Tiantai Buddhism emerged from an idiosyncratic and innovative interpretation of the Lotus Sutra to become one of the most complete, systematic, and influential schools of philosophical thought developed in East Asia. Brook A. Ziporyn puts Tiantai into dialogue with modern philosophical concerns to draw out its implications for ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. Ziporyn explains Tiantai's unlikely roots, its positions of extreme affirmation and rejection, its religious skepticism and embrace of religious myth, and its view of human consciousness. Ziporyn reveals the profound insights of Tiantai Buddhism while stimulating philosophical reflection on its unexpected effects.

Brook A. Ziporyn is Professor of Chinese Religion, Philosophy, and Comparative Thought at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago.

Introduction
1. Just Here Is the End of Suffering: Letting Suffering Be in Early Buddhism
2. Rafts and Arrows: The Two Truths in Pre-Tiantai Buddhism
3. Neither Thus Nor Otherwise: Mah¿y¿na Approaches to Emptiness
4. Buddha-nature and Original Enlightenment
5. How to Not Know What You're Doing: Introduction to the Lotus S¿tra
6. The New Middle Way: Highlights of the Lotus S¿tra in Tiantai Context
7. The Interpervasion of All Points of View: From the Lotus S¿tra to Tiantai
8. Tiantai: The Multiverse as You
9. Experiencing Tiantai: Experiments with Tiantai Practice
10. Tiantai Ethics and the Worst Case Scenario
Epilogue: So Far and Yet So Close
Notes
Bibliography and Suggested Reading
Index