Americanayana...

Buddhism in the West is always in the spot-light for one reason or another. More recently it is news about the "Dali" Lama...but Buddhist meditation, with willing monks pictured with electrodes stuck in their heads, and all the wonderful therapeutic benefits accruing from it has always been a hot topic and since the stress levels in the Western world never seem to diminish, this is something that is always relevant and each new study has some [same?] old-information-repackaged-as-new or surprise surprise something "new" to offer...

In the recent few weeks, NYT has seen a "flurry" of Buddhism related articles each of which shed light on different facets of Buddhism, or at least what it is perceived as being or thought of as representing.

There was this wonderful new-agey fairy tale of an American Buddhist monk, 55, co-habiting in a yurt with a lovely, white-clad young woman (in the picture).

Very fetching, to say the least! I will not launch into polemics here but will express my opinions a little later. What has struck me, though, is that Americans are too free-spirited a people to stick to conventions too long. There is a wandering, roaming, vagabond-souled Walt Whitman in all of them. Don't try to shackle it in chains...of course, if they want to stick to something, they will, better than natives. But, for people who'll deny reincarnation with all their might, there are more born-again-into-something Americans that people of any other nationality. In a way, Americans are always metamorphosing into something else or dying to one thing and being born to another; what else is this thing called American dynamism anyways...so experimentation, a little tinkering, some poetic license is always kosher...there is always a way to explain it [Hey, waitaminute...isn't that like the anarchic Indians...?]...

So these guys broke the rules, the Vinaya rules a celibate monk is supposed to follow...by co-habiting...but who knows...they say they are chaste despite their aching nearness...but as the ebullient Lama Surya Das expressed it, “He is with a much younger blond bombshell. What is a deep relationship that is not sexual? It is hard to understand.” It is conjecture after all...their word against ours..our dirty minds against their, possibly purer minds...
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Next up was this eerie description of Nirvana: A Superhighway to Bliss, most appropriately in the Fashion and Style section:

The incessant chatter that normally filled her mind disappeared. Her everyday worries — about a brother with schizophrenia and her high-powered job — untethered themselves from her and slid away.

Her perceptions changed, too. She could see that the atoms and molecules making up her body blended with the space around her; the whole world and the creatures in it were all part of the same magnificent field of shimmering energy.

“My perception of physical boundaries was no longer limited to where my skin met air,” she has written in her memoir, “My Stroke of Insight,” which was just published by Viking.

After experiencing intense pain, she said, her body disconnected from her mind. “I felt like a genie liberated from its bottle,” she wrote in her book. “The energy of my spirit seemed to flow like a great whale gliding through a sea of silent euphoria.”

Which is all very nice, but what caught my attention later in the article was this:

But many reaching out are spiritual seekers, particularly Buddhists and meditation practitioners, who say her experience confirms their belief that there is an attainable state of joy.

Really? Is that the take home message, if there was one? Not the "She could see that the atoms and molecules making up her body blended with the space around her; the whole world and the creatures in it were all part of the same magnificent field of shimmering energy."
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Anyhow, shortly after this, you have an article on the Old Faithful of the Old Faith, mindfulness mediation and its indefatigable champion, Jon Kabat-Zinn. The article is imaginatively titled "Lotus Therapy: A New Old Path."