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Journal of the American Academy of Religion 2005 73(2):475-496; doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfi044
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© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the American Academy of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org

Articles

The Koan as Ritual Performance

Barry Stephenson

University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 1N4.

Study of the Zen koan tradition has been dominated by psychological and textual methods and theories. But koans not only constitute a literary genre, they are part of the liturgical order of Zen Buddhism. In this article I argue that psychological and textual approaches offer a limited understanding of the ritual and performative contexts of koan practice and, drawing on ritual and performance theory, develop an alternative approach to the koan tradition.


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