The Big Bang, the Buddha, and the Baby Boom: The Spiritual Experiments of My Generation

by Nisker, Wes

• ISBN13: 9780062517661
• ISBN10: 006251766X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-03-06
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

<p><blockquote>Some deep alternative current has begun flowing out of the spiritual adventures and identity struggles of recent generations. Of course, we didn't create the conditions or questions of this new age; we got caught in them. The ground shifted, the old gods departed, the economic and political utopias crumbled, and the traditional answers were washed away. We didn't leave home; home left us.</blockquote></p><p>How did a nice Jewish boy from Nebraska become a Buddhist in California?</p><p>Join Wes "Scoop" Nisker as he takes us on a hilarious, wild ride from West to East and back again in his quest for true self and enlight-enment. Combining the best elements of memoir and social commentary, Nisker uses his own story to illuminate the Baby Boomers' roots of spiritual hunger in postwar America. His journey begins in middle America (Nebraska to be exact) in the middle of the twentieth century, travels through the heyday of the Beats and the Hippies, the birth of the modern environmental movement, and winds up in the current epi-center of Buddhism in the West -- California.</p><p>Full of colorful and immediately recognizable figures of art, religion, and popular culture -- from Alfred E. Newman to Allen Ginsberg -- The Big Bang, the Buddha, and the Baby Boom is a guided tour of both the outer and inner move-ments that have culminated in the growing culture of Western Buddhism -- a lasting, vivid picture of how the Baby Boom generation came to be identified with spiritual seeking, how they went about the search, what they have found and created, and what their true legacy is.</p>

Author Biography

Wes "Scoop" Nisker is author of the enduring classic Crazy Wisdom and the widely acclaimed Buddha's Nature, and is editor of the Buddhist journal Inquiring Mind. For the past twenty-five years he has been both a popular San Francisco Bay Area radio personality and a nationally known Buddhist mediation teacher

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Time of Your Life	ix
Starting Out Confused	1	(10)
Generation	11	(6)
A Brief History of Our Self	17	(8)
The College of Your Choice	25	(10)
The Down Beat	35	(8)
Flower Children	43	(9)
The Whole World is Listening	52	(19)
Outward Mobility	71	(22)
Inward Mobility	93	(9)
The New Age	102	(17)
Scientific Mystics	119	(15)
Green Consciousness	134	(17)
The Last News Show	151	(16)
Spiritual Politics	167	(17)
Coming Down	184	(11)
Epilogue: Carrying On	195