Gil Fronsdal (born 1954) is a Norwegian-born, American Buddhist teacher, writer and scholar based in

Redwood City Redwood City is a city on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California's Bay Area, approximately south of San Francisco, and northwest of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people to being a po ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

. He has been practicing

Buddhism Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religions, Indian religion or Indian philosophy#Buddhist philosophy, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha. ...

of the

Sōtō Zen Sōtō Zen or is the largest of the three traditional sects of Zen in Japanese Buddhism (the others being Rinzai and Ōbaku). It is the Japanese line of the Chinese Cáodòng school, which was founded during the Tang dynasty by Dòngshān ...

and

Vipassanā ''Samatha'' ( Pāli; sa, शमथ ''śamatha''; ), "calm," "serenity," "tranquillity of awareness," and ''vipassanā'' ( Pāli; Sanskrit ''vipaśyanā''), literally "special, super (''vi-''), seeing (''-passanā'')", are two qualities of t ...

sects since 1975, and is currently teaching the practice of Buddhism in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

. Having been taught by the Vipassanā practitioner

Jack Kornfield Jack Kornfield (born 1945) is an American writer and teacher in the Vipassana movement in American Theravada Buddhism. He trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Burma and India, first as a student of the Thai forest master Ajahn Chah and Maha ...

, Fronsdal is part of the Vipassanā teachers' collective at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. He was ordained as a Sōtō Zen priest at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1982, and was a

Theravāda ''Theravāda'' () ( si, ථේරවාදය, my, ထေရဝါဒ, th, เถรวาท, km, ថេរវាទ, lo, ເຖຣະວາດ, pi, , ) is the most commonly accepted name of Buddhism's oldest existing school. The school' ...

monk in Burma in 1985. In 1995, he received Dharma transmission from

Mel Weitsman Hakuryu Sojun Mel Weitsman (July 20, 1929 – January 7, 2021), born Mel Weitsman, was an American Buddhist who was the founder, abbot and guiding teacher of Berkeley Zen Center located in Berkeley, California. Weitsman was a Soto Zen roshi p ...

, the abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center. He is the guiding teacher of the Insight Meditation Center (IMC) of Redwood City. He has a PhD in

Buddhist Studies Buddhist studies, also known as Buddhology, is the academic study of Buddhism. The term ''Buddhology'' was coined in the early 20th century by the Unitarian minister Joseph Estlin Carpenter to mean the "study of Buddhahood, the nature of the Budd ...

from Stanford University. His many

dharma talks A Dharma talk (Sanskrit) or Dhamma talk (Pali) or Dharma sermon (''Japanese'': , ''Chinese'': ) is a public discourse on Buddhism by a Buddhist teacher. In Theravāda Buddhism, the study of Buddhist texts and listening to Dhamma talks by monks o ...

available online contain basic information on meditation and Buddhism, as well as subtle concepts of Buddhism explained at the level of the lay person. Fronsdal has been credited with identifying "what is perhaps the basic formula of success for any Buddhist group in America: 'spiritual' practice (that is, meditation) removed from Asian cultural expressions". Fronsdal has also been noted for his "analysis of the transformed role of ''sila'' (morality) in the western Insight Meditation Movement" and his view that the popularity of vipassana meditation in middle-class America is related to its message of "orthopraxy" (right action) and its lack of cultural and historical "baggage". His work has also been cited as a means by which First Nations people might "change the reality of

internalized oppression In social justice theory, internalized oppression is a concept in which an oppressed group accepts the methods and incorporates the oppressive message of the oppressing group against their own best interest. Rosenwasser (2002) defines it as believ ...

to the reality of peace" while his 2005 translation of the Dhammapada has been included in a suggested reading list for teaching college students about happiness. In a 2011 discussion of the meaning of mindfulness, the American

Theravada ''Theravāda'' () ( si, ථේරවාදය, my, ထေရဝါဒ, th, เถรวาท, km, ថេរវាទ, lo, ເຖຣະວາດ, pi, , ) is the most commonly accepted name of Buddhism's oldest existing school. The school' ...

Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

monk A monk (, from el, μοναχός, ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedica ...

Bhikkhu Bodhi Bhikkhu Bodhi (born December 10, 1944), born Jeffrey Block, is an American Theravada Buddhist monk, ordained in Sri Lanka and currently teaching in the New York and New Jersey area. He was appointed the second president of the Buddhist Publ ...

cited Fronsdal in the following passage as "neatly" summarizing the difference between traditional Buddhist practice and that being taught in the West:

Rather than stressing world-renunciation, they estern lay teachersstress engagement with, and freedom within the world. Rather than rejecting the body, these Western teachers embrace the body as part of the holistic field of practice. Rather than stressing ultimate spiritual goals such as full enlightenment, ending the cycles of rebirth, or attaining the various stages of sainthood, many Western teachers tend to stress the immediate benefits of mindfulness and untroubled, equanimous presence in the midst of life’s vicissitudes.

This approach has been described as having traditional forms of Buddhism "being expanded upon rather than rejected", with Fronsdal cited as calling on Vipassana teachers "to study traditional Buddhism, not in order to adopt it wholesale but to be more conscious about what is and is not adopted and to take more responsibility for assumptions and intentions underlying innovation". As such, Fronsdal is recognized as presenting meditation as "the heart of the Buddhist path" with the traditional Buddhist values of loving-kindness, ethics, and generosity as key elements in a mindfulness-based, spiritual life among practitioners who are more likely to describe their involvement as "spiritual" rather than "religious". In 2008

Peter Dale Scott Peter Dale Scott (born 11 January 1929) is a Canadian-born poet, academic, and former diplomat. A son of the Canadian poet and constitutional lawyer F. R. Scott and painter Marian Dale Scott, he is best known for his critiques of deep politics ...

, the Canadian-born poet and professor emeritus of English at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, published a poem dedicated to Fronsdal entitled ''Breathing exercise: a how-to poem.''

Publications

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Publications

References

External links