The Nature and Rationale of Zen/Chan and Enlightenment: The Mind of a Pre-Natal Baby

This book initiates a paradigm shift away from Zen/Chan as quintessentially Buddhist and examines what makes Chan thought and practice unique and original through an interdisciplinary investigation of the nature and rationale of Chan and its enlightenment.

Exploring how enlightenment is achieved through Chan practice and how this differs from other forms of Buddhism, the book offers an entirely new view of Chan that embraces historical scholarship, philosophical inquiry, textual analysis, psychological studies, Chan practice, and neuroscientific research and locates the core of Chan in its founder Huineng’s theory of no thinking which creatively integrates the Taoist ideas of zuowang (forgetting in seated meditation) and xinzhai (fast of heart-mind) with his personal experiences of enlightenment. It concludes that Chan is the crystallization of an innovative synthesis of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism as well as other resources of somatic and spiritual cultivation, and that enlightenment is a momentary return to the mental state of a baby before birth.

This book will appeal to students and scholars of religion, philosophy, and neuroscience. It will also offer new insights to thinkers, writers, artists, therapists and neuroscientists as well as those practicing Zen, Mindfulness, and psychotherapy.

Ming Dong Gu is Katherine R. Cecil Professor in the School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology, the University of Texas at Dallas and Visiting Chair Professor of Humanities, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His main research interest covers comparative poetics and thought. Recent publications include Fusion of Critical Horizons in Chinese and Western Language, Poetics, Aesthetics (Palgrave Macmillan 2021) and Why Traditional Chinese Philosophy Still Matters (Routledge, 2018).