Shambhala Sun

Shambhala Sun has good blog, where I found this article.

My thought is that being .7% of American population is an extreme minority position. I find a collective history very important.

Celebrating Buddhism in America: 30 Great Years

By Barry Boyce

Buddhism in America has changed dramatically in the three decades since the Shambhala Sun was founded. It’s been a fascinating time of growth, scandal, deepening practice, and ever-increasing impact on American society. The late Rick Fields, a former editor of the Sun, wrote the definite history of Buddhism’s early days in America. Now our senior editor, Barry Boyce, picks up the story.


In the mid-1970s, Rick Fields embarked on a little journey. It began simply enough, with a piece commissioned by Stewart Brand (the Whole Earth Catalog founder) for his Coevolution Quarterly. In “Beginning Buddhism,” Fields, who later became editor of the Vajradhatu Sun, set out to explain for “my father, my mother, and many other people” why Buddhism was important and relevant in the “rocky, concrete soil of America.” Working on the article sparked journalistic wanderlust in Fields, and as such pursuits are wont to do, the cataloging of Buddhism’s arrival on Western soil got out of control. He decided to track down all of the many paths Buddhism followed as it worked its way west. Eventually, his story would start with the Buddha and leave off in the late seventies. The resulting four-hundred-page book ended not with a stirring conclusion, however, but faded to black with an air of “to be continued…”

[Read whole article here.]