Angry Asian Buddhist

Happy Lunar New Year!

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:07:00 +0000

With no response to my feeble request for a holiday interview, I decided to answer the usual interview questions myself.

Who are you?

I’m an Asian American Buddhist blogger. I blog on Dharma Folk and the Angry Asian Buddhist blogs. As of the past few months, you’re likely to find more frequent updates on Twitter.

What’s the Buddhist significance of this holiday?

For most of my life I haven’t thought of this holiday as having any intrinsic connection to Buddhism. I’ve always seen it as a holiday derived from Chinese culture that’s been infused with some Buddhist practices. But the same could be said of a lot of other “Buddhist” holidays like Rohatsu, which at root is a Chinese harvest festival that’s evolved into something that most Western Buddhist bloggers would only recognize as a winter Zen retreat.

If there’s anything very “Buddhist” about this day, I’d say it’s an opportunity to start the year with some good “Buddhist” deeds, so that these deeds will hopefully trickle forward into positive habits throughout the year. I usually begin with a midnight vegetarian meal and later visit temple with family or friends.

That said, I just read on Rev. Heng Sure’s blog that this day has another Buddhist connection of which I’d never known: “For practicing Buddhists the first day of the lunar new year is the celebration of Maitreya Bodhisattva’s anniversary. Maitreya is famous for having subdued his temper through learning ‘patience under insult.’ You simply can’t upset him. Insults, curses, even blows will not get his goat or shake his equanimity. He has a big belly, not from greed for food but from holding all the chi (qi) that people have thrown at him. Swear at him, cut him off in traffic, insult his mother, he endures it all because he has subdued himself—his false pride and vanity are long gone. He sees through the surface of relationships and understands that you wouldn’t be giving him grief if you had peace of mind. Why increase your afflictions by getting caught up in your unresolved drama? It has nothing to do with him, and he won’t waste a second of precious lifetime struggling with hurt feelings or animosity.”

What does this holiday mean to you?

For me, the New Year is all about home, family, and community. Friends have been sending me Chinese New Year videos that remind me to appreciate my parents, to never underestimate the power of love, and to never leave home behind. I haven’t eaten a New Year dinner with my family in well over ten years, but I hope to change that starting next year.

What do you plan to do for the Lunar New Year?

I’ve already done the temple visits. On the Saturday before New Year, some friends invited me to visit Hsi Lai Temple. I hadn’t visited the temple in five years, so it was refreshing to walk around, partake in delicious vegetarian food, and observe some New Year rituals before the crush of visitors expected yesterday and today.

As I’m writing this post late at night on Lunar New Year’s eve, I’m probably going to have a small vegetarian snack at midnight before preparing for tomorrow. My New Year’s plan is to send good wishes to my family and friends, to practice sitting meditation in the morning and evening, and to reflect and plan on what I’d like to do differently this year compared to last year.

There are a couple other Lunar-ish New Years coming up, so stay tuned.

And Happy New Year!

Buddhist Holidays 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 12:18:00 +0000

I am going to try to continue last year’s experiment and interview people about how they celebrate Buddhist holidays. Many holidays went without interviews last year; I’m hoping this year will be more productive.

Lunar New Year · January 23
Losar · February 22
Magha Puja · March 7
Hanamatsuri · April 8
Thingyan · April 13–17
Songkran · April 13–15
Gotan-e · May 20–21
Vesak · June 4
Obon · July & August
Asalha Puja · August 2
Vu Lan · August 31
Ohigan · September 22
Kathina · November
Rohatsu · December 8

This list is by no means an exhaustive catalogue of Buddhist holidays. It’s more of a map (and reminder) for future holiday posts. You can find another partial list at About.com’s Buddhism page. If there are other Buddhist festivals you’d like for me to cover, just drop a note below in the comments (links would be useful too), and I will consider them.

Corrections are also most welcome.

Why is American Buddhism so White?

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:31:00 +0000

Shambhala Sun Foundation Staff

The provocative title of this post comes not from one of my sleep deprivation induced paroxysms of self-righteous indignation, but rather from a beautifully selected forum discussion in the current issue of Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly.

You can read the forward by Charles Johnson online, but you’ll have to buy a copy of Buddhadharma to read the entire discussion with Larry Yang, Amanda Rivera, angel Kyodo Williams and Bob Agoglia. You’ll also find a great piece by Jan Willis, “Yes, We’re Buddhists Too!” I couldn’t recommend this issue enough.

The forum discussion is one that readers of this blog really shouldn’t ingore. Read it and let me know: what did you think?

Support Lao Buddhists of Colorado

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 01:13:00 +0000

There is a huge backlog of Angry Asian Buddhist posts that I haven’t quite gotten around to, but some issues are more important than others. This is one of them. Gil Asakawa writes from Colorado:

The Laotians epitomize the ability of recent immigrant communities to hang together and promote their traditional culture and values while they (especially the younger generation) embrace American culture and values. That sense of unity will serve them well in the months to come, as they rebuild “their heart and soul,” as one tearful women described the temple.

[…]

I visited the temple yesterday afternoon and felt an indescribable sadness for their loss. Firefighters were still milling about, sifting through debris, probably investigating the cause of the fire. Police blocked the street (the temple faces a side street, not Wadsworth Blvd., which is a major thoroughfare). But a steady stream of Laotians kept coming by, parking their cars down the block and walking to the temple to pay their respects and offering their help.

One young man sitting in his car with his baseball cap askew rolled down the window and turned down the hip-hop on stereo to ask me details about the fire. I told him what I knew. He told me he’d helped the head monk for several years and considered him a mentor. A woman who parked her car and began walking began sobbing when she got her first look at the burned-out skeleton of the temple. She said she left work early when she first heard about the fire. Many of the visitors had just heard about the tragedy through the community grapevine while at work.

The community has established the Lao Buddhist Temple Fire Relief Fund at 1stBank, a Colorado-based bank chain, and is accepting donations to help rebuild the temple. You can find the nearest 1stBank location here, or call Sy Pong at 720-210-7555 or Maly at 720-217-6142.

It’ll help the Laotians bring back to life the heart—and soul—of their community.

Please support Colorado’s Lao Buddhists. You can learn more about the situation at the links below.

Congregation gathers at Buddhist temple lost in Westminster fire [Nina Sparano, KWGN]
Community rallies to rebuild Buddhist temple destroyed by fire in Colorado [Buddhist News]
Lao Buddhist Temple of Colorado Needs Help to Rebuild After Devastating Fire [Gil Asakawa, Huffington Post]
Buddhist Monks Hoping To Recover Temple Artifacts After Fire [Deb Stanley, ABC7News]
Blaze destroys Buddhist temple [CNN]

If you donate more than $250, I’ll send you a thank you card. More importantly, you’ll be providing enormous help to a Buddhist community that dearly needs it.

Update: In response to a question on Twitter, the fire occurred in Westminster, a suburb northwest of Denver. You can also get more information about donations at the temple’s website: laobuddhisttempleofcolorado.com.

The White Face of Buddhism: Now at Patheos

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 12:40:00 +0000

Danny Fisher just announced that he’ll be maintaining a new Patheos blog, which was mention enough to spark my smoldering curiosity and get me to check out the Patheos Buddhism Portal. So I visited and saw a landing page covered with the work of White people.

I really worked hard to find the Buddhist Asian folk, but Patheos seems to have created an almost perfect showcase for the stereotype online Buddhist: the White Buddhist American man.

Well okay, I managed to sniff out some diversity in that collection of essays on the “Future of Buddhism” in the United States. Among those 22 essays, you can find four written by Asian authors—namely Mushim Ikeda-Nash, Venerable Sheng Yen, Chade-Meng Tan and George Tanabe. With about 18% of those essays by Asians, this Patheos collection ranks at about the same level of Asianness as the general Western Buddhist publication—perhaps a noteworthy trend?

Yes I know that Justin Whitaker has publicly vowed to make the effort to try to be “more representative of American/Western Buddhism.” He even followed through by posting about an African American Buddhist! I can’t wait till he writes about another Person of Color!

So at least you know that the Patheos Buddhism Portal isn’t the exclusive preserve of White Buddhists. The Portal is not all White—it’s just overwhelmingly dominated by White American Buddhists. And that’s a problem.

Chocolate Chicago Buddha

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 11:04:00 +0000

I spotted this confection at the Chicago French Market.

I assume that this pâtissier only intended that a chocolate Buddha confection would sell well; I doubt any deliberate offense to Buddhists. Even so, this is perhaps too fine an example of Buddhism consumerized and ingested as such. Not quite the traditional Dharma Burger, but I would still put it in the same category.

The Pew study marginalizes Asian Americans

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 20:22:00 +0000

At the heart of my exhortations that Buddhists should ignore the Pew Forum’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey is that the study tragically misrepresents Asian America. Past critiques, such as those cited by Rev. Danny Fisher, focus on the Pew study’s methodological problems of potentially undercounting immigrants or omitting the state of Hawai‘i.

Fair points, but the impact of these methodological errors is hard to gauge. In other words, we can rail against the study’s methodological flaws until we’re red in the face, but in order to demonstrate (rather than speculate) that the outcome of the study is flawed, we have to look at the numbers. I’ve done this before, but given James Coleman’s ingenuous reading of the study, I feel obliged to do so again.

This exercise uses the estimated population of the United States during the year the Pew study was conducted—301.6 million (courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau)—in addition to three statistics from the Pew Study: 0.7% of Americans identify as Buddhist, 32% of American Buddhists identify as Asian, and 9% of Asian Americans identify as Buddhist.

Apply the first percentage to the total American population in 2007, and you end up with some 2.1 million Buddhists in America.

Now if 32% of those American Buddhists are Asian, then there are a mere 676,000 Asian American Buddhists.

The Pew study tells us that 9% percent of Asian Americans identify as Buddhist, and since we know the Pew estimates there are about 676,000 Asian American Buddhists, we can combine these two statistics to reveal the size of Asian America in the eyes of the Pew study. It’s simple algebra: if 9% of x equals 676,000 then you just need to divide 676,000 by 9% in order to find x (i.e. the number of Asian Americans). This yields 7.5 million Asian Americans, or about 2.5% of the American population.

But wait a moment! The U.S. Census estimates there were 15.2 million Asian Americans in that year. That’s more than twice the estimate we came to from the Pew study’s numbers.

Slice the numbers another way, and you arrive at the same dilemma. When Coleman writes about a very white liberal middle-class face of Buddhism, he bases his entire understanding on a set of numbers that are irredeemably skewed against Asian Americans. Take the Pew study’s Buddhism statistics at face value, as James Coleman does, and you partake in the racial marginalization of Asians in Western Buddhism.

I just can’t say it enough. Stop using the Pew study!

Why shouldn't Buddhists use the Pew study?

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 19:34:00 +0000

“The Face of Western Buddhism” (Buddhadharma Fall 2011) is a perfect case study of how to marginalize Asian American Buddhists in print. Sociologist James Coleman depicts Buddhist America using the effectively racist dichotomy of immigrants versus converts and he whitewashes American Buddhist history by ignoring several decades of Asian American Buddhist pioneers. Most problematic is that the author presents his case as one based on sound empiricism.

Coleman paints the picture of an affluent White Buddhist America where “roughly three-quarters of American Buddhists are converts,” where “Buddhists are more likely to identify themselves as liberals,” where Buddhists “are more likely to have a higher income and better education than the average American” and where “Buddhists are the fastest-growing religious group in American today.”

The meat of this analysis comes from the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life—a study that no self-respecting academic could use to describe American Buddhism without being guilty of racial marginalization. As I demonstrated before, the Pew forum can only come to this sort of conclusion because its survey is skewed toward White middle-class Americans.

The Pew study itself even admits that the survey deserves “caution” when looking at religious groups with large numbers of immigrants:

English-only surveys, and even English surveys with a Spanish option, are likely biased in that their samples do not sufficiently represent the full spectrum of Latinos, many of whom are recent immigrants and are unable to complete a telephone survey in English. […] This suggests that caution is also in order when estimating the number of adherents of other religious groups that are disproportionately composed of immigrants, such as Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and members of other world religions.

According to U.S. Census surveys, there were 14.9 million Asian Americans in 2007. If you follow the Pew study’s numbers, there were only 7.5 million. (You can do the math.) That’s a big difference and ample grounds to question any of the study’s findings on Buddhist America.

Honestly, people. Stop using the Pew study.

Taste of Chicago Buddhism

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 17:42:00 +0000

When I began blogging about Buddhism on Dharma Folk, there weren’t many Asian American Buddhists in the blogosphere. Now it seems as though every month I’m encountering a new blog written by an Asian American Buddhist. Taste of Chicago Buddhism is one such blog, written by Rev. Patti Nakai of the Buddhist Temple of Chicago.

The blog discusses topical issues on everything from Buddhism to Rev. Nakai’s community in ways that make me ever so slightly nostalgic for the Windy City. I particularly enjoyed her recent opinions on what students read about Buddhism. Her blog also paints another picture of “Chicago Buddhism” that’s quite a bit different from Stephen Asma’s red meat and whiskey version.

I hope you’ll have the chance to check out Taste of Chicago Buddhism and even enjoy it enough to add it to your blog list.

What Marginalization?

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 21:37:00 +0000

After reviewing my interview with Maia Duerr, I noticed in the comment section an unanswered question, which I hadn’t read before.

Arun: can you provide specific examples of the marginalization and denigration of which you speak — and I don’t mean examples from 30 years ago, but current. I am partly wondering if there’s a mis-attribution occurring. Having spent quite a bit of time with Korean American Buddhists, it strikes me that their form of Buddhism really is very, very different than that which Westerners have been in the process of adapting for themselves, but just because each is different and each are drawn to different forms, doesn’t necessarily mean there’s marginalization or denigration.

The most prominent examples of the marginalization of Asian Americans from the Western Buddhist narrative are found in high-profile Western Buddhist magazines, namely Shambhala Sun, Tricycle and Buddhadharma (the three largest by distribution). The paucity of Asian writers in these publications is well documented. A perfect recent example is Buddhadharma’s winter 2010 issue on women in Buddhism, “Our Way”, which completely left out the voices of Asian Buddhist women.

Another good example of our marginalization comes from the 2010 election, when the highest profile of the American Buddhist media swarmed around White candidates who didn’t identify as Buddhist, while ignoring the non-White candidates who did. It may have been twenty years ago that Tricycle founder Helen Tworkov wrote that Asian Americans “have not figured prominently in the development of something called American Buddhism,” but for many White Buddhists today, Asian Americans are still little more than an afterthought when “American Buddhism” comes to mind.

More subtle forms of marginalization include the ways that Asians are caged into stereotypes by the types of topics that Western Buddhist media choose to discuss with us. I recently demonstrated that while Buddhadharma typically allots just one or two spots for Asians on feature discussion panels, they make an exception for stereotypically Asian topics. The editors clearly know how to reach out to Asian Buddhists when they want to, but it seems that most of the time they are content with their almost exclusively White lineup of feature panelists.

Examples of our denigration are less frequent in published media these days, but abound online. During the firestorm over the Australian bhikkhuni ordination, Bhante Shravasti Dhammika lambasted Theravada Buddhists in Asia as “spiritually moribund, tradition-bound and retrograde.” I am still endlessly grateful to Bhante Sujato for standing up against accusations that misogyny in Western Buddhism is some by-product of Asian influence.

You need not dig too deep into the Buddhist blogosphere to find White-savior rhetoric or proposals to whitewash the face of Buddhism or White Buddhists who poke fun at Asian names. Beyond blogs, online forums host much franker assessments of “ethnic” Buddhists. (“They’re not really in the business of spreading the dharma.”) These words are far from the usual statements from Western Buddhist institutions, but they are part and parcel of the Western Buddhism that we Asians in the West must deal with.

When we complain about our marginalization, our complaints are repeatedly dismissed as invalid, divisive or even thrown back at us as examples of how we are lesser Buddhists. When the blogger Tassja wrote about White privilege in Western Buddhism, she was ripped apart with abusive language that I will not copy here. When my partner-in-crime Liriel wrote to Tassja’s defense by sharing her own personal story of growing up Buddhist in the West, she was called a racist and told that “it might be better to be a convert to Buddhism than to be born in to it.”

The examples here speak to the way that self-styled Western Buddhists use both online and print publications to craft a narrative of Buddhism in the West that marginalizes the voices of Asian Buddhists, who continue to constitute Western Buddhism’s largest demographic. Often, Asian voices are omitted altogether. The marginalization of our stories and perspectives results in a Western Buddhist media landscape where we are deprived of an effective rhetorical counterweight to the denigration of our communities, culture and Buddhist practice.

Our community is broad, including everyone from recent refugees to fifth-generation practitioners, from monastic teachers to social activists, and I would like to think that our lives are not so alien to those of Western Buddhism’s non-Asian practitioners that their publications are better off when we are pushed to the side.

Q&A with Jizo Chronicles

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:33:00 +0000

I am very honored that Maia Duerr reached out to interview me for the Jizo Chronicles blog, not to mention that she includes me in the group of “socially engaged Buddhists”! I have advocated for a long time that one of the best ways to reach out to Asian American Buddhists is to raise our profile in the magazines and blogs dominated by White Buddhist discourse. And Maia decided to do just that.

Ever wondered what’s up with my whole Angry shtick? Who inspires me? You can read the full interview here.

The Buddha in the Attic

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 15:51:00 +0000

I’m too time-crunched this morning to write my own thought-out post on this, so I’ll just quote the Angry Asian Man (to whom I owe a hat tip).

This week, finalists were announced for the 60th annual National Book Awards, the prestigious literary prize presented to exceptional American books written and published in the last year: Finalists Named for National Book Awards.

There are five finalists in four categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people’s literature. What’s noteworthy is that the short list for fiction includes Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic, a fictional retelling of the postwar Japanese American experience.

And from the Amazon book description…

In eight incantatory sections, The Buddha in the Attic traces their extraordinary lives, from their arduous journey by boat, where they exchange photographs of their husbands, imagining uncertain futures in an unknown land; to their arrival in San Francisco and their tremulous first nights as new wives; to their backbreaking work picking fruit in the fields and scrubbing the floors of white women; to their struggles to master a new language and a new culture; to their experiences in childbirth, and then as mothers, raising children who will ultimately reject their heritage and their history; to the deracinating arrival of war.

This book sounds like one to definitely consider adding to your reading list. And congrats to Julie Otsuka!

Happy Columbus Day!

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 08:57:00 +0000

Don’t forget to celebrate this holiday by traveling to your local Indian reservation and claiming it as your own. Of course, should you have none in congenial proximity, an Asian Buddhist temple will do. Or even just the home of your dark-skinned neighbors. Happy Columbus Day!

Voices of Tibetan Youth

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 07:11:00 +0000

There is an emerging generation of Asian Buddhists in the West and beyond, comprised of vocal young adults fluent in the language and currency of the West, but who refuse to be limited by it. And among them is the Angry Tibetan Girl.

As described by the Tibetan blogger Dechen on the youth blog Lhakar Diaries…

“Angry Tibetan Girl” is angry, and funny, as hell. There are so many posts with echoes of countless conversations I have had (!) and been part of (!) with Tibetan friends which were often non-stop rants. Yes it’s uncomfortable to admit but it feels SO GOOD to rant! That’s why I love Angry Tibetan Girl – she just says what we’ve all been thinking!

You might have missed it, but there is a youth blog for the voices of young Tibetans. I couldn’t believe it when I found it.

As a nod to Lhakar, I encourage you to listen to the voices of Tibetans speaking for themselves, on their own terms. Follow them. Tweet with them. Support them. (h/t to @djbuddha)

The Future of American Buddhism

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 15:59:00 +0000

While searching for inspiration for our temple’s summer camp next year, I came across some videos of other temples’ summer programs. These compositions reminded me that our “traditional Asian enclaves” are doing lots of work to nurture the next generation of American Buddhism. Much of what you read about Asian American Buddhism online comes from members of the Buddhist commentariat who are not part of these communities, and so I thought it would be good for you to see our backward, retrograde, traditional and insulated communities speak for themselves.

My favorite clip comes from the Sacramento Obon festival, where Socho Ogui, Bishop of the Buddhist Churches of America, danced to Taio Cruz along with other Buddhist ministers and youth leaders.

The next generation of American Buddhism will come from many quarters, but it looks like some temples are already giving their kids a head start in community involvement.

Alan Senauke: On Race & Buddhism

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 16:02:00 +0000

This piece, “On Race and Buddhism,” first came to my attention while browsing the Buddhist Peace Fellowship website, but was later taken down when the site underwent a major redesign. In response to an appeal I broadcast, Ven. Kobutsu Malone was generous enough to contact the author, Hozan Alan Senauke, and forward me a copy of this essay. That was about two years ago.

It took me until this year to finally set aside the time to email Alan Senauke and receive his permission to post his essay on this blog. The author should be familiar to anyone long involved in the engaged Buddhist or Western Zen landscape; Senauke is a Zen priest ordained in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, has served as executive director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and also is the founder of the Clear View Project (which has its own blog).

This essay is also available in his recently published book The Bodhisattva’s Embrace: Dispatches from Engaged Buddhism’s Front Lines, which brings a Buddhist perspective to issues as wide ranging as globalization, poverty, militarism, race and privilege. (Full disclosure: I am borrowing heavily from Maia Duerr’s Amazon review here.)

I am delighted to share this essay below.

Zen Master Dogen wrote “Gourd with its tendrils is entwined with gourd.” This means we are all intimately bound up, wound up with each other. Truly inseparable. At Buddhist Peace Fellowship, San Francisco Zen Center, and at Berkeley Zen Center, we have been talking about the complexities of diversity, race, zen practice, and our communities in the United States. This is not just about “political correctness;” it is about practice and awareness. My own thoughts are not entirely clear. If I sound critical, it includes self-criticism. My own efforts have fallen short and I think we need to work on this together.

After six years of practice, homeless among householders, wayseekers, and mendicant teachers, the Buddha sat under the Bodhi Tree with the firm intention of awakening. After seven days he perceived the true nature of birth and death, the chain of causation, and awakened to realization with the morning star. At that moment he spoke these words: “Wondrous! I now see that all beings everywhere have the wisdom and virtues of the enlightened ones, but because of misunderstandings and attachments they do not realize it.”

Allowing his understanding to ripen, allowing Bodhicitta, the mind of compassion to ripen, he took up the responsibilities of teaching, sharing his experience in a way that unlocked the mystery of our own experience. As the Buddha came to express it, “I simply teach about the nature of suffering and the end of suffering.” This is a radical teaching. It goes to the root. His understanding that all beings everywhere have the wisdom and virtues of the enlightened ones leaves us today with a great responsibility. As the wheel of Mahayana Dharma turned, our own Zen vehicle, that responsibility was further clarified by the Bodhisattva vow to save all beings.

And yet this vow was there from the beginning. Why else did the Buddha rise from the comfort and joy of enlightenment and freedom to teach? Why else did he offer teachings like the “Metta Sutta,” where he says:

May all beings be happy.
May they be joyous and live in safety.
All living beings, whether weak or strong,
in high or middle or low realms of existence,
small or great, visible or invisible,
near or far, born or to be born,
let no one deceive another, nor despise any being in any state;
let none by anger or hatred wish harm to another.
Even as a mother at the risk of her life watches over
and protects her only child,
so with a boundless mind should one cherish all living things,
suffusing love over the entire world, above, below,
and all around, without limit;
so let one cultivate an infinite good will toward the whole world.

True to that teaching, he offered refuge to everyone he met on the path. Kings and paupers, ascetics and householders, people of all castes, brahmins , outcasts, and criminals. After some strenuous convincing, he even offered refuge to women. That’s a long story in itself, not unrelated to the issue at hand today. The Buddha’s reluctance reminds us that patriarchy has deep roots running through most cultures.

Taking refuge means committing your life to waking up, to taking on the problem of suffering and the ending suffering for all beings and ourselves. This is what zazen is about. Sitting upright in stillness means to see oneself in complete interdependence with all beings, with the rocks and trees and ocean and sky. The emptiness we so often talk about is not some kind of negative space. It is total interdependence. “Gourd with its tendrils entwined with gourd.” True reality is empty of any one thing, empty of self, because all things, all people co-create each other.

Seeing through and beyond dualistic thinking is the direct experience of zazen. I underscore the word ‘experience,’ because, if we are caught by our ideas or an idle wish, we slip back into the tide of duality. All of us have such experiences from moment to moment, time to time. A moment of merging with someone or something we love, a moment of doing something completely, a moment of losing oneself in meditation. At times in zazen we settle fully into the realm of nonduality and recognize that this is our true mind, our true state of being. All the great spiritual traditions express an understanding of this natural way of life.

By habit we see the world dualistically. Driven by doubt and fear, by a lack of trust in our true Mind, we see things as self and objects, as us and them, as other. It seems so hard to recognize the truth that Tibetan Buddhists teach: that every being was at one time my own mother. The root of racism is denial of this truth. It is about seeing people as other in a systemic way. It is such an entrenched habit we are not usually aware of. I would emphasize the word “systemic,” because ideas are like a virus in society. They have a power that goes beyond our individual like and dislike. Racism is a system of domination that is economic and political as well as personal. It runs deep in the oppressor and the oppressed alike, but the damage caused is different.

Even though I have the privilege of a good education, middle class male upbringing, white skin, I find in myself deeply ingrained survival responses as someone born a Jew. Several years ago at a meeting of international Buddhist activists in Thailand I realized that by evening of the first day I had figured out who among the westerners was Jewish. And I realized that all the Jews were doing the same thing and had “signified” to each other. We knew who each other was, and we were more comfortable for it. This, I am sure, is a pattern that goes back through centuries of ghetto life, of being seen as the other by a dominant culture. It’s not a genetic thing. I can still remember sitting in the den at home, my mother telling me how to watch out for myself at school. She explained that some people would exclude and threaten me just for being Jewish. It’s so deep that sometimes I often find myself looking around the zendo and counting those I think are Jewish. Some of you may find yourself making a similar census. I know that people of color do this.

But let’s remember where our Buddhism came from. Our ancestors come from India, China, and Japan. When I visit Suzuki Roshi’s temple in Japan, Rinso-in, I always walk in the graveyard where the old priests of the temple were buried. How amazing it is for Zen to leap oceans and cultures and be so generously offered to us. We should accept it humbly, recognizing the price of suffering paid to plant the Dharma seed here. We owe it to our teachers and ourselves to share this practice with the same generosity and openmindedness. Keep in mind that most Buddhists even in America don’t look like me. They are Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, and so on. I come to Buddhism out of suffering. They come to Buddhism by birth.

How does it feel to come to Zen practice as a person of color? And such people will come; they do come. My friend Sala Steinbach, an African-American practitioner at San Francisco Zen Center, says, “If it is about liberation, people of color will be interested.” They are. The Dalai Lama draws stadiums full of people in Mexico. In South America there are Zen and Tibetan teachers with very strong lay sanghas. I ask my Asian, and Latino, and African-American friends about how it feels to come here, to San Francisco Zen Center or Spirit Rock. And I ask myself what feelings come up to see these friends to walk through the doors . Dogen suggests that one take a step back to turn one’s light inward and illuminate oneself. What I see in myself is then reflected back into the world.

The answer to how it feels to anyone largely depends on two further inter-related questions. First, does one feel safe and seen in the community? Are the conditions of one’s life acknowledged, welcomed, explored in the sangha? I suspect the answer is sometimes yes, and too often no. Thoughtless words can turn people from the temple and from the practice. I have seen this happen. An offhand comment is made about how we are all white an middle class here, with people of color and working class friends sitting right there. When we unknowingly see through a lens of class and white supremacy, people are made to feel invisible and uncounted.

White supremacy is the cornerstone of racism, created out of blindness to one’s (my) own privilege as a white man. It is at once personal and systemic. If one wants to see white supremacy, the practice of turning our light inward needs to be blended with dialogue with friends and sangha members who don’t carry this very particular privilege.

The same kinds of painful things happen if you are homosexual, or if by reason of injury or fact of birth you can’t get up the steps of the temple. These blindnesses hurt and turn people away. That’s what it might feel like from one side.

On the other side, the Buddha’s understanding is “all beings have the wisdom and virtues of the enlightened ones, but because of misunderstandings and attachments they do not realize it.” This understanding is so precious that we are obligated to share it. I don’t mean crude proselytizing, but the Buddha himself never stopped preaching Dharma. Now we have centers and institutions for Dharma. To make zazen and Dharma available, we need to tell people they are welcome and invite them to practice with us. We must find ways to open our doors to those who can come to us. Some San Francisco churches have created a kind of covenant of “open congregation.” This means that in their literature and at their services, classes, and events they make it known that they welcome people of color, gays and lesbians, and so on. This is being pro-active rather than passive on questions of diversity and inclusion.

Already we are taking practice to jails and hospitals, to people who might not be able to come to the meditation hall. We can also take ourselves to mosques, churches, and synagogues, where we can meet with minsters and parishioners. If we make ourselves known there, we will be welcome, and people will appreciate that we have reached across various lines to witness their own practice.

This is necessary, because in America passivity means white supremacy. It is subtle and pervasive, conditioned by and conditioning our magazines, movies, tv, our clothing, all the things we buy. It is a virus infecting my own mind as a person with so-called privileges, and the mind of someone who might not have such privileges. Recently I was invited to talk about Buddhism and race to a diverse group of teenagers doing an interfaith social action internship in San Francisco. I hope I did a good job talking to them, but it was curious to me that I was the organizers first choice for a Buddhist speaker. The irony is that Buddhism in America gets defined as and by people who look like me, not by the far more numerous Asian and Asian-American practitioners.

But the wonderful thing about what the Buddha taught, what we can experience in zazen, is that each of us can go beyond duality. It can’t be done just by reason and talk. We have to uncover the reality of the world, which lives deep in our bones and then bring it back out into the world. We must be willing to make a lot of mistakes. Make our mistakes, learn the lessons and go back at it. The African American scholar/practitioner bell hooks writes about this in “Buddhist Women on the Edge”:

“In a culture of domination, preoccupation with victimhood and identity is inevitable. I once believed that progressive people could analyze the dualities and dissolve them through a process of dialectical critical exchange. Yet globally the resurgence of notions of ethnic purity, white supremacy, have led marginalized groups to cling to dualisms as a means of resistance....The willingness to surrender to attachment to duality is present in such thinking. It merely inverts the dualistic thinking that supports and maintains domination.
“Dualities serve their own interests. What’s alarming to me is to see so many Americans returning to those simplistic choices. People of all persuasions are feeling that if they don’t have dualism, they don’t have anything to hold on to.
If we are concerned with dissolving these apparent dualities we have to identify anchors to hold on to in the midst of fragmentation, in the midst of a loss of grounding. My anchor is love....”

I like to think that love and compassion are anchors of my practice. But they depend on mindfulness too. Zazen is rooted in mindfulness, breath after breath, thought after thought. This kind of training carries over into life outside the zendo. I try to uncover my own thought patterns. This is sometimes painful and embarrassing, but it is the essence of saving myself and all sentient beings. It is amazing to see the stories one can make up about other people, and how these stories are conditioned by race, or class, or privilege. Check it out for yourself. When you meet someone you consider different from yourself, do you think you know something about them? Do you think you might know the same kinds of things about another white person or someone more like you? This is a mindfulness practice, watching one’s thoughts about race, or any kind of difference. It is for our own sake, and not for the sake of political correctness. This is a very personal practice.

Then we can go further into our extended communities. Ask your friends of color how they experience the practice and the community. This is entering the realm of not knowing, risky, but completely necessary. In the wider Buddhist community, it might mean making excursions and visits to Asian Buddhist temples. They are friendly places. The same Dharma resides there, though it may take some different forms. We think nothing of going to restaurants featuring Asian cuisine.

When we have closely examined ourselves, and begun to look around and share our thoughts with others, then we have started to create the conditions for change. If our whole society could take such steps, it would be the start of a wonderful, hopeful era. Could there be racial peace for the first time in history? This is no pipe dream. It is the Bodhisattva Vow, the working of our Way Seeking Mind.

If each of us and the sanghas we cherish could nurture this process of mindfulness, the change could come much quicker. Compassion and peace could blossom in very surprising ways. And our life of zazen would be a golden wind blowing across a meadow of wildflowers.

Again, I am deeply grateful to Alan Senauke and Kobutsu Malone both for their correspondence over the years and for their contributions to ensure that this essay be shared. You can purchase a copy of Alan Senauke’s book, The Bodhisattva’s Embrace, which contains this essay, either here or here.

Lessons from our Elders

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 11:12:00 +0000

Here’s another piece that’s been sitting in my draft box, waiting to be published. I was happy to see an interview by Jeff Wilson with Rev. Patti Usuki in this summer’s issue of Tricycle.

Rev. Usuki is a well-known Shin writer, and I was personally impressed by her book Currents of Change: American Buddhist Women Speak Out on Jodo Shinshu, which documents the attitudes of Shin Buddhist women who don’t quite fit the stereotypes of “insular ethnic Buddhists.” You can get a taste of her writing with this excerpt from the Tricycle interview.

Converts and newcomers to Buddhism outside of Asia sometimes have a tendency to dismiss Asian-Americans as “ethnic Buddhists” or “baggage Buddhists”—as people who do not seriously practice Buddhism. However, we have much to learn from many of these women who still reflect a generations-long internalization of the buddhadharma through their thoughts, words, and deeds. They themselves are often the first to humbly profess that they know nothing about the dharma, and yet many of them display an innate understanding of such tenets as dana [the practice of cultivating generosity] and interdependence in all that they do—and many show, through their outlook, a profound grasp of the spirit of the nembutsu. They have often made huge sacrifices so that the temples will prosper, enabling others to experience the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. And yet they have embraced change without stridency. We have to remember that through their life experiences—such as racial and religious discrimination and being put into internment camps during World War II—they understand suffering and impermanence, and they know the value of finding joy in whatever life dishes out. They keep moving forward, and their positive perspectives alone are a lesson to us all. Certainly, they know what it is to be marginalized by those with dualistic minds, but they know that the light of immeasurable wisdom and compassion shines on all without discrimination.

If you have a copy of the summer issue, you can find this paragraph tucked away in the back, across pages 105–106. I am a big fan of Rev. Patti’s writing, and I hope to be able to post more from her here in the future.

Diversity at the Buddhist Teachers Council

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 11:16:00 +0000

A recent Tricycle blog post on diversity caught my attention. The magazine asked some participants of the recent 2011 Buddhist Teachers Council the following question about unity amid diversity:

Buddhism is very diverse—some would even say that the different traditions represent different religions. What was the common Buddhist thread that brought you all together?”

And here are the responses of two Asian American participants.

I came seeking unity in the Three Treasures. I was disappointed to find that the “mindful” community remains unable to bridge the gap of diversity; and further, that this vital necessity is not a primary concern.
—Myokei Caine-Barrett, Shonin, Myoken Temple
What brought us together probably has something to do with the Buddha’s saying “I teach one thing and one only: that is, suffering and the end of suffering.” It has such a universal calling. However, while “Buddhism” may be diverse, “Buddhist” communities in the West do not yet reflect the diversity of our multicultural experiences.
—Larry Yang, East Bay Meditation Center

I am very glad that Tricycle included us in their list, and that these thoughts were shared. For all my grumblings over diversity at the Buddhist Teachers Council, I’m inclined to think of the conference as a positive success. Diversity was certainly not prominent, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say the conference was an abject failure on this front. More on that thought in another post.

You can read other responses to this question in the current issue of Tricycle. Bhikkhu Bodhi’s is one of my favorites.

Best Buddhist Writing 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 11:21:00 +0000

This year’s The Best Buddhist Writing 2011 has made positive strides across the board in the inclusion of Asian Buddhist writers. Nine of the 32 contributors are Asian. That’s more Asians than ever before. They also make up a larger proportion of the authors than ever before. You could say that this year’s volume is in fact the “most Asian” volume published so far. This increase in representation boosts the entire series’ overall quotient to 20.3 percent (compared to 19.2 percent as of last year’s publication). As usual, I’ve included an Asian Meter chart to illustrate the comparison with previous years.

This progress is especially notable for the number of new Asian writers. Many of the writers in The Best Buddhist Writing also have been published in previous volumes; in the past three years, 42 (2008), 58 (2009) and 61 (2010) percent of writers in Best had also previously appeared in the series. In the last two years, none of the new writers were Asian; all Asians in those volumes also had work published in previous volumes of Best. In contrast, of the nine Asian writers included in this year’s volume, four are new.

Of course, the representation of Asian writers is still quite low compared to the proportion of Asian Buddhists in the North American Buddhist community. My count of nine authors is perhaps inflated by the fact that one of the pieces is co-authored by two Tibetan monks. (I count authors, not pieces.) Best also features fewer authors this year (32) than it usually does (34 on average). If we further take gender into account, we see that all of the Asian authors are male, even while this volume of Best is the closest yet to gender parity. (Women comprise 15 of the 32 writers.)

That said, progress is progress. Not only has the Asian quotient improved over last year, this year’s quotient is the highest yet. I hope with all my heart that they will keep up this good work.

(Thanks to the Tricycle blog for bringing this book to my attention!)

Vu Lan

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 02:41:00 +0000

Below is a holiday interview that I had originally intended to post a couple weeks back. My interviewee for the Vu Lan (盂蘭盆節) or Ullambana holiday is my friend Thao, who currently studies at a prestigious Southern California university. I am deeply grateful to her for sharing her thoughts and experiences of the Vu Lan festival, which concluded last week.

Who are you?
I am a youngin’ trying to find balance between college life and the Buddhist path.
What is the Buddhist significance of this holiday?
I grew up knowing this holiday as “Ullambana.” My mom was the first person to tell me the significance of this holiday. She told me a story of a son who made offerings to the temple sangha on a particular day of the moon calendar so his mother could be liberated after she had passed. Ullambana is similar to Japan’s Obon ceremony, honoring one’s ancestors who have passed as well. As I grew up, I came to learn that Ullambana was a holiday honoring filial piety, “one of the virtues to be held above all else: a respect for the parents and ancestors.”
What does this holiday mean to you?
This holiday reminds me of my roots. My name directly translates in both Vietnamese and Chinese (孝) as the less common English words of “filial piety.” Since Ullambana is centered around this concept, it humbles me and especially makes me want to let my parents know how much I appreciate them.
What do you plan to do on this holiday?
My current plan, while I’m back up North, will be going to celebrate this holiday at a temple called the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas on Sunday, August 14th. We will be reciting the Ullambana Sutra three times, and there will be a big lunch of vegetarian food. In addition, I will be able to show my parents my metta for them and express my gratitude for all parents alike ☺

Work has kept me busier than usual as of late, but I will make an effort to try to publish a few more posts this coming week.

Charges Dismissed Against Buddhist Nun

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 05:47:00 +0000

Venerable Hong Yuan came to New York to raise money for her fire-damaged temple, but found herself arrested for handing out prayer beads, charged with a misdemeanor for acting as an unlicensed vendor and offered a day of community service in exchange for a guilty plea. Last week the nun refused to plea guilty to any wrongdoing, and now DNAinfo reports “[p]rosecutors said that they will effectively dismiss the charges when she appears in Manhattan Criminal Court on Monday.”

Phew! (Update: charges dismissed!)

You can read Shayna Jacobs’ full story at DNAinfo—it seems the prosecution sees its mistake. Ven. Hong Yuan should now have no more need to worry about these ridiculous charges. Many thanks to Ms. Jacobs for her reporting on this incident, highlighting a situation that could easily have disappeared under the radar.

Thanks also to Jack Daw for spearheading a Twitter campaign to persuade the Manhattan District Attorney’s office to reconsider this case. We may never know how much the Twitterverse shaped the prosecutors’ ultimate decision, but it was no less breathtaking to see Buddhists rally online for one humble Chinese nun far away from home in New York City.

Of course, you can still support Ven. Hong Yuan’s cause to raise funds to restore her temple. You can make checks payable to the Atlanta Pu Xian Buddhist Association, Inc., 3140 Shallowford Pl., Atlanta, GA 30341. The association can also be reached by telephone at 678-436-3607.

Previous Singtao Daily articles by Li Xiaomi on Ven. Hong Yuan can be read here and here (in Chinese). Previous posts on this blog about Ven. Hong Yuan are here and here.

Photo credit to Singtao Daily.

Update: Finally a post on the topic from Our Chinatown! (Well, I suppose you could also count these two.)

Obon Festivals 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:07:00 +0000

Sadly, I’m travelling all weekend and so won’t have the opportunity to attend the festivals down here in Orange County and Venice. There are still plenty of Obon festivals left to attend this summer. It’s never to late to break out your kachi kachi!

Southern California and Nevada

Orange County Buddhist Church (July 16–17)
Venice Hongwanji Buddhist Temple (July 16–17)
Pasadena Buddhist Temple (July 23–24)
Vista Buddhist Temple (July 23–24)
West Los Angeles Buddhist Temple (July 23–24)
Guadalupe Buddhist Church (July 24)
Buddhist Temple of San Diego (July 30)
Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple (July 30–31)
San Luis Obispo Buddhist Temple (August 6)
Gardena Buddhist Church (August 6–7)
Las Vegas Buddhist Sangha (August 13)

Northern California (Bay, Northern and Coast Districts)

Enmanji Buddhist Temple (July 16)
Mountain View Buddhist Temple (July 16–17)
Buddhist Church of Florin (July 16)
Marysville Buddhist Church (July 16)
Walnut Grove Buddhist Church (July 16)
Buddhist Temple of Marin (July 17)
Watsonville Buddhist Temple (July 17)
Stockton Buddhist Temple (July 23)
Buddhist Church of San Francisco (July 23–24)
Buddhist Temple of Alameda (July 30)
Salinas Buddhist Temple (July 31)
Buddhist Church of Oakland (August 6)
Palo Alto Buddhist Temple (August 6)
Placer Buddhist Church (August 6)
San Mateo Buddhist Temple (August 13)
Southern Alameda County Buddhist Church (August 13)

Northwest (Washington and Oregon)

Eastern and Mountain States

Ogden Buddhist Church, Utah (July 16)
Cleveland Buddhist Temple, Ohio (July 30)
Seabrook Buddhist Temple, New Jersey (July 16)

Canada

Buddhist Temple of Southern Alberta (July 16)
Steveston Buddhist Temple (July 16)
Montréal Buddhist Church (July 31)

More details about Obon dates and locations can be found at the Japanese City Obon Festival and Bon Odori Schedule! (I wish I’d known about this before I typed up this list.) If you have photos, I’d be most delighted to link to them! Corrections are much welcome too. Many thanks to Rev. Bridge and Rev. Usuki for their help in putting this list together.

Chinese Nun Refuses Plea Deal

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 14:31:00 +0000

I hope you remember about Ven. Hong Yuan (宏願法師), who police arrested on Canal Street last month for distributing prayer beads to supporters, including those who donated to help rebuild her burnt-down temple. DNAInfo reports that prosecutors are “charging her with a misdemeanor for acting as an unlicensed vendor.”

The DA offered a plea deal where Ven. Hong Yuan will serve “one day of community service in exchange for a disorderly conduct, non-criminal guilty plea,” but the nun has refused.

We should support Ven. Hong Yuan in her pursuit of justice, especially in encouraging the DA to drop the charges against her. This situation is a fantastic opportunity for Buddhists to reach out and support each other across racial, cultural and geographic lines. If you follow Ven. Hong Yuan’s story, it should be clear that she could definitely use the assistance of supporters to show the DA that this nun has the support of an entire community behind her.

You can read more background at this previous post with information from the earlier articles at DNAInfo and Singtao Daily.

Photo credits to DNAInfo/Shayna Jacobs.

Bon Odori This Weekend!

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 04:00:00 +0000

Bon odori is a dance linked with Obon. Entire festivals and bazaars have developed around bon odori, and these Obon festivals are good opportunities for interaction between temples and local communities. A number of Obon festivals are happening this weekend, from New York to Virginia to Chicago to Berkeley to Vancouver! If you happen to live near one of these temples, I encourage you to stop by and join in the dance and festivities. I’ve provided a list of some of this weekend’s festivals below.

Western Temples

Berkeley Buddhist Temple (July 9)
Berkeley Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple (July 9)
Fresno Buddhist Temple (July 9)
Oxnard Buddhist Temple (July 9)
Buddhist Church of Sacramento (July 9)
Salt Lake Buddhist Temple (July 9)
Los Angeles Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple (July 9–10)
San Jose Buddhist Church (July 9–10)
Monterey Peninsula Buddhist Temple (July 10)

Eastern Temples

Midwest Buddhist Temple, Chicago (July 9)
Ekoji Buddhist Temple, Fairfax, Virginia (July 9)
New York Buddhist Church, New York City (July 10)

Canadian Temples

Fraser Valley Buddhist Temple (July 9)
Tornoto Buddhist Church (July 9)
Vancouver Buddhist Temple (July 10)
Kelowna Buddhist Temple (July 10)

If you want to attend a bon odori in Hawai‘i, you are fortunate that there’s a website for this: Let’s Bon Dance!

Let me know in the comments of any corrections needed with the lists above.

Photo credit to the Berkeley Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple. Thanks also to @Kyoshin, @djbuddha and Rev. Usuki for helping me find the lists of temples above.

It's Obon Season!

noreply@blogger.com (Arun) — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 17:19:00 +0000

We are already well into Obon season, and I haven’t even started to practice my moves yet!

I’ve posted about this holiday and festival before, and you can probably expect a few more posts this summer. My favorite explanation is still this article by Rev. Patti Usuki.

In Japan, Obon has been held since 657 CE. It is observed in July or August. A commonly held belief among people in Japan is that the disembodied spirits of the dead return to visit at this time of year. This belief is not supported by Jodo Shin Buddhists, who consider such a belief to be an unfounded superstition
Most Japanese-American Buddhists belong to the Jodo Shinshu school (including the sangha of West LA Buddhist Temple), so it is important to understand the history and significance of our Obon Festival. It is not, as some mistakenly believe, to welcome back the spirits of the dead. Instead, it is a time of gratitude, giving, and joy in the Truth of Life. Hence, it is also known as Kangi-e, or the Gathering of Joy.

There are already videos up of this year’s bon odori at the Arizona Buddhist Temple and the San Fernando Valley Buddhist Temple. If anyone has any other photos or video—especially from the recent Senshin or West Covina Obon festivities, I’ll most happily post those here too!