What the author, who is Professor of Asian Philosophy and Religions and Director of the Centre for Korean Studies at Stony Brook University (State University of New York), offers his readers is not an academic study of his topic, but, as the title suggests, an account of his personal experience of a particular angle on the Buddhist teaching and practice which he is trying to promote with this book.

It all started in 1965 when he was teaching Buddhist Studies at Dongguk University in Seoul while he became advisor to a group of fifteen dedicated students who formed a subgroup within a wider Association of Buddhist Students and decided to adopt a monastic life style. They were given shelter in a Buddhist monastery and observed its daily routine besides following the practice outlined in ‘The Ten Vows of Samantabhadra Bodhisattva’, the last chapter of the Avataṁsaka Sūtra belonging to the Huayan school of Buddhism, and pursuing simultaneously their diverse subject studies at their respective universities. (A Huayan [Hua-yen; Kor. Hwaǒm, Jap. Kegon] work was reviewed in JRAS 18/4, October 2008, pp. 539–541). Serving two masters, as it were, soon proved exhausting, but giving up was ruled out because of the wide publicity given to the ‘first student monastery ever’. When the vacation came the group decided to visit and stay a few days in each of the twelve Zen monasteries in Korea whose abbots were reputedly enlightened. Publicity again accompanied them and so did exhaustion. In the last monastery, Haeinsa, the abbot Sungchol Sunim asked them for a fee – not in money but ‘in Buddhist currency’: one thousand prostrations to the Buddha in the meditation hall. He met their incredulity with the assertion that he knew they could accomplish it – and so they did, in thirteen hours to drum beats performed by monks. To their astonishment the Sunim then asked them to climb the mountain behind the monastery. But this, in fact, restored their bodily balance after their ordeal. In the subsequent interview the Sunim told them that practising his ten vows was Samantabhadra's natural way of functioning (his momjit), which sprang from his essence (mom). To imitate his momjit was useless, one had to transform one's own mom first.

Realising that he had so far pursued his philosophical and religious inquiry from a momjit perspective, the author became a monk under Sungchol for three years and when he left the monastery he thought himself to have become a completely different person transformed “by the mom-oriented culture of the monastery”. This did not prevent him from marrying, having children and moving to the USA (1969), eventually settling down to a comfortable academic job (1979) consisting of commenting on and interpreting classical texts of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. From his acquired understanding of the mom/momjit paradigm he discovered that “many scholars in the West have not always correctly understood or interpreted these classics”, precisely because of “their lack of familiarity with the mom/momjit paradigm (‘essence/function’, in Chinese t'i-yung). This discovery of his was his final motivation for writing this book. His motivation was apparently strengthened when he asked “a noted Stanford University professor of Buddhism” how he taught “the t'i-yung construction”. The professor's answer was that he did not teach it at all as it would only cause confusion for his students. Of the author's own PhD students only one showed interest in or understanding of the mom/momjit paradigm. So what exactly is the mom/momjit paradigm? And does this book help its readers to do better than the author's students?

We are told in Chapter One, ‘Initial Considerations’, and then throughout the book what the terms mom and momjit mean in repeated and ever modified attempts to explain the unexplainable. In the abstract they mean “essence” and “function” or, more accurately, “body” and “the body's function” – “both [these] paradigms are used to point to a nondual relationship between the two concepts”. This nonduality exists within us at this very moment and is experienced in practice within our own bodies. This is, I suppose, a low level experience of the paradigm: it is clear that bodily functions (momjit) form a unity with the body (mom), although conceptually we separate them. Another “ordinary level” of understanding the paradigm is through the metaphor of a tree: the roots correspond to mom and the remainder of the tree is momjit. In human life a deep emotion corresponds to mom and its expression in terms of behaviour to momjit. And so it goes on.

On a deeper level “the religious aspect [of the paradigm] may be equated with the Buddhist term emptiness” which is “an all-embracing completeness”. Hence even a speck of dust contains the entire universe and the smallest unit of time contains all time. From this angle everyone can be seen as a Buddha and mom and momjit are contained within each other. But all definitions are inadequate. Yet mom can be experienced directly, but to achieve it, one must first be “broken” which means that one's conceptual and conditioned ways of perceiving oneself and the universe have to be completely discarded. The starting point for it is intense (spiritual) suffering, i.e. dissatisfaction with ordinary life (while satisfaction with it is spiritual sickness).

Chapter Two, ‘Tools for Transformation’, describes hwadu (Jap. kōan) and other methods peculiar to Zen, such as “the strange behaviour of Zen Masters” and the “beatings and shoutings”. The author complains, however, that nowadays “many Zen teachers . . . are misleading people” by “sugar-coating hwadu practice”. In the author's understanding hwadu correctly applied “does not lead one to enlightenment”, but urges one “to return to the Buddha”; hwadu “is nothing but returning to the Buddha”; it just “means to return to our ordinary, everyday life as it is . . . We are already Buddha; we exist as timeless beings, as mom”. It culminates when death comes which “is a time of glory, a time for celebration; we are returning to the mom”. Does this mean that the author (and by implication Zen in general) brushes aside the teaching of sequence of individual lives spelled out in texts of most schools of Buddhism? Yet he does refer at one point to “karmic causes and conditions” without, however, putting them into the context of sequence of lives.

Chapter Three, ‘Other Teachings’, is preoccupied particularly with teachings of Wŏnhyo (Weonhyo, 617–686), the most cherished figure in Korean Buddhist tradition. The author uses him in stressing the “nondualistic nature of one mind” and linking it to his mom/momjit paradigm. He further uses for his paradigm theory Huayan, the Diamond Sūtra, Hui-neng's Platform Sūtra, the teachings of Chinul (1158–1210), Chinese Chan (Ch'an), Taoism and Confucianism. Remarkably, the last one is described in clear and penetrating style presenting an excellent overview of Confucian thought. Unfortunately, a similar characterisation can hardly be applied to his accounts of the other teachings.

In Chapter Four, ‘Present-Day Applications’, the author re-interprets the metaphor of the raft for Buddhist teaching: the Buddha of the Pāli discourses says that once the other shore (nibbā na) is reached, the raft (the teaching) is discarded. But the author suggests that even after one has been transformed through one's practice, “there still will remain some slight connection . . . continuity . . . between the old state and the new one”. He also stresses the necessity of faith, “one's deepest conviction concerning the inner, hidden realm of mom”. He then outlines the practice in five stages according to Chinul. In the Conclusion the author gives his ‘Final Thoughts on Mom and Momjit’, which he considers “to be an outstanding model for the understanding of all existence”, but which is so misunderstood by others because of the lack of flexibility of their consciousness. He ends with a cordial invitation to the readers “to open the door and welcome this beautiful and powerful message of nonduality” into their hearts.

This certainly is not an academic or scholarly work and I wonder whether the author's lectures to his students are delivered in the same spirit and style. It is more a style of a Zen master addressing his pupils and in some passages it even implies (inadvertently or intentionally?) that behind it is an enlightened mind. The question would be: whose? The author also relates stories from his own life which show his anxieties, uncertainties and hesitations how to proceed, so he asks himself: “What would Jesus or Buddha do in a similar situation?” Probably nothing special: “Buddha would have known that his Buddha-nature was protecting him, just as Jesus knew that God was always looking out for him. But I have a wife to support and a job to maintain”.

There are other instances, rather superficial or trivial like the one just mentioned, in which Buddhism and Christianity and other religions are brought together. It seems that the author regards them as equally in possession of higher wisdom, only expressed in different terms.

I have to leave to the readers to decide whether the book helped them to do better than the author's students in grasping the meaning and significance of the mom/momjit or t'i-yung paradigm. But maybe the point is to read the book while giving up “the analytical mind”, as advised in the section on Chan, and allowing its passages to sink in and contribute somehow to one's overall perception of the topic. Regrettably, a reviewer can't do such a thing if he is to fulfil his task, even inadequately.