KILLING THE BUDDHA
This book addresses the proverb: “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” The ninth-century sage Lin Chi gave this advice to one of his monks, admonishing him that this Buddha would only be a reflection of the monk’s unexamined beliefs and desires.

Peter Manseau and Jeff Sharlet took Lin Chi’s advice to heart and set out on a car trip around America, looking for Buddhas along the road: prophets in G-strings dancing to pay the rent, storm chasers hunting for meaning in devastating tornados, gangbangers inking God on their bodies as protection from bullets, cross-dressing terrorist angels looking for a place to sing.

They then called upon some of today’s most intriguing writers and asked them to reimagine books of the bible, so that KILLING THE BUDDHA, based loosely on a Biblical structure, could become a contemporary bible that encompasses our conflicting and often ambivalent beliefs about religion.

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U.S. - Simon & Schuster