Gil Fronsdal
| Gil Fronsdal | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Religion | Theravāda Buddhism |
| School | Sōtō Zen |
| Personal | |
| Born | 1954 |
| Religious career | |
| Website | Insight Meditation Center |
Gil Fronsdal is a Norwegian-born, American Buddhist teacher, writer and scholar based in Redwood City, California. He has been practicing Buddhism of the Sōtō Zen and Vipassanā sects since 1975, and is currently teaching the practice of Buddhism in the San Francisco Bay Area. Having been taught by the Vipassanā practitioner Jack Kornfield, 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 monk in Burma in 1985. In 1995, he received Dharma transmission from Mel Weitsman, 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 from Stanford University. His many dharma talks available on line 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 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.
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