Tarthang Tulku, a Tibetan Buddhist expatriate now living in the United States, has begun an extensive mission effort with two goals: the preservation of his Tibetan Buddhist heritage; and the adaptation of Buddhism to the new American environment. The study determines the potential that these efforts possess for the development of an emergent American style of Buddhism. Three aspects of his work are examined for their degree of adaptation: doctrine; community life; and ritual/meditational praxis.;Tarthang Tulku expresses the teachings of classical Buddhist philosophy in American thought-forms. He formulates the Buddhist philosophy of emptiness in terms of the interrelationship of Time, Space, and Knowledge as Being. He remythologizes the jargon of humanistic psychology, transforming it into a working vocabulary of practical terms that are infused with new Buddhist meanings. He develops a community structure based upon a suffusive model that is appropriate to the fragmentation of modern society, and which depends heavily upon mass communication to hold its elements in contact. He radically reorients his community from the traditional focus on monastic concerns to a lay emphasis--in effect, a "monkless" Buddhism that is designed for life in the modern secular world. In ritual/meditational praxis, however, the practitioner is drawn into a symbolic world that is still Tibetan in orientation. Ritual is deliberately preserved in its traditional form, and meditational practice is based upon the Tibetan symbol of the "yogic body.".;The study concludes that, although much progress has been made toward an emergent American Buddhism, Tarthang Tulku's community remains a "Buddhism in transition" from East to West. Since the target audience of his efforts is the young, urban professional, the study suggests that Tarthang Tulku draw upon the rich symbolism of the "new American wilderness" of city life to provide an American focus to ritual/meditational praxis.
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