Between the convert Buddhists and the ethnic Buddhists, Prebish says, there has been a "glaring divide." To the converts, meditation — their own meditation — is key. In the Buddhism practiced in temples such as Wat Dhammagunaram Buddhist Temple in Layton, as in Buddhist temples in countries like Thailand and Vietnam, it is mainly the monks who meditate, not the lay congregation.

But, nationwide, this divide is closing, Prebish says. "What seems to be a new buzzword is 'hybridity."' The converts who meditate are now more likely to think beyond their own mats, and the ethnic Buddhists now sometimes meditate. At the Salt Lake Buddhist Temple, where 90 percent of the congregation is Japanese-American, there is now a meditation hour every Sunday morning, in addition to the regular service and the kinds of Lagoon outings, fundraisers and holiday celebrations found in any religious community.

Buddhism at its most profound is about the meld of mindfulness, community and ethical conduct. Many Westerners pick and choose what they want out of Buddhism, says longtime Salt Lake Buddhist practitioner Richard Glade. To focus on meditation alone, as some Westerners do, instead of focusing on "what is really about a change of heart, a change of lifestyle, a change of view, is a little like taking the seeds out of the orange and throwing the rest away."

Glade, who is a Salt Lake psychotherapist, leads meditation and teaches Buddhist precepts at a group that meets downtown on Wednesday nights. He was asked to teach in 1990, at the request of three senior Tibetan teachers, "with the idea that we would remain aligned with traditional practice without making a fancy show of it," he says.

One "change of heart" that Buddhism can lead to is bodhicitta: compassion toward all sentient beings and its related loss of attachment to the idea of "self." Or, as Glade puts it, "seeing others' suffering as as important as your own." Suffering, as Buddhists see it, is a result not of external events but the "grasping" we do toward a specific outcome, our inability to be present in the moment no matter what that moment holds, and our lack of understanding that everything is both impermanent and interdependent on the lives of others.

Meditation is the first step, one that can bring a "pliancy" to the mind, "kind of like tilling the field," says Khentrul Lodro Thaye Rinpoche, who is considered a reincarnation of a "realized being." But simply meditating to calm your mind — trying to "stop your thoughts" — can lead to a "flawed" meditation: one that may bring peace but not clarity.