User talk:Jlharry12345/Buddhism in the United States

Comments on your plan
Hello!

I appreciate your reflections on areas where the Wikipedia page could be improved, and the other peer reviewer's comments (Natanxoza) seemed right on target to me. I especially liked their point about adding more pictures since they do peter out towards the end of the page.

It really is such a big page, and topic, it's hard to know how to most productively make your intervention. One thought: what about developing the section on "accreditation" towards the end. You bring up in your plan an interest with the whole question of authority. Indeed, the question of authentic/authoritative lineage is so important in Asian religions, which in some ways is exacerbated by the context of diaspora. How can the dharma and, more importantly, the accredited EXPERIENCE of fully realizing the dharma, get transmitted from teacher to student, under the disrupted conditions of modernity, migration, translation of Buddhism across cultural and linguistic barriers, etc? Anyway, that's a deep question, which you would be well-equipped to address. Check out Helen Tworkov's book, Zen in America. In the back of it, she has a chart showing the dharma transmission lines for different figures, including Nyogen Senzaki, the Zen monk whose poems about the Japanese incarceration are so well known. He was never formally granted an official "dharma certificate" or what-have-you by his teacher, and yet nonetheless went on to teach and influence many people, including Robert Aitken.

Ziegenbalg66 (talk) 15:26, 28 November 2022 (UTC)