Writing about Religion

For my birthday last year I asked my friend to order me China Root by David Hinton. China Root is a book about the influence of Taoism on the development of Ch’an Buddhism in China that I’d seen promoted on Shambhala Publication’s Instagram feed. It seemed like a refreshing source of information about Zen’s Chinese heritage and history, so often overlooked by Zen writers in the West who are, in a not-always-unproblematic way, obsessed with the Japanese-ness of the tradition.

When I first became interested in meditation, one of the things that really excited -- or maybe I should say reassured, or even relieved -- me about reading books about Buddhism, Zen and Tao, was their clarity and brevity. Unlike the dense and pretentious texts of Western philosophy and critical theory I’d read and loved (even in my perplexedness) as a student, these spiritual texts seemed much more honest, humble and straightforward. I did not feel like Buddhist writers were trying to obscure their teachings behind unnecessarily fancy language or trying to make me feel simple or stupid. They wanted to be understood because they wanted people to be able to access the teachings, and hopefully, make use of them in their lives.

There is something fundamentally inclusive and generous about writing in a way that almost anyone can understand, and in my own experience, I find that when I’m not doing this, it’s not because the subject is simply too complex to be rendered simple and clear. It’s because I don’t really know what I’m talking about. So when I read something that seems impenetrably complex, I’m not impressed by the writer’s “intelligence” the way I once was. Rather, I question their understanding -- or at least their intention in writing. Are you writing to be understood, or to be impressive?

This would be my first criticism of China Root. While the writing is subtle and attentive, it often gets dense and complex to the point where I don’t know what Hinton is saying. Opening it to a random page, I find this paragraph: “Dark-enigma cannot be portrayed directly because it is exactly the generative existence-tissue prior to the distinctions of forms, of names, or even of consciousness separate from things.” This sounds interesting, but when I read the passages above and below it, there is little to clarify what, in practical terms, this means.

Obscurity doesn’t always equal depth, but where it does, we need a line connecting what is deepest to the surface of our lives: advice and insights on how to put it into practice. This would be my second struggle with Hinton’s book. There is no attempt to connect these teachings, in all their apparent mystery and complexity, to the everyday world of the ten-thousand things. How do I put it into practice in my life? How can it help me as a person with a hard job and complicated relationships and financial stress, living in the middle of a pandemic?

I’m sure there’s a lot in the teachings Hinton explores that could be of assistance to suffering beings; he just doesn’t say what that is. It would be helpful if Hinton could mix in some more everyday-language translations, examples and applications. Certainly as a scholar Hinton is impressive. But as a teacher, what is missing from his writing are the elements that make it accessible and practically helpful to the average person.

Which relates to my third criticism of the book: Hinton never writes about himself, his own life, or how the teachings have impacted it. Hinton writes about spiritual practice like a scientist, and he writes in a vacuum: there is a voice, but it’s not clear who is speaking.

Something I personally seek in spiritual texts is experience. What was it like for the author to discover these ideas? What was it like for them to practice with them? How did they help them and their community? Where did they fall short? What is their relationship to power and privilege, marginalization and exclusion? I want to hear about Hinton’s life, because I’m sure it’s been a rich and interesting one. And I also want to do away with the erroneous belief that we can write about ideas impersonally or objectively. This is especially urgent in the case of white writers.

In the classroom, I’ve found that it is most honest and helpful to frame the things I teach by acknowledging my own positionality: Hi, we are talking about race today, and I am leading this conversation as a white person who has not experienced racism, so my understanding is necessarily biased and incomplete. I am open to your questions, input, and correction. The voice of someone who is in recovery from addiction carries different weight when we talk about drug policy than that of someone who has never done or been close to anyone who has done drugs. And so forth for immigration, sex work, reproductive rights.

In short, who we are and what we have experienced affects how we understand ideas, and while we can’t get out of who we are, we can still acknowledge it. Paradoxically, acknowledging our positionality and the biases and blindnesses, or experiences and insights, that come with it, allows us to approach our topic more clearly and honestly.

As white writers, it feels less and less like an innocent mistake to make to acknowledge our own positionality, because in most cases, that positionality is one of privilege, which almost always brings with it both unacknowledged advantages in our lives, and blind spots in our understanding. When we don’t name whiteness, we miss out on the opportunity to consider the ways in which it is working on us or what we’re doing. And that includes writing about Buddhism. It also relieves us of the burden of acknowledging the reality of inequality -- human-created suffering -- in our work. And the work of writing about religion involves discussing these things, as awkward and uncomfortable as it can be.

What does it mean to be a white person writing about Zen today? What are our responsibilities, and how might our experience and understanding differ from those of practitioners of colour? I believe it’s our duty to ask. Hinton’s scholarship is inspiring, but I wish he would show us more of the person who is speaking, and of the everyday world in which he finds himself, and we find ourselves, inextricably enmeshed.