How can Buddhism speak to Westerners?

• Buddhism is Bliss Culture
• Dharma The Cat
• Engaged Buddhism: New and Improved!(?) Made in the U. S. A. of Asian Materials — discusses, among other things:
  • use of "source-alien terminology"
  • Buddhism's tradition of originality & adaptation?
  • "nirvana is samsara" (just above this anchor)?
• Ethics For The New Millenium — Free excerpt from the book by His Holiness The Dalai Lama. Plus book jacket summary, reviews & author biography. - Bookbrowse.com
• Inner Ecology - 1 [God] "So supreme is this natural fact that we can call it 'the law of nature' or 'God'. "
• Huston's World's Religions: review — says Huston's is a pretty good introduction but he "tries to co-opt it into another expresion of the Godhead," and describes Mahayana in ways that confuse it with Pure Land Buddhism.
• Journal of Buddhist Ethics
• Mindfulness In Plain English, by Ven. Henepola Gunaratana. Very helpful!
• Mindfulness Meditation by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D.
• The No-Self Experience in Western Eyes
• No-self or Not-self — Thanissaro Bhikkhu, 1996
• On Creating American Zen - by John Tarrant and Joan Sutherland of the Pacific Zen Institute's Liturgy Project.
• Thich Nhat Hanh's theory:
  • 14 Precepts of Interbeing
  • Five Precepts
• Zen Library

How can we appropriately adapt Buddhism to Western culture?

• Two pieces by James Ishmael Ford:
  • Buddhism without Beliefs, a sermon using the title of Stephen Batchelor's book.
  • Holding the Lotus to the Rock — reflections on the development of Zen in the West. Ford emphasizes the importance of creating community. He received Dharma transmission within the Soto lineage from Jiyu Kennett Roshi in 1971, and received permission to teach in the Harada/Yasutani koan tradition from John Tarrant Roshi in 1998. In addition to being minister at the First Unitarian Society in Newton, Massachusetts, he directs the Henry Thoreau Zen Sangha there, teaches at the Zen Community of Boston, and was one of the founders of the Unitarian Universalist Buddhist Fellowship.
• Good Medicine for This World - in a conversation about tonglen with Alice Walker and Judith Lief, Pema Chödrön mentions a couple of things Western Buddhist teachers do differently:
  • they "simply don't buy" the notion that homosexuality is an obstacle to spiritual growth (any more than they'll perpetuate judging women as inferior)
  • they have to take extra pains to address the strong tendency of Western Practitioners to hear dharma teaching "with a filter of turning it against themselves."
• Sit Down and Shut Up! Brad Warner's approach to Zen is irreverent and debunking, but seems nevertheless authentic to me.
• Being Creative with Tradition: Rooting Theravaada Buddhism in Britain- by Sandra Bell.
• Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening, by Stephen Batchelor, is about using the methods of Buddhism without the mythology or metaphysics. I haven't read it yet, but it's on my shelf waiting. Here are two critiques of it:
  • By Ven. Bhikkhu Bodh, President, Buddhist Publication Society (Kandy, Sri Lanka) — on the site of the Journal of Buddhist Ethics.
  • By Marjorie L. Silverman. Her Master's thesis at McGill University.

What is the relationship between Buddhism & meditation, and psychology or psychotherapy?

• Consciousness Studies:
  • Center for Consciousness Studies — at the University of Arizona
  • Journal of Consciousness Studies
• Meditation and Psychotherapy — a review of the literature, by Greg Bogart, Ph.D. Originally published in The American Journal of Psychotherapy, 1991.
• Psychotherapy / Buddhist Meditation — ten essays from the Buddha Dharma Education association, and information on courses in Buddhist Psychotherapy and Counselling.
• ToDo Institute - Zen-based life skills, sometimes called therapies: Morita and Naikan

What other aspects of Western culture resonate with Buddhism?

• Jacques Maritain's Mysticism - part of a discussion of the book Mysticism, Metaphysics and Maritain, by James Arraj (complete book online). Sounds like a description of sunyata to me.
• Here's a description of a process the authors call "Dialogue"— which sounds like a sort of group vipassana to me. By David Bohm, Donald Factor and Peter Garrett.
• Who Am I Without You? The Reconciliation of Self with Society in Hegelian and Mahayana Buddhist Thought, by Thom Brooks. In Quodlibet, the Online Journal of Christian Theology and Philosophy, vol. 4, no. 1 (Winter 2002).

What other aspects of Western culture need greater development in Buddhism?

• Family, Childrearing, Relationship, and Community as Practice
  • Katie Allison Granju's Buddhism Weblog — information and resources for Western Buddhist families