Source: Los Angeles Times
In 1972, Jack Kornfield stepped off a plane in Washington, D.C., his head shaved and his body swathed in golden robes. He had come home to see if he could make it as a monk in America.
Kornfield had spent several contemplative years at a Buddhist monastery in Thailand, where he lived with few possessions, followed a strict monastic code and retreated each day to the lush forest for hours of meditation.
But in the U.S., he found no monasteries that practiced the Vipassana meditation he had studied. And the precepts he had followed in Thailand — which barred him from handling money and required that he eat only donated food — proved difficult to follow.
He gave up his robes and starting driving a taxi. He dated, got a doctorate in psychology and continued to practice Buddhism on his own terms, using the teachings he had learned to help cope with everyday life's ups and downs. And with time, he began to help build a new Buddhism.