(7 of 9)
The liberalization was theological as well. In traditional Buddhism, withdrawal from the world's passions was often assumed to preclude political action (although heads of large Asian monasteries often set up de facto alliances with local power structures, for better or worse). Americans, however, were attracted to "engaged Buddhism" of the sort most eloquently championed by Thich Nhat Hanh, famous for his 1960s anti-war activism. In Yonkers, N.Y., Zen master Bernard Glassman has established--using Zen principles--a bakery, garment company and building-renovation firm staffed by the formerly homeless and unemployed.
There are dozens of other innovations and debates, some small and some quite radical. A civil but ferociously felt argument has raged for the past few months around a book called Buddhism Without Beliefs, in which Stephen Batchelor, a former monk in both Zen and Tibetan traditions, suggests that Buddhism jettison reincarnation and karma, thereby making possible what he calls an "existential, therapeutic and liberating agnosticism." In fact, many American practitioners have already Batchelorized themselves by default. A good example is Ann Buck, 67, a retired businesswoman and teacher of Theravadan meditation. Although she does not reject karma, it plays little role in the groups she gathers in her house in Malibu, Calif.; it will certainly not figure in a phone service she is helping plan that will furnish computer-generated meditation guidance. If participants move further into Buddhism, she says, she will be gratified, but her first goal is to service "the enormous need of people to find a safe home, a refuge, within their being."
Some think meditation will constitute Buddhism's distinct contribution to American religious life. Different branches practice different varieties, but each begins with a simple awareness of breath drawn in and let out. Fields notes that a near mechanical process that allows each individual to look inside him- or herself for the divine fits in particularly well with the democratic tendency of the faith here: "Americans have always been a do-it-yourself culture, and this is a do-it-yourself philosophy." Benedictine Sister Mary Margaret Funk, executive director of the International Monastic Interreligious Dialogue, goes considerably further. "Christianity and Judaism don't go deep enough in helping people live [spiritually] every day," she says. "What [American Buddhists] are doing, and it's kind of amazing, is taking a path of enlightenment into a lay culture without priests and temples and structures, and moving it right into daily practice for everyday life." Once established in Buddhism, she feels, the movement will spread to other faiths. "It's beneficial to all of us. It will go down in history as one of the best things that happened to civilization."