This book explores the possible relations between Western types of rationalism and Buddhism. It also examines some cliches about Buddhism and questions the old antinomies of Western culture ("faith and reason or "idealism an materialism"). The use of the Buddhist notion of the Two Truths as a hermeneutic device leads to a double or multiple exposure that will call into question our mental habits and force us to ask questions differently, to think in a new key.

Double Exposure is somewhat of an oddity. Written by a specialist for nonspecialists, it is not a book of vulgarization. Although it aims at a better integration of Western and Buddhist thought, it is not an exercise in comparative philosophy or religion. It is neither a contribution to Buddhist scholarship in the narrow sense, nor a contribution to some vague Western "spirituality. Cutting across traditional disciplines and blurring established genres, it provides a leisurely but deeply insightful stroll through philosophical and literary texts, dreams, poetry, and paradoxes.

Double Exposure, Cutting Across Buddhist and Western Discourses, Bernard Faure, Stanford Universty Press, Paperback, 2004, 195 Pages, $21.95

Bernard Faure is George Edwin Burnell Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University. He is the author, most recently, of The Will to Orthodoxy: A Critical Genealogy of Northern Chan Buddhism (Stanford 1997).