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| Acknowledgments | |
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| Introduction | |
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| The daunting task of studying Jesus | |
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| The clutter of preconceptions and presumptions | |
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| Emptying one's mind | |
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| Searching for the historical Jesus | |
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| Validity of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed | |
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| Shocks from the scholars | |
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| Reading the Gospels, Zen Style | |
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| Finding Zen in our own backyard | |
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| Zen is transcultural and transreligious | |
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| The lost dimensions of Jesus' spirituality--joy, humor, and poetry | |
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| The pitfalls of being "serious" | |
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| Seriousness as a sign of the ego | |
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| Humor as a way to truth | |
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| Jesus as poet | |
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| The sober Jesus versus the smiling Buddha | |
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| The "irreverent" tradition of Zen | |
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| The kingdom is NOW! | |
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| The wonder of ordinary magic | |
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| True spirituality is art | |
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| The curse of Bible inerrancy | |
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| Love versus moralism | |
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| The sensuous anointing | |
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| Initiating the beginner's mind | |
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| What Is Zen? (I): The Art of Living | |
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| Can Zen be defined? | |
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| "Holy outrageousness" | |
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| Zen does not mean sitting meditation | |
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| The eccentricities of Zen | |
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| Zen as mental culture | |
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| A mini-history of Zen | |
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| Zen as the bridge between the spiritual and the mundane | |
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| Zen and the Chinese mind | |
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| Zen as a spirituality without the trappings of religion | |
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| Zen as the poetization of life | |
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| Zen and Taoism | |
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| Hui Neng, the sixth patriarch | |
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| Zen has no formula | |
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| The notion of discipline in Zen | |
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| Zen can only be shown | |
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| The Sermon of the Flower versus the Sermon on the Mount | |
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| Presence as the basis of spirituality | |
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| Zen, art, and ordinary magic | |
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| Recovering the zest for life | |
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| Zen and the "Aha!" experience | |
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| Wu-wei is not doing nothing | |
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| The playful way to excellence | |
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| The use of uselessness | |
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| Zen and the fine arts | |
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| What Is Zen? (II): The Heart of the Matter | |
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| Zen, motherhood, and apple pie | |
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| The yin and the yang: creative tension | |
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| The artful gentleness of Butcher Pao | |
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| Spiritual judo: understanding the power of weakness | |
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| True freedom as a reflection of gentleness | |
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| The "magic of thinking small" | |
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| Learning simplicity from the Cosmo-girl | |
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| Paradoxity as the heart of Zen | |
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| The Zen world of poetic craziness | |
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| Zen lessons from the flops of artificial intelligence | |
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| The value of fuzziness | |
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| Left-brain versus right-brain thinking | |
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| Zen experience can't be verbalized | |
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| Zen and soul | |
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| Zen as inward quest | |
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| The Magic Kingdom | |
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| The mystery of time | |
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| Clock time versus psychological time | |
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| What is it like to be an angel? | |
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| The Tao cannot be sought | |
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| Eternity as the disappearance of time | |
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| The kingdom and peak experiences | |
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| "The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed" | |
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| Entry into the thoughtless zone | |
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| The pitfalls of hope | |
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| What is happiness? | |
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| Zen: The Art of Seeing | |
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| Fuzziness as opportunity | |
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| Enlightenment as creative visualization | |
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| Reverse bodhisattvas | |
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| Real alchemy | |
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| Being "born anew" | |
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| "Nirvana is not the result of anything" | |
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| The koan of the Son of Man | |
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| Lessons from the Fiery Serpent | |
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| The mystery of Sisyphus's smile | |
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| Hell as the path to heaven | |
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| The First Noble Truth revisited | |
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| Seeing is the only truth | |
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| "This is it!" | |
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| The paradoxes of life | |
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| The Looking-Glass Universe | |
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| The topsy-turvy world of Zen | |
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| Who is Jesus? | |
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| The Son of God as archetype | |
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| The death koan of Jesus | |
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| The Tale of the Unfortunate Traveler | |
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| Choicelessness as freedom | |
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| The Stranger revisited | |
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| Death as healer | |
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| The culture of wabi-sabi | |
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| The beauty of inverse laws | |
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| Living dangerously | |
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| The poignant bitter-sweetness of life | |
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| Finding nirvana in samsara | |
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| The Usual Hell | |
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| Heaven as the loser | |
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| Voluntary hell | |
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| The big secret--hell is already here! | |
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| The myth of perpetual suffering | |
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| Just a little thought | |
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| The Unquenchable Fire | |
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| Hell and mindfulness | |
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| Hell is the normal state | |
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| Hell is not punishment | |
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| Parable of the Prodigal Son | |
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| Perfection in imperfection | |
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| Are we a nation of self-loathing masochists? | |
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| Hell and the hide-and-seek God | |
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| Coming to terms with lila | |
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| Faith | |
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| Lessons from the Temple of the Broken God | |
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| "Faith" as cosmeticized greed and fear | |
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| "Religion" as a hindrance to true faith | |
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| Faith as the courage to be | |
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| The importance of surrendering | |
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| Faith as erotic love | |
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| Faith as gentleness toward life | |
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| Every day is a good day | |
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| Faith as paranoia | |
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| "Do you want to be saved?" | |
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| What is idolatry? | |
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| What is spiritual truth? | |
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| "Only don't know" | |
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| Christian "hope" and Buddhist "hopelessness" | |
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| Hope as an inner search for meaning | |
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| Rebuilding faith | |
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| My Yoke Is Easy | |
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| "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing" | |
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| Zen as everyday spirituality | |
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| Religion as the pursuit of beauty | |
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| Inner beauty as self-abandonment | |
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| Grace versus art | |
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| "Law came in to increase the trespass" | |
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| The Koan of One Hand Clapping | |
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| Understanding koans | |
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| Learning to trust | |
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| The prevalence of the hero-mind | |
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| Can a Zen person be ambitious? | |
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| Stopping the Big Thief | |
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| What Defiles a Man | |
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| The power of silence | |
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| What is listening? | |
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| The experience of the Holy | |
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| Limitations of concepts, words, and thoughts | |
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| The fluidity of a "cup" | |
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| To see the world in a grain of rice | |
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| Flowers and garbage | |
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| The participatory universe | |
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| The ubiquitous Jesus | |
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| Consciousness as a double-edged sword | |
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| "Who told you that you are naked?" | |
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| The Unforgivable Sin | |
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| Separation as a part of growing up | |
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| Forgetting the words | |
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| Resist Not Evil | |
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| The art of loving one's enemies | |
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| Appreciating the thorns of life | |
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| Exorcism: Western style versus Zen style | |
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| Naming demons | |
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| The problem with scapegoating | |
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| Getting to the root of the illness | |
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| The amputational approach to purity | |
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| Resist not evil! | |
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| The care of the soul | |
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| Tantra as the path of love | |
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| The Fighter versus the Warrior | |
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| True gentleness and true toughness | |
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| The herb that both kills and heals | |
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| Pitfalls of asceticism | |
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| Tantra as a necessary part of spiritual growth | |
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| Avoidance and indulgence as expressions of escapism | |
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| Tantric practice through the development of respect, attention, understanding, and responsibility | |
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| Love | |
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| Are Zen masters afraid of love? | |
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| What is love? | |
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| Love as Goodness | |
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| True love is indiscriminate | |
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| The All-in-One Commandment | |
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| Unconditional love as nonsense to the rational mind | |
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| Love is not favoritism | |
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| No-mind as true love | |
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| Love as an expression of freedom | |
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| Can love be willed? | |
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| Love and wu-wei | |
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| Love is openness to life | |
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| The primacy of self-love | |
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| Love is a matter of seeing | |
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| Compassion as insight into interconnectedness | |
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| The Oneness of Life | |
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| I Am the Way | |
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| Does Christianity have a monopoly on truth? | |
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| Gnostic versus synoptic gospels | |
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| Understanding Gnosticism | |
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| Gnosticism as Christian Zen | |
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| The great "I Am" | |
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| The koan of "Who am I?" | |
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| The Self is the Way | |
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| Epilogue: The Beginning of a New Paradigm | |
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| The reading of classics | |
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| Multiple interpretations as a blessing | |
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| The Western notion of truth | |
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| Even truth cannot be attached to | |
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| Truth and security are incompatible | |
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| The use of ambiguity | |
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| We read what we are | |
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| The veiling of higher truths | |
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| Resolving the conflict between mystics and orthodoxy | |
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| We all have the fundamentalist instinct | |
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| Zen does not fight anything | |
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| A new paradigm for spirituality | |
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| A fearless entry into life | |
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| Notes | |