Posted in American Buddhism
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WHEN I WROTE THE ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
to Buddhist America a decade ago, I began with this story:
One day an old woman who lived in New York went to her travel agent and asked him to get her a ticket to Tibet. %
“Tibet?!”
Posted in American Buddhism
Buddhism in Asia has been divided for centuries, kept within separate traditions and lineages. American Buddhists have already begun to actively learn from each other’s traditions. Many Zen masters and their students have been avidly studying the mindfulness and lovingkindness practices central to Vipassana retreats.
Posted in American Buddhism
Buddhism is becoming more democratic in our American democracy. Traditionally, most Buddhist communi
ties in Asia were hierarchical and authoritarian. Wisdom, knowledge, and practice were handed down from elders to juniors, and the running of monasteries and the san - gha (community of monastic practitioners) rested in the hands of the master or a small core of senior monks. What they decided was the way things were, and there was no questioning
Posted in American Buddhism
A third and perhaps the most important force affecting Buddhism in America has been the force of feminization. In Asia, through the monasteries and older monks, Buddhism has been primarily a masculine and patriarchal affair: masculine by virtue of the fact that it has been men who have preserved and transmitted it, and more
Posted in American Buddhism
The fourth major theme as Buddhism develops in the West is integration. In Asia, Buddhism was primarily characterized by ordained priests, monks, hermits, and forest dwellers who withdrew from worldly life into monasteries, ashrams, caves, and temples, where they created circumstances of simplicity and renunciation for their practice. The rest of the Buddhists, the great majority of laypeople, did not actually practice meditation but remained
Posted in American Buddhism
Our understanding of different practices is also helped by seeing the structure of the entire spiritual path, by understanding its essence and how it brings about human happiness and freedom. The essential path taught by the Buddha has three parts to it. The first is kindness of heart, a ground of fundamental compassion expressed through virtue and generosity.
Posted in American Buddhism
Historically, all major religions, including Buddhism, have contained a basic tension—one that persists as Buddhism comes to America. This is the tension between tradition or orthodoxy and adaptation or modernization. Many people involved in Buddhism see it as their purpose and their duty to preserve and sustain the Sutras, the tradition, and the practices just as they were handed down in their lineage from the original teachings and the great masters of old, from
