Western Buddhism owes its widespread appeal to the ability to reinvent itself for the needs of contemporary followers.
Such evolution clearly presents itself in modern mindfulness movement, which promotes mindful eating, mindful parenting, and corporate mindful leadership. “This is a far cry from Buddhism’s original big splash among beats, hippies, and other figures of the American counterculture.” Jeff Wilson writes in his book “Mindful America.”
“Plenty of such folks worked and parented, of course, but the zeitgeist of such movements was the search for alternatives to the staid nuclear family model with 9-to-5 dad and June Cleaver housewife,” he adds. “Many people joined Buddhist meditation groups because they wanted something different from life in suburbia, office jobs, conventional marriage, and parenting.” Wilson then cites “The Dharma Bums”, in which the beloved writer Jack Kerouac writes:
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See the whole thing is a world full of rucksack wanderers, Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that crap they didn’t really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least fancy new cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume, I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of ’em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures.
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“That future did not work out precisely how the beats envisioned it,” Wilson concludes. “Buddhism has itself become a consumer item.” Both “Mindful America” and “The Dharma Bums” are wonderful reads in their entireties. Complement with Jack Kerouac on how to explain Buddhism to your parents, why the world is nothing but a dream, and then revisit Kerouac’s 30 rules of writing.
I’m a freelance writer and mindfulness advocate behind this blog. I started my meditation practice in 2014, and in 2017 I launched this website to share what I learn with others. Here are the three things you can do here:
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