Grassroots Zen: Community and Practice in the Twenty-first Century

?Future generations may come to see the publication of Grassroots Zen as a pivotal in the emergence of a uniquely American Zen.”
?Rami Shapiro, Minyan: Ten Principles for Living a Life of Integrity

?Steger and Besserman offer something quite different, and quite welcome? a Zen that comes to terms with, and ultimately transcends, the hierarchical, sexist, otherworldly, and pseudo-militaristic overtones of the Zen tradition.” ?Library Journal

?This book will appeal to [all] who are uncomfortable with Zen’s hierarchies and moral prescriptions.” ?Shamhbala Sun

?... Steger and Besserman name and describe a phenomenon that is occurring all over the country: relatively small, democratically run groups of Zen Buddhist practitioners are banding together and sustaining a sangha, or community, free of the hierarchy and formality of the monastery.”
?Publishers Weekly

?A short, clear presentation on one way to make Zen less Japanese and more Western... ? ?Rita M. Gross, Buddhism After Patriarchy

Grassroots Zen offers a study of how one Zen group returned to an ancient Chinese tradition of community meditation practice without a leader or hierarchy. It outlines an authentic, ?grassroots” approach, urging people from all walks of life to come together in meditation and the study of dharma.

Married university professors and authors Manfred Steger (Gandhi’s Dilemma: Nonviolent Principles and Nationalist Power) and Perle Besserman (aka Perle Epstein) (The Shambhala Guide to Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism) studied first under the cultural weight of Japanese Zen, then with the light-footed lay master Robert Aitken. As Westerners, they found the freedom from tradition liberating.