Laurence Cox, The Buddha and the barcode: understanding 21st century Buddhism. Reading: South Street Press, 2000.
This short (15,000 words) book will be published this autumn. Here's the blurb and contents listings.
There are over a million Buddhists in western Europe today. From remote Scottish islands to busy Birmingham suburbs, people are turning to Buddhist ethics, meditation and wisdom to meet the challenges of everyday life in the 21st century. This book explores what is going on.
The Buddha and the Barcode looks at the essentials of Buddhism and how it came to Europe. It asks how it is changing in its interaction with modernity and what contemporary Buddhist practitioners actually get out of it. It also looks at why Buddhism is in the news: Hollywood celebrities, media scandals and majority world politics.
The Buddha and the Barcode focusses throughout on what Buddhism means in practice: how it works, why ordinary people dedicate themselves to Buddhist practices, how it has been understood and misunderstood, and where it is going on the edge of the 21st century.
Meditators and marketers, hermits and activists, lamas and tourists play through the scenes of Buddhism's encounter with modernity, making of it something new each time but drawing on Buddhism's fundamental challenge of transformation - awakening, freedom, and happiness.
The Buddha and the Barcode is an ideal introduction to Buddhism as it is lived today, explaining the fundamentals without long discussions of mediaeval philosophy and history. It is a challenging and original discussion of an ancient tradition in globalised modernity.