xii, 400 pages : 24 cm; Prologue. From margins to meditation ; Methodological polytheism -- 1. The differential tradition. The second order -- 2. Sudden/gradual : a loose paradigm. The semantic field ; The ideological (dis)content ; Phenomenological analysis -- 3. The twofold truth of immediacy. The 'naturalist heresy' ; Skillful means ; The means and the ends -- 4. Chan/Zen and popular religion(s). A theoretical parenthesis ; The East Asian context -- 5. The thaumaturge and its avatars (I). The thaumaturge tradition in China ; The domestication of the thaumaturge -- 6. The thaumaturge and its avatars (II). The emergence of the Trickster ; The Bodhisattva ideal ; The return of the thaumaturge -- 7. Metamorphoses of the double (I) : relics. The cult of Śarīra ; The iconoclastic reaction -- 8. Metamorphoses of the double (II) : 'sublime corpses' and icons. Chan 'flesh-bodies' ; The semantic revolution ; Bones of contention ; Icons and Chinsō -- 9. The ritualization of death. The Chan denial of death and the afterlife ; The ritual domestication of death ; From defilement to purity -- 10. Dreams within a dream. Methodological caveat ; Asian dreams ; Dreaming in Chan/Zen ; Dreaming practice -- 11. Digression : the limits of transgression. Tales of monastic dereliction ; Chan/Zen attitudes toward sexuality ; Images of women ; Sodom and Gomorh -- 12. The return of the Gods. Militant syncretism ; Chan/Zen mythological imagery ; The cult of the Arhats ; Zen and the Kami -- 13. Ritual antiritualism. Another rite controversy ; Can/Zen liturgy ; Ritual omnipresent ; Ritual as ideology ; Ritual mediation -- Epilogue. Dichotomies in question(s) ; The paradoxes of mediation.; "Through a highly sensitive exploration of key concepts and metaphors, Bernard Faure guides Western readers in appreciating some of the more elusive aspects of the Chinese tradition of Chan Buddhism and its outgrowth, Japanese Zen. He focuses on Chan's insistence on "immediacy"--Its denial of all traditional mediations, including scripture, ritual, good--and yet shows how these mediations have always been present in Chan. Given this apparent duplicity in its discourse, Faure reveals how Chan structures its practice and doctrine on such mental paradigms as mediacy/immediacy, sudden/gradual, and center/margins."--Publisher description.; 

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