BUDDHISM IN AMERICA

(9 of 9)

Yauch himself is remarkably slight and soft-spoken, given the aggressiveness of his group's punk-rap music but then since he began practicing Tibetan Buddhism, the group spits into the crowd a lot less. Yauch, brought up secularly by a Jewish father and Catholic mother, first meditated after attending teachings by the Dalai Lama in India in 1992. "It felt logical to me," he explains. "Real, not hokey." He spends anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours a day in cross-legged contemplation. Back braced against the wall--a flaw in technique, he'll admit--he repeats short prayers, in English, assigned by his teacher. He prefers not to share their content, other than that they have to do with having "no interest in self except for where it can benefit other beings." He waxes genuinely enthusiastic about becoming "more aware of what I do now and how it affects other people."

Yauch, 33, does not disagree with Thurman--"to really be a Buddhist practitioner, you need a real lama and direct link to the heritage," he says. But his youth and enthusiasm make the possibility seem more palatable. "There's something going on," he says. "It's at its inception, its birth; it's kind of helpless right now. But as it takes root, it will evolve into American Buddhism."

Two generations ago--two years ago, actually, given his milieu--he would have been a curiosity. Today he is something of a role model, although his attitude about this can only be called detached. "I'll walk through life and do the best I can to benefit other human beings," he says. "Feels like I'm in for the long haul, at least for this lifetime."

--Reported by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles and Richard N. Ostling/New York