The Buddha from Brooklyn

...With the publication of Christian serts, although on what grounds is not Eugene McCarraher Critics, readers may now judge McCarraclear...

...More specifically, would be to identify precisely the most across the political spectrum, and intro- he examines how religious and secular disturbing practices, beliefs, or incidents duced a new phrase-"Starbucks Catholi- intellectuals sought to adapt two particin the world of a "cult" (paying careful cism"-into the vocabulary of educated ular traditions, Protestant republicanism attention to the personal sources of the observers of American religion...

...concludes...

...In her late teens, Zeoli Holiness Penor Rimpoche, a prominent Brooklyn landed in North Carolina, where she and figure among exiled Tibetan Buddhists...

...Hoping for a more exalted past of a community of men and women who many lifetimes on other planets and lost life, of the sort she had enjoyed with believed that the surest path to their sal- continents...

...God Jesus-she stood with him on Calvary-a vation was to give their lives over to her...

...Among this book's achievements lovers and followers, "was like in the at- neer, several business people, a solar enare the patient way in which the author mosphere," " and this seems true of all her ergy expert, an NBC sound technician, comes to her conclusions, the frank way relationships...

...as it is, she tells us a very good story about an Italian-American woman from Brooklyn who becomes an incarnated Buddha...

...is energy which we share...

...monk appeared at the Center's new loca- paid Jetsunma a salary that threatened to The Buddha from Brooklyn represents tion in Kensington, Maryland, collecting bankrupt them, they financed her exa change in the way journalists deal with disturbing and unusual religious phenomena...

...she begins experimenting with and you are already practicing Buddhism...

...the most ef- displeased Alyce/Catharine added that Sherrill, a reporter for the Washington fective response to social problems is she was the reincarnation of the Buddha Post, finally decides that Jetsunma's Ti- prayer...

...Penor Rimpoche announced to ligious figure recognizes her as a special those at the Center, "You are all Buddhists Robert A. Orsd being...

...In that ar- and Catholic medievalism, to the twenfears they evoke) and use them as the oc- ticle, and in his unrepentant response to tieth-century reality of corporate capitalcasion for shaping questions of broader his critics in a subsequent issue, McCar- ism...

...Jetsunma's proselytizing de- raher attacked American Catholicism for of these traditions in shaping oppositional ployment of her sexuality ("cult...

...Three patterns emerge in meeting my mind" (she had no idea who Zeoli's life at this time: A respected re- he was...

...If only Sherrill had resisted the impulse to reassure us that they are not we, she could have told us something about the contemporary American religious landscape...

...raises the issue of the interplay of the erotic and the spiritual in religious cultures generally (including the "mainstream" ones...

...and she gains and loses tremendous India in 1987-where she channeled the Martha Sherrill gets to this weight as she moves from depression, prophet Jeremiah, utterly bewildering her question at the very end of boredom, and loneliness to being the ob- hosts-Alyce/Catharine was declared by her account of the career of Brooklyn's ject of others' erotic and spiritual desires...

...Commonweal 2 2 October 6, 2000...

...However, by surrendering in the end to the pervasive cultural pressure to secure the boundary between "cult" and "religion," Sherrill deprives herself and her readers of the opportunity to think about what Jetsunma's world might teach us more broadly about American religions, and about ourselves...

...all souls are connected...

...I can't stand people looking over my shoulder...

...Not surprisingly, neither topic has gotten much attention in the study of American religions, except in relation to "cults...

...I felt," she remembers, "like I was New Life...

...A more useful heuristic launched a storm of protest from readers torical conversation...

...Penor Rimpoche to be the reincarnation Alyce Louise Zeoli, also known as Jet- It is also here that Zeoli (now Catharine) of Ahkon Lhamo, a saint and religious insunma Ahkon Lhamo, founder and guru develops her theology: We have all lived novator...

...This is an important book that should Maybe Sherrill should have turned it go a long way toward shifting intellectuinto a freak show...

...7 Robert A. Orsi, author of The Madonna of 115th Street, teaches in the religious studies "just think of monotheism as an economy measure...

...Dharma (Buddhist truth...

...Martha Sherrill a new boyfriend, Michael Burroughs, Zeoli broke down at her first glimpse of Rarutom House, $2i.95,392 pp...

...Born in 1949, Zeoli was raised in CaCommonweal 2 1 October 6, 2000 pensive whims, covered the costs of her failed moneymaking schemes, indulged her in luxury lingerie and vacations, ap- RELIGION & POLITICS, AGAIN proved her appetite for boy and girl toys (whom she ordered into monastic celibacy when she was done with them), uri- its capitulation to a corporate capitalist sonated on an effigy of her hated ex-hus- cial order characterized by bureaucratic band, and, when Jetsunma demanded, managerialism and a pick-and-choose surrendered their children to her...

...They life choices of Jetsunma's followers...

...ma Continent of Absolute Clear Light, tuneteller (which she was): "Our con- Back in Maryland, Jetsunma's folor KPC), in Poolesville, Maryland, was a nection," she says of meeting one of her lowers, who included a software engicult...

...maybe someday the KPC will be Cornell University Press, $$26.95, 288 pp.her's critique of "Starbucks Catholicism" democratic...

...Cult" is best understood not as her...

...founded the Center for Discovery and him...

...The monk asked her to host His The Buddha from abusive stepfather...

...Its purpose is to stop Hidden Triumph of the Consumer Ethos," unfinished, creative, and animated hisand contain...

...Sher- Christian Critics spiritual consumerism...

...Conceiving of sunma and the KPC in relation to any- doubt be familiar with the this impasse as in many ways a conflict thing else, except other cults (which Sher- R writing of Eugene McCarra- between progress and its critics, McCarrill does...

...On a visit to tween a cult and a religion...

...Then she in Modern American have to date been confined to academic panics...

...and a Bally fitness trainer, all comfortin which she discusses her doubts and Shortly after she inscribed the Buddhist able enough to fund the KPC out of their misgivings, and the respect and sympa- prayer "oM AH HUM" on the vanity plates of pockets and trust funds, began prosthy shown for the spiritual concerns and her Renault Alliance, an itinerant Tibetan trating themselves before her daily...

...The willingness of KPC members to give Jetsunma their offspring challenges us to think about what use people make of children in any religious setting...

...The appearance of the Christopher Shannon al debate beyond the liberal/conservaword "cult" in the text obliterates further tive stalemate that has plagued religious thought, making it impossible to see Jet- eaders of this journal will no as well as secular thought...

...department at Indiana University...

...McCarraher shows the central role application...

...McCarraher's rill hangs tough through all of this, never Religion and the Impasse more fully developed historical arguments turning it into a freak show...

...His 1997 Commonweal ar- raher looks beyond modernism and antia descriptor, but as a command, like a ticle, "Smile, When You Say 'Laity: The modernism to a notion of tradition "as an law officer's "Halt...

...B 0 0 K S Spiritual desires & then some narsie by her mostly absent mother, a alms...

...Zeoli is clearly an attractive and and took the name Jetsunma (a reworkbetan Buddhist center, called Kunzang compelling woman, with the interper- ing of the title of the Dalai Lama's sister, Palyul Choling (Fully Awakened Dhar- sonal sensitivity of a really talented for- Jetsun...

...right now, it's a cult, she in its full historical complexity...

...different ways of praying, in search of The fabric of Zeoli's mind, he said, was the hat is the difference be- the most "efficient and powerful" one...

...Religion is democratic, she as- Social Thought journals...

...Zeoli's life was about to change in a psychotic grandmother, and a drunken, big way...