While it has long been acknowledged that Chan differs in many ways from more mainstream forms of Buddhism, recent scholarship has also resulted in an increasing awareness of the originality of early Buddhist teachings found in the Nikayas and their distinctiveness from the later doctrine of classical Theravada. This book is inspired by passages in Nikaya and early Chan texts that can be read as expressing surprisingly similar and at the same time very unconventional ideas about meditation, consciousness, and reality. While due to their unorthodox character, these passages have often been ignored or explained away when studied in the context of just one tradition, the new perspective provided by their comparative analysis allows a more direct reading to be considered, thereby drawing out their radical implications.  This book argues that the unconventional concepts found in Nikaya and early Chan texts are part of a unique and coherent meditative paradigm that is very different from the