The Accidental Buddhist: Mindfulness, Enlightenment, and Sitting Still

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 own 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 classes in an old Quaker farmhouse, to a meeting with a Catholic priest who's also a Zen master.