We should have seen this coming. The baby boomers experimented with everything; they left their childhood faiths for other faiths or nothing at all; they intermarried and raised their children to be “spiritual but not religious.” Now a small but growing number find themselves in the uncomfortable but not necessarily unhappy position of driving their high-school-age kids to Buddhist retreats. Diana Winston, the author of “Wide Awake: A Buddhist Guide for Teens,” has been teaching Buddhism to youth for more than a decade, and she says she’s seen it change from a fringe practice to something normal and accepted, especially on the coasts. (In the middle of the country, Winston says, kids sometimes practice Buddhism in secret; they write to her, looking for someone to talk to.) Mahagony Gamble, who oversees the high-school and young women’s division of SGI-USA—the Buddhist sect known for the chant “Nam myoho renge kyo”—says membership has exploded in the past two years, and a growing number of the new members are kids from non-Buddhist families who show up at meetings with their Buddhist friends from school.
One such member is Allegra Fonda-Bonardi, 18, the daughter of secular parents from Santa Monica, Calif. She discovered Buddhism six years ago, during “a very middle-school boy drama.” She turned to her best friend for help, and the friend suggested chanting. “I felt better almost immediately, and I said, ‘This chanting stuff is pretty cool’.” Now chanting twice a day, she meets regularly with other local SGI Buddhists, and she plays the trombone in a Buddhist band. Sumi Loundon, author of “The Buddha’s Apprentices,” thinks the new enthusiasm among teens is related to the ubiquity of Eastern religious and pseudo-religious practice: so many people meditate, chant and practice “mindfulness” that Buddhism no longer feels alien. But Fonda-Bonardi has another idea. “Honestly?” she says, before she rushes off to a rehearsal with Jackson Browne’s band. “I think this generation is looking for a philosophy of hope … We’re going to be inheriting this place. How will we create hope and peace in this new time?” Her parents, she says, are happy to drive her to meetings.
