If you liked Kathleen Norris's previous books, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography and The Cloister Walk, you'll love this one. Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, an old-fashioned miscellany with dozens of entries, offers honest, personal reflections on matters that are not exactly carpool conversation God, the Bible, idolatry, and eschatology to name but a few. Peppered with hundreds of biblical and literary allusions, Amazing Grace is a long conversation with thinkers and writers, like Emily Dickinson, who have influenced the author's spiritual evolution. Norris wrote this "vocabulary of faith" because she needed to explain, and redefine, church words to herself. As a lover of words, she found those used by the ecclesiastical establishment to be foreign, and often intimidating. In writing this book, she befriended the church's vocabulary, her way.

Norris, who for years distanced herself from orgainzied religion and defined her religious affilation as "nothing," now describes herself as a cross between a Roman Catholic and two types of Protestant. One grandmother was Methodist, the other Presbyterian; both, and more, are incorporated in Norris's mature faith. Though she is now more secure in her own faith, Norris does not try to convert the reader. She knows the difference between belief and doubt and sacred ambiguity. Her base may be Christian, but her range is global. Norris draws upon the wisdom of the Dalai Lama, who helps people recognize the value of where they have come from and tells them not to become Buddhist but to go home and become what they were meant to become. Readers will find themselves subtly, not powerfully, transformed.

Whether describing drinking gin gimlets in motels while working as a writer in residence at a North Dakota school or her battles with feminism and its appealing but angry theological residue, Norris is funny and up close and personal. Whether it is humor or wide-ranging, well-lived experience, this writer lives up to her title. She amazes with grace.

No, this is not a Zen koan. The answer to this, and to almost every other question about American Buddhism, can be found in the comprehensive and enlightening book, The Complete Guide to Buddhist America. This unique reference book, an expanded edition of Buddhist America, features articles by today's foremost Buddhist teachers, detailed listings of over 1,000 meditation centers in the U.S. and Canada, and more.

Editor Don Morreale proclaims in the foreword that "Buddhism has gone mainstream," a popular refrain in innumerable recent articles on the subject. Morreale goes on to provide an in-depth exploration of this trend and its relationship to the ancient, multi-faceted roots of this religion.

Divided into four sections, representing different traditions, the book lists centers and meditation groups and provides addresses, phone numbers, information on the facilities, programs, and retreats offered, and, yes, even e-mail addresses. Buddhists are high-tech too, you know.

I was impressed by the sheer number of sanctuaries, especially those that have sprung up in the unlikeliest of places. For instance, the Vietnam Buddhist Center in Sugarland, Texas, a beautiful oasis, does not exactly conform to our image of a Texas landscape or way of life. But then again, if there is one thing that I've learned from this book and from my own, limited, experience with Buddhism, it is truth can be found when expectations are not met.

"The religion of the future, Albert Einstein once wrote, "will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. . . . If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism." Of course, not all of Buddhism transcends the personal and the dogmatic, but much of it strives to. And although it isn't possible to reconcile all its claims with modern science, the religion or some of the many aspects of it is growing in popularity in this country. "America," according to Newsweek, "may be on the verge of Buddhadarma." Naturally this new interest in an Eastern religion manifests itself in all sorts of ways, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous greater awareness of Tibet's plight, classes on breathing and meditation techniques, a guru lecture circuit, an "Ask the Lama" column on the Internet, some questionable faith-healing practices, and a movie starring Brad Pitt.

And, of course, a spectrum of books to address all these issues. One new book that deals as much with the headlines of the 20th century as with timeless aphorisms is Palden Gyatso's The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk. Captured by Mao's oppressive regime and imprisoned for 33 years, until 1992, Palden Gyatso suffered torture and persecution simply because he exemplified a Tibetan way of life that the Chinese had vowed to destroy. His is a story of quiet heroism that demonstrates beliefs better than any lecture could describe them.

A good place to begin filling in the background of all this recent history is The Roaring Stream: A New Zen Reader. Out of more than a thousand years of writings about Zen and its predecessor Ch'an, editors Nelson Foster and Jack Shoemaker have mined 350 pages of both classic and lesser-known commentators, from Bodhidharma to the poet Po Chu-i. The selections by each author are introduced with extremely helpful historical and biographical comments. With a deliberate emphasis on writings about women and lay people, The Roaring Stream reveals aspects of a tradition sometimes overlooked today.

An anthology of classic writings is Buddhist Texts Through the Ages, edited by Edward Conze and others. Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Tibetan texts have all contributed to the growth of Buddhism over the centuries. This book offers 214 excerpts from them.

Mary Craig tells a story that falls into the realm of general nonfiction more than that of Eastern thought. Kundun: A Biography of the Dalai Lama focuses on the parents and siblings of the child who, at his birth in 1933, was chosen as the latest incarnation of the Dalai Lama. The story of the family seems to be the story of the nation hardship, struggle, occasional triumph, and the usual tangle of emotions and loyalties that make families so . . . interesting.

For quite a different take on the whole subject of Buddhism, read a lively new anthology entitled Being Bodies: Buddhist Women on the Paradox of Embodiment, edited by Lenore Friedman and Susan Moon. Our very urge to transcend the body demonstrates deep ambivalence about our mortal coil. That "embodiment" could be seen as a paradox at all is one of the questions this challenging book addresses, through essays, poems, and interviews.

An entertaining and even amusing survey of the varied flavors of Buddhism appears in The Compass of Zen, by Seung Sahn. Based upon his talks, this book presents the basic questions in many short, accessible chapters woven around anecdotes and dialogues. From the Four Noble Truths to the Five Human Desires, this book seems to cover the whole mathematics of insight.

If you'd like to apply classic Buddhist writings to your own life, a handy guidebook might be a new book by Lama Surya Das, Awakening the Buddha Within: Eight Steps to Enlightenment. Although the title sounds like a pocket field guide, this book actually consists of 400 pages of explanation, anecdote, and a quietly developing demonstration of a philosophy of life that, even a skeptic must admit, would change the world.

Here's something for the budding Buddhist or the merely curious youngster. Sherab Chodzin and Alexandra Kohn offer a charming book (tainted by the publisher with the old line "for children of all ages," but that's not the book's fault) entitled The Wisdom of the Crows and Other Buddhist Tales. From half a page to several pages long, the fables herein read like a cross between the Brothers Grimm and the Bhagavad Gita. The illustrations are lovely and capture the Eastern flavor while remaining friendly and even humorous. It's difficult to imagine a more entertaining introduction to a different culture.

One recent book answers a question you probably never thought to ask: Can a seeker named after a beef stew find true enlightenment while really just looking around? "I never intended to find a new religion," Dinty W. Moore admits in The Accidental Buddhist: Mindfulness, Enlightenment, and Sitting Still. "I was just passing curious." But his exploration of Buddhism as a cultural phenomenon led him to embrace it as a philosophy of life. Very much a personal, anecdotal account, the book can be refreshingly irreverent while demonstrating the puzzled response of Moore's acquaintances to his new-found faith.

The thing that strikes one first about The Best Spiritual Writing 1999 is how non-traditional many of the pieces are. The perspectives of many faiths including Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, and Zen Buddhism are represented in this second annual anthology. Essays on parenthood, prayer, travel, and nature touch upon spiritual sensibilities without emphasizing any specific religious discipline. Interspersed among these essays are poems on anger, grief, and hope by Virginia Hamilton Adair, Seamus Heaney, Luci Snow, and others.

A unifying theme in the collection is that a spiritual outlook is the ability to see the divine in the ordinary in things taken for granted. A sparkling example is Tom Junod's surprisingly candid profile of Fred Rogers (Mr. Rogers to over three decades of kids), which reveals an everyday man on a spiritual mission. In Can You Say . . . 'Hero'? Junod shows a quiet prophet walking among us, one who can touch us all. Another non-traditional perspective is found in Jonathan Rosen's The Talmud and the Internet. In a witty but bittersweet story of his grandmother's death and his search for a passage from John Donne with which to eulogize her, Rosen compares the web of insight, opinion, and dissension contained on a single page of the Talmud to the World Wide Web from which he finally retrieves the poem. Mary Gordon contributes a more somber piece on visiting her mother in a nursing home. In Still Life, Gordon addresses the questions "Who are we?" and "Why are we here?", and she conveys an acceptance of the unknowability of the answers. This anthology engages, informs, and entertains. The pieces range from Bernie Glassman's heartbreaking description of grief to Larry Woiwode's celebration of nature.

This collection shows that great spiritual writing is universal in its reach. It does not try to persuade or convert. It simply reveals each individual's experience and offers it as a building block to the faith of the larger community.

Lisa Baker is a freelance writer in Wayland, Massachusetts.

In 1830, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church) began in upstate New York with six men. At the millennium, it counts over ten million members (more than half of them living outside the United States), and, at the present rate, projects a likely 263 million members by 2080. Now that's success, especially in a time when the organized church is regarded with suspicion and distaste by many spiritual seekers.

Apart from the Catholic Church, the Mormon Church is possibly the most organized church in Christendom. The Ostlings (husband and wife, admittedly conventional Protestants ) have produced a candid but nonpolemical overview that fully achieves their intention to focus on what is distinctive and culturally significant about this growing American movement for outsiders and insiders alike.

They detail the results of intensive research into such matters as Mormon history, structure, unique teachings, and redefinitions of traditional Christian beliefs. In the judgment of this non-Mormon Gentile, the authors succeed for the most part in their objective stance, although Mormon readers may not agree. In either case, they provide much to ruminate upon and, in the process of comparing Mormonism to other Christian faiths, a short course in traditional theology for adherents who tend to be ignorant these days about the basis of their own beliefs.

The Ostlings point out the many strengths of the Mormon Church: the Saints' devotion to their faith, their high expectations for their young, their personal moral behavior, their extraordinary tithing, and their fasting for the needy. More controversial matters are not glossed over, such as Mormon teachings on continuing revelation; the position of women and blacks; vicarious baptism for the dead (including Catholic saints, Jews, and others); and secret temple rites (curiously Masonic).

Agree or disagree, you will be enlightened and instructed by this book.

Maude McDaniel has written over 300 book reviews for the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, among others.