'Packing a blessedly down-to-earth sense of humor; Dinty Moore is te perfect scout for the new frontiers of American Buddhism.'-Rodger Kamenetz, author of The Jew in the Lotus

Buddhism is on America's mind. TV commercials embrace it: Michael Jordan runs to the top of a Tibetan mountain to find the true meaning of sports drinks. A hillside of Buddhist monks meditates on hard drives. The famous (like Richard Gere and Tiger Woods) fight stress with it. From coaches to cops, from stockbrokers to schoolchildren, Americans are learning to love the lotus position.

But many of us are more curious than we are committed. Dinty Moore was, too. So he decided to find out what exactly was going on. Are we becoming Buddhists behind our on backs? Why is this ancient, Asian religion suddenly such a big part of American pop culture?

Moore set out to see Buddhism for himself by attending Buddhist retreats, meeting the monks face to face. Before long he was hooked on breathing. And what the Buddhist monks were telling him was starting to make good sense.

With humor and humility, Moore takes us into the physical and spiritual geography of Buddhism American-style: from Change Your Mind Day (a sort of annual Buddhist Woodstock in Central Park), to a weekend at a mountain retreat for corporate executives learning effective ways to cope with stress, to a visit with a Zen teacher holding clases in an old Quaker farmhouse, to a meeting with a Catholic priest who's also a Zen master.

Too timid to dip you own toe into the still waters of Zen? Dinty Moore does it for you in The Accidental Buddhist, an utterly engaging book by a writer who started out wanting to chart cultural change and ended up changing his own life.

Dinty W. Moore has worked as a documentary filmmaker, professional modern dancer, wire-service journalist, and college creative writing professor. He has published fiction and poetry in numerous national literary magazines and is the author of another book of nonfication, The Emperor's Virtual Clothes: The Naked Truth About Internet Culture. He lives with his wife and daughter in State College, Pennsylvania.

'I am an accidental Buddhist. I never intended to find a new religion, I was just passing curious, I started to notice Buddhism everywhere. Business Week was writing long articles about meditation sessions in major corporations and on Wall Street. School-children and cops on the beat were being encouraged to breathe as a way to fight stress. Buddhist monasteries and retreat centers were flourishing in out-of-the-way places, and Newsweek declared that 'America may be on the verge of Buddhadharma.'I wanted to know what was going on, so I went on retreats myself and interviewed the key players. Before long, I, too, was hooked. I hadn't counted on actually liking it.'-Dinty W. Moore

Contents

Acknowledgments
Prelude
Part 1: Zen mind, muddled mind
1 Buddha 101: Stumbling up monkey mind mountain
2 One bright idea: My American Buddhism project
3 Just sitting: I obsess a lot, and then I get distracted
4 Zen gardening: Me and my green-thumbed monkey
5 Why do Tibetans have such trouble with their vacuum cleaners? They lack attachments
Part 2: Practice makes perfect
6 Catholic boy Zen: Was Jesus a Bodhisattva?
7 You can change your mind: And your karma, too
8 The work Koan: Life without a cushion
9 The plain-spoken Theravadan: A high view from a low seat
10 Buddha bug, Buddha being: You are what you eat
Part 3: Real Buddhists don't take notes
11 Destroy your neighbor, destroy yourself: The Dalai Lama and the action hero
12 Trying to hit the ball: Fruitless searching on the fruited plain
13 Eat your rice, wash your bowl, and just sit: Studying with the seven-year-old master
14 What kind of Buddhist am I? A lousy one, thank you
Basic Buddhist terms
Suggested further reading (bibliography)