Gil Fronsdal (born 1954) is a Norwegian-born, American Buddhist teacher, writer and scholar based in Redwood City, California.
[5] 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".
[6] Fronsdal has also been noted for his "analysis of the transformed role of sila (morality) in the western Insight Meditation Movement" [7] 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".
In a 2011 discussion of the meaning of mindfulness, the American Theravada Buddhist monk Bhikkhu Bodhi cited Fronsdal in the following passage as "neatly" summarizing the difference between traditional Buddhist practice and that being taught in the West: Rather than stressing world-renunciation, they [Western lay teachers] stress engagement with, and freedom within the world.
[11]This approach has been described as having traditional forms of Buddhism "being expanded upon rather than rejected", with Fronsdal cited as calling on Vipassana teachers "to study traditional Buddhism, not in order to adopt it wholesale but to be more conscious about what is and is not adopted and to take more responsibility for assumptions and intentions underlying innovation".