284 BOOK REVIEWS OPENING A MOUNTAIN: KÖANS OF THE ZEN MASTERS. By Steven Heine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. 200 pp. THE KÖAN: TEXTS AND CONTEXTS IN ZEN BUDDHISM. Edited by Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 322 pp. The Zen koan is mysterious to many and its significance remains disputed by schol- ars. Is it a challenging therapeutic device, to be left behind like a raft after crossing the river, or a self-transparent statement of the liberated mind? Is it a logic-defying paradox or does it have its own performative rationality? Is it a spontaneous and often irreverent oral expression or a complex and staged literary form understand- able within its context? Is it a narrative with multiple levels of meaning or something that potentially interrupts the work of meaning, narrative coherence, and conven- tional understanding? Although paradoxical and even shocking language occurs in other traditions, these two provocative volumes illustrate the uniqueness, significance, and interpre- tive difficulty of one of Zen’s primary practices. Both works are valuable contribu- tions to understanding the context, development, and meaning of the koan from its origins and growth in T’ang and Sung China to later Japanese developments. Steven Heine’s Opening a Mountain: Köans of the Zen Masters includes transla- tions of sixty koan cases, selected traditional commentary, and his account of each case. This rich work gathers significant koans about Zen’s encounter with its “other” from a variety of koan collections compiled in Sung China and Kamakura Japan. The volume is organized around the theme of “opening a mountain.” Masters opened up mountains for Zen by confronting and converting local spirits, hermits, and other forces that would prevent or endanger its practice. It refers more broadly to the confrontation and contest between Zen masters and figures representing super- natural forces, indigenous and popular religiosity, and rival forms of practice such as that of the isolated hermit without vows and outside the Buddhist community. The koans are presented and discussed in five sections concerning: (1) supernat- ural mountain landscapes; (2) irregular rivals such as hermits, wizards, and dangerous women; (3) supernatural experiences in which bodhisattvas, demons, and magical animals are encountered in dreams and visions; (4) the use of symbols of authority and transmission such as the flywhisk; and (5) experiences of confession, repentance, self-mutilation, death, and the afterlife. Heine argues that emphasizing the ritual, symbolic, and cultural dimensions of the koan complements understanding it as using paradoxical language to free one from the reification of language through aporia and double-binds. He insightfully shows through his translations and discussions the often ignored mythological and religious dimension of many koans. Even when koans use mythic or supernatural elements ironically, it is still in reference to such a context of belief. Since the out- Buddhist-Christian Studies 24 (2004). © by University of Hawai‘i Press. All rights reserved.