The Pluralism Project at Harvard University

Jeff Wilson

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Buddhism in North Carolina Project

Jeff Wilson's work with the Pluralism Project and with Dr. Tom Tweed's Buddhism in North Carolina Project continues as Jeff researches the Buddhist centers in the western portion of North Carolina. These new profiles have now been posted, filling out the research on over 65 Buddhist centers found in that state.

Jeff Wilson writes a column for Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Five are archived here.

Jeff's article "Down Home Dharma" was published in August, 2002.

Buddhism in North Carolina Project

Asheville Vipassana Group (2002)

Cullowhee Sitting Group (2002)

Green Sangha of Western North Carolina (2002)

Mindfulness Practice Center of Durham (2005)

Mountain Zen (2006)

Nantahala Gorge Sitting Group (2006)

SGI - USA Asheville Chapter (2007)

Shambhala Meditation Center of Asheville (2006)

An Excerpt from Jeff Wilson's book: The Buddhist Guide to New York.

In the five boroughs of New York City alone, there are more than one hundred Buddhist temples, centers, and meditation groups spanning the entire range of Buddhist teachings, as well as dozens of Buddhist-oriented book- and supply stores, restaurants, and art dealers. Nowhere else in the history of Buddhism have so many different traditions and recources been available to a single population. New York simultaneously hosts cutting-edge Buddhist psychotherapist Mark Epstein and traditional Tibetan medicine man Eliot Tokar. There's a larger than lifesize statue of a Buddhist saint (which survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima) on the Upper West Side, as well as a museum devoted entirely to Tibetan art on Staten Island. In the East Village celibate monks and nuns maintain a Tibetan-style monastery, while a few blocks away the Village Zendo is run by an Irish American lesbian Zen master. Celebrity Buddhists Richard Gere and Philip Glass are meditating at the same time as prisoners in Sing Sing. From the performing arts to cuisine to the hundreds of turtles ritualistically released into Central Park ponds by Chinese Buddhists each year, Buddhism has made an indelible mark on the life and character of New York City.

Source:
Wilson, Jeff. The Buddhist Guide to New York. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2000, pp. xi-xii.