1. American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity. By Ann Gleig. Yale University Press, 2019. xiv + 362 pages. $35.00 (hardcover).
2. Reviewer Affiliation: Seattle University, USA.
摘要
Ann Gleig's American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity offers a richly detailed and analytically precise study of contemporary meditation-based convert lineages that reflect a significant generational shift to the postmodern in American Buddhism. Gleig positions her book as a direct response to David L. McMahan's The Making of Buddhist Modernism (2009) to reveal new developments afoot in convert Buddhist communities that challenge entrenched narratives of Buddhist modernism, including the primacy of individual meditation, the psychologization of Buddhism, and the enduring inheritance of white privilege. She draws from multisite ethnographic research on Zen and Vipassana convert communities, interviews with key figures, and carefully mined historical materials, blogs, magazines, and podcasts to mark the coming of age of a “postmodern Buddhism” that is less a clean break than a reshaping of its predecessor. As researcher and self-identified practitioner of Buddhist meditation, she shifts easily between theory and ethnographic data to reveal what lies beyond tired models of American Buddhism built upon racialized hierarchies of immigrant/convert, Asian/white, devotional/meditative, and popular/rational Buddhists. The book is divided into eight chapters flanked by a comprehensive introduction and conclusion that expertly guide readers through a wide range of academic theories to best interpret the changing landscape of Buddhism in the United States. Gleig skillfully balances intellectual sophistication with jargon-free language designed to reach audiences beyond the scholarly discipline alone; the result is an exceptionally well crafted study of the latest turning of the wheel of Buddhism.
