In recent decades, scholars such as John McRae, Griffith Foulk, and Bernard Faure have argued that the Tang period (618–907) “golden age” of Chan Buddhism, as we have come to see it, was, in many ways, an illusion created by later Buddhist authors who carefully crafted the textual record to glorify their predecessors and enhance their own status. It has also been asserted that our fascination with the Tang has blinded us to the real glories (institutional, intellectual, literary, and doctrinal) of the Chan school during the Song dynasty (960–1279). But to date, most scholarly endeavors have been devoted to deconstructing the key texts of Tang dynasty Chan, revealing them as literary creations of a subsequent age and not the eyewitness accounts of enlightened, iconoclastic Chan masters that they purport to be. So far, little work has been done on Song dynasty Chan. One reason for the delay seems to be the daunting amount and bewildering diversity of the available sources. Scholars cannot be blamed for preferring to concentrate on the relatively limited amount of Tang material (albeit edited and redacted by Song authors) rather than plunging into the much vaster corpus of later texts. Morten Schlütter, armed with electronic resources (pp. 8–9) that have given him access to huge swaths of hitherto impenetrable sources, has boldly forged ahead and has, in this volume, provided a valuable report of what he has found. His picture of Chan during this transformative phase is one that we were not able to perceive before, and it will serve as an invaluable guide to future researchers.

The title of the book may give the impression that Schlütter focuses on doctrinal matters, but, in fact, the author shows a consistent interest in the broader social and cultural scene. For this reason, the book has much to say to scholars of Song institutional and intellectual history as well as to those who study Buddhism in China, Korea, and Japan. Schlütter patiently lays out the necessary background for appreciating the significant features of Chan Buddhism in the Song. He explains that the endorsement by the early Song court of a new kind of establishment known as the “public” monastery led indirectly to the promotion of the Chan school with which this type of institution was particularly associated. He reveals how Chan came to power partly because of certain state policies, yet retained its dominance through the patronage of individual literati. Literati exerted considerable influence in the appointment of Chan masters as the abbots of public monasteries. Because it was only as an abbot that a master could bequeath the dharma to his students, members of the Song elite became crucial to what Schlütter calls the “procreation” of Chan lineages. The significance of the elite for the future of Chan explains why disputes between lineages were played out in public, in writing, rather than discreetly contained within the cloister: doctrinal controversies, just like hagiographies of Chan masters and collections of their sayings, were intended for consumption by an informed and influential audience.

The account of the place of Chan within Song society provided in the opening chapters sets the scene for the story at the heart of the book: the twelfth-century dispute between the Caodong (Japanese, Sōtō) advocates of mozhao (“silent illumination,” in which simply sitting in silent illumination was considered nothing less than enlightenment) and the Linji (Japanese, Rinzai) upholders of kanhua (“observing the key phrase,” wherein the practitioner focuses on the crucial phrase of a gong'an [Japanese, kōan] so as to move beyond discursive thought and precipitate a great awakening). Schlütter painstakingly recreates the revival of the moribund Caodong tradition and establishes beyond doubt that it was indeed the Caodong faction that was the target of attacks from the Linji lineage and its most famous master, Dahui Zonggao (1089–1163).

As the author makes abundantly clear, although the contrast in meditative styles had a resonance in East Asian thought that is still felt today, this was not only a disagreement about the technicalities of soteriology but also a fight between powerful factions over the control of real resources of wealth and power. As the majority of great public monasteries in the Song were Chan institutions—that is to say, they were headed by abbots who were members of particular Chan lineages—there was much at stake for the victorious side in this competition. Although Schlütter's work is detailed and exhaustive, he writes clearly, and the reader will have little difficulty in following his argument even where it hinges on subtle and seemingly arcane interpretations of Buddhist dogma. This book will be much appreciated by those in the field and also enjoyed by interested nonspecialists.