Evolving Dharma: Meditation, Buddhism, and the Next Generation of Enlightenment

Evolving Dharma is a next-generation book about meditation, Buddhism, and the contemplative path.

Evolving Dharma is a next-generation book about meditation, Buddhism, and the contemplative path. It explores how the dharma (the path, the way, the teachings of the Buddha) has evolved in astonishing ways and how dharma practice evolves in one’s own life. Instead of approaching the dharma as spirituality, therapy, or self-help, scholar and practicing Buddhist Jay Michaelson presents it as a set of technologies for upgrading the brain, for physically enhancing its capacity for wisdom and compassion.
In the last twenty years, Buddhism has exploded well beyond its former boundaries. Meditation is being taught to prisoners, cancer patients, and children. It is being practiced online–by geeks, hipsters, and punks; by atheists, Christians, and Jews; by people who are not spiritual. It’s not even Buddhism anymore, having evolved out of its original religious context and into dozens of new ones. Evolving Dharma is the first book to take stock of these trends, and to speak in real-life terms about how they affect the practice of meditation and the path to upgrading the mind.
Michaelson is fearless, unorthodox, and irreverent, yet his book is also based on his decad