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Be not misled: Zen Action/Zen Person is not merely another introduction a survey of Zen Buddhism. Kasulis' philosophical project and purview is far grander; he is seeking a new grounds for understanding personhood through a Zen view of self and action. Even scholars with no interest in Zen per se will find much of philosophical interest and stimulation in this creative work. Kasulis' scope is vast indeed: he begins with Socrates and ends with Morita psychotherapy, with frequent references to Heidegger and other contemporary European philosphers.Kasulis quotes Taoist Chinese sages, Indian dialecticians, and German philosophers with equal ease, to illustrate and buttress his arguments. Although he sometimes ignores historic schisms among competing Zen schools, Kasulis is not writing a history of Zen,nor does he intend to do so. In his preface, his goal is explicit

"Often the explanations (of Zen Masters) are not fully satisfying to the critical Western reader. To fill in the gaps, we will resort in this study to some philosophical reconstruction.In other words, by extrapolating from the basic tenets of the Zen tradition, we can reason through certain arguments that are only implicit or fragmented in the Zen writings themselves...."(p.xi)

This is indeed a welcome volume for those of us who have fallen out of love with the perpetual paradox of cocktail party koans, and the smiling masters so unwilling to support or explain their deep-sounding pronouncements.

Kasulis recognizes that Zen emerges from a Sino-Japanese world with presuppositions very different from our own, He starts from two premises taken for granted among Japanese but too rarely elucidated for Westerners: that language is inadequate to describe reality, and that personhood (like language) is inescapably contextual. Zen Action/Zen Person opens with a discussion of context in Zen and in Japanese language, While oversimplified,

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this unique approach has several merits. It acquaints the reader with the Japanese viewpoint, simultaneously denying that Zen need be inscrutable and impenetrable, while cautioning against wholesale translation of Zen ideas into Western :terminology. This beginning section is a good example of Kasulis' practicing what he preaches: all communication is inextricably context-bound, so each context must be understood before its language has any meaning. Kasulis takes the argument a step further, holding that personhood is also defined in terms of contexts in the Orient. While this is importantly true, Kasulis never even alludes to the Vedic or Confucian origins of the relationships and hierarchies which define persons in India and China. Taoism and Buddhism are reactions against mainstream Hindu and Confucian role-definitions of persons in society, which they never supplant. We may well wonder how far the Japanese notion of personhood in terms of context and action is Zen-inspired, and how much we should really trace back to the Analects and the cultures it nourished.

At the same time that Kasulis challenges the high regard in which Western thinkers have held propositional truths, he denies that Eastern philosophers have seen no need for consistent arguments in defending their own positions. To show that Zen's distrust of language is logically defensible, Kasulis turns to the critiques of time and causality in Nagajuna's Mulamadhyamikakarika. Time and causality are notoriously messy concepts, so to treat them as typical of the inadequacies of all language and conclude that "all utterances share the quality (of being contradictory or paradoxical) if we push them far enough," (p. 28) may be a little hasty. Most simple statements can be unpacked and analysed quite unproblematically, with sufficiently sophisticated definitions, syntax rules, and perhaps Montague grammar, unknown to the Japanese. Nevertheless, for the sake of the western reader, Kasulis' use of Nagajuna has the value of repudiating common-sense notions of the simplicity and referentiality of language. It would be a mistake to think of Nagarjuna's methods as father to the Zen tradition, of which Kasulis says he is a "patriarch." Historical links between Nagarjuna and Bodhidharma and the early Chinese patriarchs are unknown, and logical analyses with the force and clarity of Nagarjuna's dialectics are distinctly lacking in most of the Zen tradition. But Kasulis is not claiming that Nagajuna is a Zen Buddhist. Rather, he uses Nagarjuna to show how we may rationally criticize ratiocination, to defend and explain the background and consistency of Zen

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philosophy as a Zen master might, if one ever felt the need to defend and explain,and in this he does a fine job.

Kasulis is probably best known for his writings on Dogen, and it is in his interpetations of Dogen that he really shines. He demonstrates a meticulous and empathetic reading of Dogen's Shobogenzo, particularly the difficult fascicles on genjokoan, bendowa, and uji. Here, Kasulis has done a commendable job in "demythologysing" Zen Buddhism of the metaphysicalisms which have encumbered it since D.T. Suzuki. By reinterpreting such Suzuki-isms as "manifestation of reality" as the more accessible "presence of things as they are," Kasulis indeed makes Zen more consistent with its claim to repudiate metaphysics, or at least to reject blanket statements about unexperienceable Ultimates. However, this very translation, "presence of things as they are," tends towards a naive realism so common in Sino-Japanese thought. The careful phenomenologist wants to "bracket out" the question of the reality of the objects of experience, and simply deal with experiences themselves. Indian Buddhists like Nagarjuna would surely agree. But the Zen (Ch'an) tradition often strays into a naive realism which asserts that not only experience but its objects are externally real and objectively, knowable. Reflecting the vacillation of his sources, Kasulis is sometimes very clear that Dogen is a phenomenologist (p. 69); at other times, he quotes with approbation the materialist version of Dumoulin, that "This physical world, just as it is, is genuine, patent reality." (p. 84). But such apparent inconsistencies are rare, and do not significantly detract from the argument for the primacy of experience.