Liberating Intimacy: Enlightenment and Social Virtuosity in CH’AN Buddhism

This is the best book I have ever read on the Ch’an Buddhist tradition. Hershock articulates and defends his thesis with insight, power, and elegance. Enlightenment is ultimately about intimacy, sociality, and virtuosity. It is a central, yet heretofore ignored, aspect of not only the Ch’an Buddhist tradition in China, but also the Soto (Zen) tradition in Japan. If you understand Hershock on Ch’an, you are well on your way to understanding Zen Buddhism according to Dogen Kigen as well. Moreover, you will leave this work with an enriched understanding of an entire tribe of unsuspecting kindred spirits; specifically, you may want to reread the works of Watsuji Tetsuro, Dogen Kigen, Aristole, Alister Macintyre, Jurgen Habermas, and Richard Rorty. This book ranks with those of Chung-yuan Chang whose early classics on Ch’an Buddhist philosophy introduced western philosophers to the rigor, complexity, and logic, if your will, of the most interesting of all Chinese Buddhist traditions.