Paradoxical Language in Chan Buddhism

Abstract

Chinese Chan or Zen Buddhism is renowned for its improvisational, atypical, and perplexing use of words. In particular, the tradition’s encounter dialogues abound in puzzling, astonishing, and paradoxical ways of speaking. In this chapter, we are concerned with Chan’s use of paradoxical language. In philosophical parlance, a linguistic paradox comprises the confluence of opposite or incongruent concepts in a way that runs counter to our common sense and ordinary rational thinking. One naturally wonders about Chan masters’ rationales for their use of paradox. There are also concerns about whether the use violates the logical law of noncontradiction to the effect that nothing can be both P and not-P all over in the same way at the same time. The chapter consists of four sections. After the introductory first section, in the second section, I first sketch key ideas of Chan that are pertinent to our investigation and then examine the use of paradox in the sermons associated with certain Chan masters of the Tang dynasty (618−907). In the third section, I attempt to analyze the presence of paradoxical language in post-Tang encounter dialogues. The fourth section concludes.