Lord of the Three in One

An illuminating account of the steadfast resilience of rural popular culture in post-Mao China Lin Zhao’en (1517–1598) set out to popularize Confucianism by combining Confucian studies with Daoist inner alchemical techniques and Buddhist Chan philosophy into something he called the Three in One Teachings. Despite periods of clandestine activity since its inception, the Three in One cult has undergone a remarkable revival in post-Mao China. Today, in more than a thousand temples by tens of thousa