Zen Buddhist writings are full of iconoclastic instructions. The 9th century Zen master Lin-chi exhorted: “If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha.” The 13th century master Dogen wrote: “To study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self.” Words can be impediments to understanding the nature of reality, and in order to be enlightened, we must go beyond conceptual thinking. Nonetheless, Zen has a very intricate, subtle, and complex philosophy, a philosophy that uses paradoxes and contradictions to go beyond our ordinary logic and language, and one deeply connected to meditative practice. In this course, we will analyze and explore the inner logic and practice of Zen Buddhist philosophy. In the first part of the course, we will look at the historical roots of Chan Buddhism in the Mahayana Buddhism of India and the Daoist philosophy of China. In the second part of the course, we will follow the development of Chan in China into Zen in Japan by examining the writings of some of its major thinkers, including Hui-neng, Lin-chi, and Dogen. In the last part of the course, we turn to the ideas of some contemporary Zen philosophers and their implications for psychotherapy, neuroscience, social and political engagement, and the ecological crisis.