Buddhist Practice on Western Ground: Reconciling Eastern Ideals and Western Psychology

Description

When Western students get involved with Buddhist meditation without understanding the cross-cultural translation required, their responses to the teachings are often coloured by unrealistic expectations or unconscious filters. Buddhist Practice on Western Ground explores the expectations that Westerners bring to Buddhism and the ways that they prematurely limit what they can learn from it.

Harvey B. Aronson, Ph.D., M.S.W., is a psychotherapist in private practice and a Buddhist meditation teacher. He is founder and teacher-in-residence at the Dawn Mountain Tibetan Temple, Community Center, and Research Institute in Houston, Texas. He travels and lectures on Buddhist philosophy and psychology at universities and at academic and Buddhist conferences around the country.

"An amazingly helpful book . . . Aronson realizes the value of psychotherapy, Theravada, and Tibetan Buddhism, and weaves them together so that, even outside their respective cultural contexts, their advantages are experienced and their pitfalls avoided."-Jeffrey Hopkins, Ph.D., author of Maps of the Profound and Cultivating Compassion "As a psychotherapist and Buddhist scholar and teacher, Harvey B. Aronson has a lot of wisdom to share that will help Western Dharma practitioners to establish a healthy, clear foundation for achieving liberation. Aronson raises important questions and provides helpful insights about complications that can occur when Eastern and Western cultures come together. I have been waiting a long time for this book."-Geshe Rinpoche, author of Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep