Bringing Home the Dharma

Coming out just before Christmas 2011 is this latest offering from author and retreat leader Jack Kornfield. Its stated theme is that awakening, though it may be fueled by formal meditation, is intimately related to every aspect of life. I say “stated” because the book is really a broad retrospective on Kornfield’s long career as a meditation teacher. He addresses mindfulness in the light of decades of practice, celebrates the teachers who originally inspired him in the 1970s, and surveys the particular difficulties Buddhism faced as it filtered into an American context over the last forty years.

With such an extensive background, Kornfield is able to address Buddhist meditation not only from the Pali texts and from his own experience, but also by drawing on huge experience in dealing with the problems and successes of retreatants. This has demonstrated to him again and again the healing power of choiceless awareness. Though some basic meditation instructions appear in the last section of the book, the emphasis is on offering reflections for experienced meditators.

Kornfield’s Buddhism is very much Buddhism for Westerners rather than traditional, “hardcore” Buddhism. He discusses the value of a peaceful mind when encountering the world, and in particular when facing its political conflicts. He also covers the subject of parenting for meditators. One chapter addresses the issue of forgiveness, certainly a concern for many, while not being an issue emphasized in more traditional approaches. The path to enlightenment is often turbulent, he goes on to say, and the peace that follows the turbulence is then agitated when we come back into contact with the world outside of retreat centers.

In the middle sections of the book, Kornfield surveys the history of his involvement in Buddhism. He reflects on his initiation into Buddhism as a twenty-something monk in Thailand and repeats stories of his interactions with Ajahn Chah. The material on Dipa Ma I found particularly powerful and inspiring. Kornfield then describes the characteristics of the type of Buddhism he has developed since the 1970s — a lay Theravada movement led by converts and centered around meditation rather than monasteries. He calls this “American Buddhism,” though it has to be said that it’s really only one of the many forms of Buddhism in America, since it coexists with other, more traditional varieties. He describes the founding of the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts and Spirit Rock meditation center in California. Other topics covered include some of the hot topics of the last forty years — drugs, the sex lives of gurus, and the relationship between meditation and psychotherapy.

Though Bringing Home the Dharma offers little that will be new to fans of Kornfield’s earlier works, I think they will enjoy it as a summing up of his long teaching career.

Jack Kornfield. Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are. Shambhala, 2011. Hardcover. 304 pages. ISBN 9781590309131. $24.95.