Western Buddhism: The 50 Year Lessons

It’s been about 50 years since the bulk of the Asian meditation masters arrived here — Japanese, Korean, Tibetan, Vietnamese and so on. Many of us have spent our whole adult lives trying to practice and absorb what they taught us. I’ve been thinking recently about the “50 year lessons” that we have gleaned during this time.

Some of the lessons have been transformative, others disappointing. Many of the lessons we learned the hard way — by making mistake after mistake (which is what my teacher Suzuki Roshi characterized as the basic quality of Buddhist practice, even for teachers). In this and the next post I want to present my 50 year lessons, at least those I have thought of so far.

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