culture of China. The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) was part of a broader Japanese plan to invade China, subjugate her people, and destroy its culture, replacing it instead with ‘Japanese’ nationalist culture. This fascistic policy eventually led to a clash between Japan and the US, and Japan’s eventual defeat in the Pacific War (1941-1945). Immediately following Japan’s defeat, however, the US devised a Cold War policy of re-activating Japanese nationalism, and using it as a means to confront ‘Communist’ China. This included the whole-sale acceptance of the distorted Japanese academia regarding the history of Chinese Ch’an Buddhism, and the permanent exclusion of Mainland Chinese academia and knowledgeable Mainland Chinese scholars from US discourse. This is the historical background within which McRae’s operates, whereby he eulogises the Japanese scholar Yanagida Seizan, and writes from history all the contemporary Chinese Ch’an masters (such as Xu Yun), and such Chinese scholars as Cen Xue Lu, and Charles Luk, amongst many others. McRae also seems to be oblivious to the fact that many members of the Chinese Communist Party were devout Buddhists, and that Master Xu Yun (1840-1959) was directly responsible for Chinese Buddhism being preserved in modern China. As McRae pursues the Japanese interpretation of Chinese history, he either remains silent, or does not see the many errors and fabrications contained within Japanese ‘scholarship’, an attitude compounded by the fact that although assessing ‘Chinese Ch’an’ history, McRae follows the Eurocentric habit of referring to it by the Japanese name of ‘Zen’, when in fact it is well-known that Japanese Zen deviates significantly from its Chinese Ch’an historical roots.
Japanese Buddhist scholarship both before and after WWII cannot be trusted as a vehicle for conveying correct and accurate historical information pertaining to another country. The same criticism has to be made against the scholarship of Taiwan, as both modern Taiwan and Japan are intrinsically linked with the US anti-China foreign policy, a main component of which, is the denigration of Chinese culture. Furthermore, McRae, by pursuing his thoroughly bourgeois course, never acknowledges that Mainland Chinese scholars have already ‘critiqued’ the history and development of Chinese Ch’an Buddhism, (both before and after the Communist Revolution of 1949), and that nothing he has to say is ‘original’ in anyway. What makes his work seem ‘original’ to many Western readers is that the views expressed are conveyed in English for the first time. However, there is a major difference between how John McRae deconstructs Chinese Ch’an history, and how modern (Marxist) Chinese historians pursue the same task. Whereas McRae is ‘attacking’ and ‘demeaning’ traditional Chinese culture in a thoroughly ‘Eurocentric’ manner that conveys ‘White privilege’, Chinese scholars are engaged only in the pursuit of correct dialectical knowledge of the historical development of the Chinese nation. Whereas Taiwanese and Japanese nationalists are fully engaged in perpetuating Western notions of ‘racialisation’ against other Asians (i.e. ‘Communist Chinese’), Mainland Chinese scholars bring a modern interpretive narrative to bear upon old historical narratives that simultaneously reveal all inconsistencies and contradictions (without the requirement of Westerners pointing them out), and encourage a positive and fulfilling interface between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ in a reconciling manner. Where McRae, writing as he does from a Eurocentric perspective, sees only ‘error’, ‘imagination’ or ‘artifice’, the modern Chinese scholars reveal previously ‘hidden’ historical paradigms contained deep within the fabric of Chinese history that outsiders pursuing limited politicised ideals, have no hope (or means) of discovering or revealing. Despite his otherwise ‘wide’ learning, John McRae’s knowledge of Chinese Ch’an Buddhism remained superficial and reliant upon questionable sources. What he participates in ‘destroying’ is not Chinese culture per se, but rather the distorted image of Chinese culture that exists in the racialised imaginations of biased Westerners, and their Taiwanese and Japanese allies.
©opyright: Adrian Chan-Wyles (ShiDaDao) 2016.
Reference:
Seeing Through Zen http://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/John_R._McRae_Seeing_through_Zen.pdf
The deconstructive work of the American academic John McRae presents a number of false paradigms as ‘fact’ regarding the ‘modern’ assessment of the history of Chinese Ch’an Buddhism. His work has at its core, the fallacy that it is presenting a ‘higher knowledge’ that cannot be legitimately questioned, and that if its assumptions are questioned, then it automatically follows that the questioner is ‘supporting’ the opposite argument to everything McRae is stating. However, the problem that McRae represents is not necessarily the observations he makes about the spiritual and religious practises of a non-European culture, (although, of course, these observations should be open to rigorous and robust questioning), but lies in the distinctly ‘Eurocentric’, and more specifically, the ‘late’ 20th century ‘Americentric’ attitude of perceiving the world, that he employs throughout his work. This essentially ‘Cold War’ attitude of US bias against Communist China creates a bizarre and almost schizophrenic pseudo-academic climate, where a central element of Chinese spiritual culture (in the form of Ch’an Buddhism), is assumed to be authoritatively assessed by a non-Chinese academic from the West, through a flawed method of analysis that ‘excludes’, the very country (i.e. ‘Mainland China’) this spiritual culture has historically emerged from. To give an analogy that McRae might have appreciated, this is like attempting to scientifically study the moon through observing its reflection in a bucket of water – whilst simultaneously ignoring the bucket, its water, and the reflection.
The ‘lie’ that underlies McRae’s work in this area (regarding Chinese Ch’an Buddhism) is that it is ‘rational’ and ‘objective’, when in fact it is neither. McRae’s academic analysis reflects the inherently racist US anti-China policy, and it does this specifically by ignoring Mainland China completely, and observing the development of thousands of years of Chinese history through the distorting lens of Japanese academia. This biased and flawed foundation is further cemented with the occasional reference to ‘Taiwanese’ academia, an island that was occupied and colonised by the Japanese imperial army from 1895-1945, and invaded and annexed from the Chinese Mainland by the rightwing ‘Nationalist’ regime in the late 1940’s. Whilst accepting everything without question the Taiwanese academics have to say about Chinese Ch’an Buddhist history, McRae has nothing to say about the Nationalist’s ‘anti-Buddhist’ policy since 1911, or the fact that its armies attacked and destroyed the famous and iconic Shaolin (Ch’an) Temple in Henan, in 1928, as part of a continued pursuance of this policy. Taiwan, of course, was a fascistic state up until the late 1980’s, but since 1949, has remained an area of US political and military activity intended to confront Mainland China. Therefore, the academia emanating from this US colony cannot be taken at face value, and until proven otherwise, assumed to be in the service of US anti-China imperialism. This is exactly the same situation associated with Japan, a rightwing nationalist entity since the Meiji Restoration of 1868, which whilst pursuing a ruthless militarised racism (premised upon a sense of ‘spiritual’ superiority), went to war with China and eventually with the US in the 20th century. The Japanese, whilst pursuing their nationalist fervour, attempted to historically eradicate all reference to their Chinese cultural past, and create the false impression that ‘Japanese’ culture was not only ‘unique’, but also ‘pure’ when viewed in comparison to the ‘corrupt’ culture of China. The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) was part of a broader Japanese plan to invade China, subjugate her people, and destroy its culture, replacing it instead with ‘Japanese’ nationalist culture. This fascistic policy eventually led to a clash between Japan and the US, and Japan’s eventual defeat in the Pacific War (1941-1945). Immediately following Japan’s defeat, however, the US devised a Cold War policy of re-activating Japanese nationalism, and using it as a means to confront ‘Communist’ China. This included the whole-sale acceptance of the distorted Japanese academia regarding the history of Chinese Ch’an Buddhism, and the permanent exclusion of Mainland Chinese academia and knowledgeable Mainland Chinese scholars from US discourse. This is the historical background within which McRae’s operates, whereby he eulogises the Japanese scholar Yanagida Seizan, and writes from history all the contemporary Chinese Ch’an masters (such as Xu Yun), and such Chinese scholars as Cen Xue Lu, and Charles Luk, amongst many others. McRae also seems to be oblivious to the fact that many members of the Chinese Communist Party were devout Buddhists, and that Master Xu Yun (1840-1959) was directly responsible for Chinese Buddhism being preserved in modern China. As McRae pursues the Japanese interpretation of Chinese history, he either remains silent, or does not see the many errors and fabrications contained within Japanese ‘scholarship’, an attitude compounded by the fact that although assessing ‘Chinese Ch’an’ history, McRae follows the Eurocentric habit of referring to it by the Japanese name of ‘Zen’, when in fact it is well-known that Japanese Zen deviates significantly from its Chinese Ch’an historical roots.
Japanese Buddhist scholarship both before and after WWII cannot be trusted as a vehicle for conveying correct and accurate historical information pertaining to another country. The same criticism has to be made against the scholarship of Taiwan, as both modern Taiwan and Japan are intrinsically linked with the US anti-China foreign policy, a main component of which, is the denigration of Chinese culture. Furthermore, McRae, by pursuing his thoroughly bourgeois course, never acknowledges that Mainland Chinese scholars have already ‘critiqued’ the history and development of Chinese Ch’an Buddhism, (both before and after the Communist Revolution of 1949), and that nothing he has to say is ‘original’ in anyway. What makes his work seem ‘original’ to many Western readers is that the views expressed are conveyed in English for the first time. However, there is a major difference between how John McRae deconstructs Chinese Ch’an history, and how modern (Marxist) Chinese historians pursue the same task. Whereas McRae is ‘attacking’ and ‘demeaning’ traditional Chinese culture in a thoroughly ‘Eurocentric’ manner that conveys ‘White privilege’, Chinese scholars are engaged only in the pursuit of correct dialectical knowledge of the historical development of the Chinese nation. Whereas Taiwanese and Japanese nationalists are fully engaged in perpetuating Western notions of ‘racialisation’ against other Asians (i.e. ‘Communist Chinese’), Mainland Chinese scholars bring a modern interpretive narrative to bear upon old historical narratives that simultaneously reveal all inconsistencies and contradictions (without the requirement of Westerners pointing them out), and encourage a positive and fulfilling interface between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ in a reconciling manner. Where McRae, writing as he does from a Eurocentric perspective, sees only ‘error’, ‘imagination’ or ‘artifice’, the modern Chinese scholars reveal previously ‘hidden’ historical paradigms contained deep within the fabric of Chinese history that outsiders pursuing limited politicised ideals, have no hope (or means) of discovering or revealing. Despite his otherwise ‘wide’ learning, John McRae’s knowledge of Chinese Ch’an Buddhism remained superficial and reliant upon questionable sources. What he participates in ‘destroying’ is not Chinese culture per se, but rather the distorted image of Chinese culture that exists in the racialised imaginations of biased Westerners, and their Taiwanese and Japanese allies.
©opyright: Adrian Chan-Wyles (ShiDaDao) 2016.
Reference:
Seeing Through Zen http://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/John_R._McRae_Seeing_through_Zen.pdf