chimerically constructed commodities should be considered neither irrelevant nor an outrage—two common responses. Rather, they are important elements for understanding the development of any religious movement, including Buddhism in America (and maybe especially Buddhism in America).

An analysis of the meditation cushion industry in America and what it says about American Buddhism.

Secular mindfulness requires an ideology of white conquest that makes invisible the enduring efforts of Asian and Asian-American Buddhists in maintaining the legacy of mindfulness practices.

This study employs ethnographic field data to trace a dialogue between the self‐psychological concept of the self object and experiences regarding the concept of “interbeing” at a Vietnamese Buddhist monastery in the United States. The dialogue develops an understanding of human experiences with the nonhuman natural world which are tensive, liminal, and nondual. From the dialogue I find that the self object concept, when applied to this form of Buddhism, must be inclusive enough to embrace relationships with animals, stones, and other natural forms.

Buddhism was here deployed in the service of a pre-existing narrative of conflict between conservatives and liberals and, by making appeals to secular scholars to define Buddhism, Buddhist voices were obscured or ignored. Finally, despite having their own media outlets, U.S. Buddhists were unable to effectively counter such representations either by perpetuating pre-existing media narratives nor by ignoring them altogether.

Empirical data indicate that the so-called “Buddhism of yellow color” that is predominantly associated with Japanese “immigrant” Buddhism, is constantly in decline in terms of “explicit” adherents. After some methodological observations, this article gives an overview of the relevant statistical data.

Leaders of New Thought were first exposed to Buddhism and Vedanta philosophy through the publications of European Orientalists and the Theosophical Society and, later, though personal contacts with Asian Buddhist and Hindu missionaries. In addition to D. T. Suzuki, who helped to spark American interest in Japanese Zen, other important early missionaries were Anagarika Dharmapāla, a Sri Lankan Buddhist and Theosophist, and Swami Vivekenanda, an Indian monk of the Ramakrishna Order who launched the Vedanta Society in North America. New Thought leaders, Theosophists, and Asian missionaries met in person at the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions and continued to develop relationships for more than a decade, particularly at the Greenacre conferences in Eliot, Maine. This chapter reveals the transnational nature of New Thought, which is typically considered to be an American metaphysical religious movement.

Describing their experiences participating in PoC group sits and activities, a recurring sentiment was the embodied feeling of being relaxed, and feeling safe and comfortable.

Drawing upon ethnographic research conducted in California with BIPOC practitioners of mindfulness, this article examines their efforts to create “safe spaces” to collectively experience and process painful embodied emotions around racialized trauma. These collective spaces, I argue, help meditators move from experiencing painful emotions as internal to their personal experience as individuals, and instead help relate their difficult emotions with those experienced and shared by other racialized minorities.

The present study extrapolates six distinct themes related to the experiences of racialized inclusion and exclusion [by eleven participants of color]. These themes are: 1) Interpersonal Barriers to Full Participation, 2) Institutional Barriers to Full Participation, 3) Strategies for Coping with Racialized Exclusion, 4) Failures of Leadership Support for People of Color, 5) Range of POC Experiences, and 6) Promoting Equity and Inclusion. Following the explication of themes, the authors offer recommendations for primarily white meditation communities to help guide their efforts toward greater inclusion

Given the growing dilution of Buddhist identity and its tendency toward syncretism in Brazil, this paper works with the heuristic concept of a ‘Buddhism in Syncretic Shape.’ Since this concept is useful for better understanding some groups in Brazil, it is suggested that it can also provide interesting insights for the study of Buddhism in the West. This concept will be developed through a detailed description of Shingon in Brazil, which has undergone a religious synthesis with Catholicism and Afro-Brazilian religions.

Drawing from interviews, participant observation, and online research, I examine two interconnected issues. First, how temple food practices—offering alms to monks and operating newly invented temple food courts—sustain temples spiritually and financially. Second, how temple food, which is consistently integrated into various events and rituals, enables Thai Americans and a diverse assortment of other participants to connect and work together.

In their open-minded attitudes toward a wide range of Buddhist practices and multivalent interpretations of various Buddhist beliefs, these young adults challenge simplistic representations of Asian American Buddhists and present an inclusive vision of Buddhism that embraces nuance, ambiguity, and change.

By attending to the ways in which young “heritage” Buddhists approach religion in ways similar to “converts,” this article further erodes the “two Buddhisms” explanation of Buddhism in America.

Ministers in the Buddhist Churches of America (BCA) began performing same-sex marriages approximately forty years ago. These were among the first clergy-led religious ceremonies for same-sex couples performed in the modern era, and were apparently the first such marriages conducted in the history of Buddhism. In this article, I seek to explain why Jodo Shinshu Buddhists in America widely and easily affirmed same-sex weddings in the later 20th and early 21st centuries. My argument is that there are three factors in particular—institutional, historical, and theological elements of American Shin Buddhism—that must be attended to as contributing reasons why ministers were supportive of same-sex marriage.

Buddhist Geeks is an online Buddhist media company and community that launched in 2007. It consists of a weekly audio podcast and a digital magazine component and since 2011, has hosted an annual conference. I will discuss the main characteristics and concerns of the Buddhist Geeks community and explore how it can be situated both in relationship to traditional Buddhism and Buddhist modernism. In conclusion, I reflect on whether Buddhist Geeks signals the emergence of a new, distinctly postmodern stage in the wider assimilation of Buddhism in America.

While often associated with a liberal demographic, the increasing online visibility of rhetoric such as “snowflakes,” “politically correct,” “postmodern identity politics,” and “cultural Marxism” demonstrates the presence of right-wing sentiments and populations in American convert Buddhism.

We chart this backlash across a broad right-wing spectrum that spans from “reactionary centrism” to the “alt-right.” We illuminate the ways in which participants both de-legitimate “Diversity Equity and Inclusion” as political rather than Buddhist and naturalize their own position as Buddhist rather than political. We show how American convert Buddhist lineages have become a site of the “culture wars”…

These universities provide education in liberal arts and professional fields, while employing the time-tested methods of traditional Buddhist pedagogy. Because these universities are generally unknown to the public, I have provided information about their history, academic programs, and the educational success created on their campuses.

In each country to which it historically spread, Buddhism created schools, universities, and various centers for learning, meditation, and moral practicea. In the USA, a great variety of Buddhist-based institutions of learning were created during the last half of the 20th century. These include, but are not limited to kindergartens, elementary and secondary schools, institutes for vocational training, and universities granting professional degrees. In this article, we will investigate one particular type of Buddhist educational institution, which we refer to as a “Buddhist University.”

Theravada as practiced by most converts in the West is distinguished by the absence of monasticism, its dominant institution. Nevertheless, Thai Forest monasticism has managed to gain a foothold in the convert West, thanks to the efforts of convert monastics trained in Thailand. This article analyzes the missionary project to “monasticize” Western lay converts through the history of Birken Forest Monastery in British Columbia, Canada, founded in 1994.

To establish a monastery in Birken’s isolated, non-Buddhist environs, the abbot, Ajahn Sona in effect created a lay village to attract converts to and to teach them their role in orthodox Thai Forest monasticism. The all-consuming nature of the monasticization project among laypeople has cut short the training of a homegrown Sangha at Birken, demonstrating the challenges of establishing a domestic convert monasticism and the continuing dominance of the laity in North American Theravada.

Taking as its focus twentieth- and twenty-first-century semiautobiographical writings by black American Buddhists, this article explores how black American Buddhists engage with Buddhist teachings to understand themselves as racialized subjects on local, national, and transnational levels.

They portray the Buddha as a social reformer enlightened to the operation of racial, gender, and sexual inequalities. This portrayal of the Buddha allows black Buddhists to articulate a counter-narrative to hegemonic Western authority while paradoxically constructing their own romantic vision of Asia as the “Other” to the West.

This essay focuses on Albert J. Edmunds, a British-American Buddhist sympathizer, and it considers the ways that Western occult traditions, especially Swedenborgianism, moved back and forth across the Pacific and shaped the work of D. T. Suzuki.

Their tools to create their own Buddhism are quite limited. And yet, the tale is one of success, as these children often find ways to affirm their own religious identities in contradistinction to their parents. Paradoxically, they do this by identifying their parents as the primary source for their encounter with Buddhism—theirs is a familial lineage.

Convert (typically White) American Buddhists largely hold to (racialized) narratives that denigrate “heritage” Buddhists-by-birth. But where does this leave their children?

In this highly theoretical book of post-colonial critique, Drew Baker (himself a second-generation Buddhist American) analyzes how scholars have missed this group of American Buddhists and then tells us about their experience of growing up Buddhish in America.

This book is recommended for parents in the West who are comfortable with jargon and are into Buddhism, but who aren’t sold on “labels.”

The parents are more comfortable with the ambiguity because they chose it, while their children are overtly driven and haunted by the question “well, what am I?”

There is sincerity here.

The two communities discussed in this paper are very different—the Buddha Center, a cybersangha, only exists in a virtual world, while the other, Daifukuji, is a hundred-year-old actual life temple with increasing digital engagement. Still, they both offer opportunities for community members to participate in online meditative ritual, prayer, and memorialization.

Our bodies and our minds are built for the pace of walking. When we use machines, they’re built to do things faster than our normal pace. Even if you’re able to accomplish a task faster, for that period it’s not as easy to accomplish the task of being in yourself. So, if it takes you 10× as long to get somewhere walking, but your goal is to be present every moment, then walking is the better way to go as opposed to taking the car

Learn more about the original, here. And you can watch two videos of Allen Ginsberg chanting this translation, here.

like the Soka Gakkai cases, our respondents appear to be searching for miracles and spiritual fulfillment that they were not receiving by engaging solely in Christian practices. Although they might be considered “free riders” through a rational choice lens, Master Chu actually encourages this behavior

How a Vietnamese monk in Houston, Texas successfully attracted a Latino following.

In Southern California, some Theravāda temples have taken up the practice of granting temporary novice ordinations to Cambodian American gang members, with the hope of reorienting the youth toward their families’ religion and culture.

Philosophically and normatively, this monastery embraces eco-centrism through notions of interconnectedness, instructions for meditation, environmental lifestyles, and non-violent ideals. In practice, however, the monastery displays a measure of anthropocentrism in terms of rhetoric which values humans more than the rest of the natural world, human-centered motivations for environmental lifestyles, and limits on non-violence which favor human lives.

The cultural context for Buddhist Modernism is really important.

… the idea that you could be both Buddhist and American at the same time seemed contradictory.

The author of American Sutra discusses how the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII reshaped Buddhist practice in the West.

Loy’s central thesis is that there are common “spiritual roots” to our ecological crisis and the Buddhist soteriological structure, when properly understood and applied from the individual to the collective case, holds the key to our way out.

Loy’s wish is not simply that we all “stop befoul[ing] our own nest” in the ways already mentioned, but that we all “awaken” to the true causes of environmental spoilage—our false belief in an ultimate “separation from other people and from the natural world” and our dysfunctional striving after “ever-increasing power and control” as a way of resolving our collective anxiety about what it means to be human. If these points weren’t proof enough of Loy’s unwillingness to play by any Maritainian or Rawlsian-inspired rules of compartmentalization, there is also his direct appeal to religions to change their internal lives: to “stop denying evolution and instead refocus their messages on its meaning.”

An article about Buddhist environmentalism and a critique thereof.

If you don’t feel challenged by the text, then the text isn’t doing its work.

… but I feel my life has been enriched by having these verses come bubble up in my mind.

This talk took place at the Insight Meditation Center in Barre, MA, in 2005, as a book launch for Gil Fronsdal’s then-newly published translation of the Dhammapada. In his talk, Fronsdal gives context to the Dhammapada and proceeds to read various verses and explain them, giving a broad flavor of the work.

But gaining mystical experience is not the purpose of our spiritual practice. The purpose of spiritual practice is to empty ourselves of self-identity.

A fascinating conversation between Master Sheng-Yen and former astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, narrated by Professor Raymond Yeh. The discussion began with Mitchell recounting his mystical experience upon returning to Earth after a lunar mission.

Bombu refers to a foolish being such as myself.

When I could finally admit this to myself, I saw that the license plate had to go …

It has to do with spending a great amount of time in a meditative state where I am able to connect with people [energetically] in anticipation of meeting them [physically].

An African-American, Buddhist herbalist explains how she’s able to build communities of care across political and cultural divides.

The Buddha is like a physician that is capable of turning poison into medicine.

How “the Queen of Rock-‘n’-roll” became a Nichiren, Buddhist teacher.

Following is a summation of the extraordinary story, as explicated in the Aitken letters, of a Zen master teaching in America for some 35 years, who has been accused of sexual misconduct numerous times and yet was never called to task nor properly investigated.

Some questions to ponder and discuss after watching this video:

• Are there any minority groups that have not historically or still might not feel welcome in your community?
• What norms or behaviors contribute(d) to that?
• Are there any people you’d have a hard time “greeting with a smile” if they showed up at your temple?

… stereotypes flew in both directions: white Buddhists were called arrogant, over-focused on enlightenment, self-absorbed. Asian Buddhists were called too devotional, too hierarchical, over-focused on social and cultural activities.

An examination of racial categorization in American Buddhism.

… the discontinuity [with premodern forms of Buddhism] that the modernists emphasize is just that, an emphasis—it is less an observation than it is an ideologically motivated construction

An important note about how and why Western scholarship is reshaping the Buddhism it claims to study.

When we think about spiritual formation, I think it’s done best when it’s amplified through a community.

A full-throated defense of teaching children (and adults!) the Dharma as a “first language.”

… figuring out what to do with your life and making it happen against all odds

A very American take on Zen.

I knew I might be late for the morning talk if I didn’t hurry. Yet I didn’t

A brief invitation to walking with mindfulness.

Three steps, one bow: that was how they made their pilgrimage. […] an unadorned account of an authentic spiritual journey.

A monk and novice write letters to their teacher as they prostrate their way up the California coast.

Note: this Second Edition is entitled Highway Dharma Letters: Two Buddhist Pilgrims Write to Their Teacher.

Where are all the young adult Asian American Buddhists, and what can we learn from them?

A heartwarming ethnography.

And after you’ve finished reading it (or before you start!), listen to this interview with the author to hear more about the process behind writing the book.

Practices like yoga and meditation were woven throughout Occupy [Wall Street], and were integral to its endurance and impact; they were not a sideshow.

… it’s easy to get out of balance

… we always speak about Buddhism as a religion of compassion, but then I saw the way Buddhism is developing in the US, especially (I have to say) amongst the White, upper-middle class, convert Buddhists… I don’t want to paint an overly-grim picture, but why aren’t there more Buddhist organizations acting to relieve the suffering in the world?

You can find all the interviews on SoundCloud at the following links:

1. Sharon Salzberg
2. Shelly Tygielski
3. Michael Kink
4. Daisy Hernández
5. Arian Moayed

Besides honesty and truthfulness, the other value that most of the participants mentioned, or described as part of the Buddhist lawyering practice, was compassion. That may surprise some, and it may be especially surprising because the participants who mentioned it practice across many different legal settings

If you’re going to tell yourself a story,
Why not tell yourself a story of freedom?

A deeply American meditation on (not translation of!) the Therigatha.

Read this book critically, alongside a real translation, so that you can see for yourself how the poems changed the originals. Consider what was lost, what was added, and how the tone shifted. What does this collection say about American Buddhism?

… indeed there is no thing there

A beautiful reading of this wonderful and profound sutta on realizing the essence of emptiness.

‘I smiled at the guards standing at my cell,’ he writes. ‘Being thrown in the Hole was worth the pleasure of seeing them still alive.’

A review of Jarvis Masters’ spiritual memoir Finding Freedom analyzing the work as a critque of toxicity in an American prison and the presentation of an alternate “Bodhisattva” masculinity possible even among killers.

Growing tolerance toward Asian peoples and cultures was fostered in a mass-mediated environment in which the role of the visual image took on increasing importance. While this environment allowed a popular engagement with Asian religious traditions, it also relied on and reinforced certain racialized notions of Asianness and Asian religiosity. These notions form patterns of representation that, because they are linked to such positive images, go unchallenged and unseen.

This fascinating and compelling history of the “Oriental Monk” figure in 20th century American media shows how Americans came to have certain feelings and expectations (that is to say, stereotypes) about Eastern spirituality in general and monks in particular which continue to shape Buddhism to this day.

… although I have long waited upon the Teacher and bhikkhus worthy of esteem, never before have I heard such a talk on the Dhamma

A beautiful reading of this wonderful and profound sutta.

It is possible to know the original intent of our sacred literature.

An impassioned defense of mythology and orthodoxy in the modern world.

Meditation can be seen as the ultimate in “[restructuring the] lower-level components” of the mind. We abandon all the higher-level cognition built upon words and concepts and return, as much as possible, to the preverbal experience in order to “re-engage and reshape” our way of being in the world.

The key is to focus on two distinctions: systems as distinct from individuals, and having privilege as independent of choosing how to engage with it.

… critics have highlighted a number of weak points in Buddhist arguments thus far about environmental issues. Nevertheless, Buddhism does provide resources for constructing an environmental ethic.

Beside the creek, one can forget language altogether and watch meaning slip away with the current. It is humbling and awe-inspiring to merge into the creekside, just another natural formation.

Then one day, [the young man] utters these three words. When the young lady hears this, she trembles, because it is such an important statement. When you say something like that with your whole being, not just with your mouth or your intellect, but with your whole being, it can transform the world. A statement that has such power of transformation is called a mantra.

A lucid and concise explanation of emptiness and interdependence beautifully tailored to his American audience, this book is based on a lecture Thay delivered at the Green Gulch Zen Center, in Muir Beach, California on April 19, 1987.