Westward Dharma: Buddhism beyond Asia - Tapa dura

"Like seeds on the wind, Buddhist teachings continue to reach new lands. This outstanding book brings to light, in rich detail, the current flowering of Buddhism in the West. Long a world religion, Buddhism is now a global one." - Kenneth Kraft, author of The Wheel of Engaged Buddhism "Westward Dharma deserves a place on the growing bookshelf of contemporary Buddhist studies. Prebish and Baumann broaden our horizons from North America to the wider Western world, exploring key aspects of Buddhism's most recent geographical and cultural expansion." - Paul David Numrich, coauthor of Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs in America.

This volume focuses on the totality of Buddhism in the West, establishing a comparative and theoretical perspective for considering the wide variety of Buddhist traditions, schools, centres and teachers that have developed outside of Asia. Scholars from North America, Europe, South Africa, and Australia explore the plurality and heterogeneity of traditions and practices that are characteristic of Buddhism in the West. This dramatic growth in Western Buddhism is accompanied by an expansion of topics and issues of Buddhist concern. The contributors to this volume treat such topics as the broadening spirit of egalitarianism; the increasing emphasis on the psychological, as opposed to the purely religious, nature of practice; scandals within Buddhist movements; the erosion of the distinction between professional and lay Buddhists; Buddhist settlement in Israel; the history of Buddhism in internment camps; repackaging Zen for the West; and women's dharma in the West.