Following Our Bliss

October 1, 2003
Next month, Yale will publish Mark Oppenheimer's Knocking on Heaven's Door, a study of how the 1960s changed the face of mainstream American religion. Similarly, in Following Our Bliss: How the Spiritual Ideals of the Sixties Shape Our Lives Today, religion journalist Don Lattin traces the religious legacy of the turbulent decade. Unlike Oppenheimer, however, he focuses his attention most toward alternative movements: the Esalen Institute, the Hare Krishnas, the Unification Church and the movement founded by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. In one particularly engaging chapter, Lattin interviews the "dharma kids": second-generation American Buddhists like Dharma Punx author Noah Levine.