Footnotes on Ann Gleig's "American Dharma"

A summary preview of “Introduction” and Chapter 1, “Buddhist Modernism from Asia to America” from Ann Gleig's book, American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity (Yale University Press, 2019. From a series of lectures by Dr Frances Garrett for a University of Toronto course that surveys historical, cultural, and textual contexts for Buddhist meditation, with a focus on the role of race in the history of Buddhist meditation in North America. We examine how Buddhist meditation practices including mindfulness have been shaped by, and even contributed to, forces like colonialism, orientalism, capitalism, and white supremacy in the last hundred years or so in North America.