"Precious" and reflections on sameness and difference

These past 2 days I have been home sick with the flu and watched dvds to entertain myself. One was the movie “Precious” which was pretty disturbing. It reminded me of when I had been a community organizer in the Bronx for a couple of years way back in the very early 90’s before coming to Indonesia.

1921 Morris Ave was one of the first buildings I was given to organize. It was a city owned building which meant that due to extreme neglect or debt the city had taken ownership of the building from the owner.  At first it was just an address on a folder in a stack of folders I had been given. Inside the folders were very sparse notes on building conditions and some tenant meeting attendance sheets.

I was acutely self-conscious walking on the side streets of the neighborhood. At nighttime I was more anonymous but honestly I was scared sh*tless seeing people lined up to buy drugs and the flashy sports cars zooming up and down the streets with the cops choosing to stay on the main streets unless they came in force to surround and raid a particular location. The “good” people in the neighborhood I knew just would not be out on the streets at night.

Following community organizing principles I “doorknocked” all the doors in the building which meant introducing myself as a new organizer from the neighborhood organization, trying to get a sense of what people felt were the important issues and try to get them to commit to attend a tenants’ meeting in the lobby later that week.  I met a lot of people since many of them were not working. There were a lot of single mothers and also a number of people who were obviously crack addicts. Knocking on each door I could hear what was going on inside and the reaction to me coming. Loud music, yelling, strange and strong smells were amplified by my fear, discomfort and desire to prove something, that I could organize and move these people towards change.

The first meeting was surprisingly well attended.  I was excited to see so many people young and old, African American, Latino, and even one white lady. I felt the possibility of unity and change in the air.

I tried to pull out the issues that were on people’s minds and make connections to the general situation in the building, hoping to build a common agenda. But the meeting quickly spiraled out of control. Some people were high, others had brought bottles to the meeting, they were exhilarated with the opportunity to vent, and then suddenly they were angry, unfocused, and ranting. In the midst of this chaos this little old Irish woman came up to me, hit and started scratching me. She thought I was a representative of the landlord and went on this 10 minute diatribe denouncing me and the landlord.  Everyone thought this was pretty funny and the atmosphere simultaneously sobered and lightened up.

On the way home after more than a few beers of my own I had the chance to reflect. Being young, idealistic and thickheaded I told myself it was a great experience while in my gut I dreaded going back.  But go back I did. Almost every day I went back and doorknocked each apartment in each of my buildings getting to know the residents.

My leaders in 1921 Morris turned out to include “Dimples” who was taller and larger than Precious but with one leg somewhat withered and bent making her gait fragile and lopsided, highlighting an unexpected vulnerability in someone so big. I asked her why people called her Dimples and she broke out a wide, sweet smile complete with a surprisingly adorable dimple.

There was “Wanda” who stuttered uncontrollably, always reeked of alcohol and usually had a 40 oz bottle of malt liquor nearby. Wanda’s apartment was a mess and her two young boys seemed sullen and lost and she would berate them fiercely for seemingly small infractions. The other residents told me that the boys’ father had frequently and severely beaten Wanda and that’s why she stuttered. Sometimes she would be so incredibly lucid, present and beautiful. Other times she would be lost in worlds I could only guess at. 

There was “B.K.” a Latina lesbian living with her partner and two boys. B.K. was a former heroin addict who was taking methadone. She was hard to keep up with and I don't know how well I knew her past a certain level. She would seemingly nonstop watch pirated VHS horror movies and ask me to watch with her. Since she was quickly elected the president of the tenants’ association I would often keep her company and sit in her kitchen as she brewed and drank strong coffee and we discussed recent developments, strategy etc. We'd also gossip and she'd share stories of past relationships. I'd share my long distance relationship woes which meant intermittent and at times sustained celibacy. 

I would spend a lot time with all my tenant leaders but with these women from 1921 Morris Ave. I developed close relationships. I’d come with a yellow pad full of notes about what I wanted to talk about, the prep work for an upcoming building meeting, trying to make connections to issues in other city owned buildings, neighborhood meetings on crime etc.  But looking back what these women really wanted was someone to talk to, someone to just be there and listen. I think they attended at least half of the meetings to humor me, so that I would feel good, like I was getting something done. Believing in the possibility of change was something that would not come easy to them.  The greatest help I could give was to be present. To listen and hear their stories of the lives they had lived, the struggles and difficulties.  Surprisingly accompanying their stories was much laughter, lightness and openness. Sometimes I would come in the middle of some household drama and hear yelling and banging from outside the door but they would still invite me inside and after sitting for awhile some incredibly complex and tragic story would emerge.  I was shocked by the tenderness and intimacy in their stories and the sudden anger or rage that would emerge if a child did the wrong thing or asked for attention.

But I have come to realize that there was no action that Dimples, B.K., Wanda or anyone else in that neighborhood did that I am also not capable of. No feeling, no anger, rage, pain, blame towards self and loved ones that I am also not capable of feeling or manifesting. The transparent self justification, running from pain, denial, and addiction is part of the sameness we share as human beings. Oppressor/oppressed, victim/abuser, exploited/exploited all inseparable turning in on each other and transforming into the other like some yin yang of suffering. Along with the light there is the capacity for darkness and we share this equally without exception.  The older I get and the deeper I look inside myself the truer this is.

Tenants would often offer me food but I really didn’t feel comfortable accepting because I knew their resources were limited. Sometimes though they would bring over food to the office when they knew I was there working late. This I gladly could not refuse. In one building – 1985 Creston Ave., we had a really successful rent strike and during the height of the conflict I was like a celebrity. People would often bring food or snacks to the office.  This was in a building that was mostly Latino and my Spanish was minimal. There were more intact families here and the men played a more visible and stable role in families and the tenant association. There were also far fewer drug apartments with open sales of drugs than in 1921 Morris. The first tenant meeting there were only four people. I remember translating what I wanted to say into Spanish and reading off my yellow pad in their lobby. But persistence made up for lack of skills and I kept coming back and kept talking about tenants’ rights in incoherent Spanish. I would doorknock for every meeting and eventually some more people started coming. Then someone even started translating for me which I took as a sign that they actually wanted to hear what I was saying. Then folks started talking to each other, in rapidfire Spanish, passionately and at length. About what I had no idea. Next thing you know the rent strike was on.  Since the landlord refused to come to any meetings we found out where he lived in Westchester, N.Y. and a whole bunch of tenants went to picket in front of his house and flyer his neighborhood. We got the city to take the landlord to court and the judge took away control of the building and gave it to a not for profit housing company to bring it up to code. The landlord was written up as one of the 10 worst landlords in that year’s Village Voice and I was quoted in the article. Heady stuff for a young organizer set on changing the world.

But it was like living and working in a pressure cooker. The problems were horrific and relentless. Without meditation I had no way to deal with everything and had no way to separate work from the rest of my life. I was constantly caught between how things were and how I wanted them to do be. I was frustrated seeing how elusive tangible change was. Where was the revolution? In the 2 years I was there I had become one of the senior organizers in the coalition of neighborhood associations and was supposed to be heading an area wide effort to organize city owned buildings.  I had seen tens of staff come and go and this included young, white college educated idealists, as well as African Americans and Latinos from the neighborhood or similar neighborhoods and young college educated and idealistic people of color like me. I had very close and strong relationships with my tenant leaders and had started to bring them onto the board of the neighborhood association of which I was the lead organizer and staff director. But I was young, my blood was hot and I decided to leave.

A sense of sadness and immediate distance is what my closest tenant leaders greeted my news about leaving with. I promised I would still come visit them and for awhile I did and sitting in their kitchens or living rooms it quickly felt like old times. But soon I was on to the next great adventure – Indonesia. I left because I wanted to and with a good education and no family responsibilities at the time I could.

After a few years while visiting the U.S., I came back to visit the old neighborhood and my old friends at 1921 Morris Ave. With me were 2 friends, husband and wife, white, very decent people from the program with which I had gone to Indonesia with. The neighborhood had changed quite a bit, become more stable and cleaner. Yet I felt the need to establish how dangerous the neighborhood had been as if my “street credibility” was in question. 1921 Morris was totally different too and I tried to find someone I still knew. B.K. was there. She told me Wanda was gone, someone else's daughter had been shot to death and Dimples had died of AIDS. B.K. took a look at my white friends and immediately asked me why I had come back, if I wanted to show off to my friends, as if this was some tourist sight. Cutting words that wounded me, but revealing more than a little truth.

Reflecting and remembering I feel a lot of sadness and regret. Not that I left but how my leaving exposed how fundamentally different our fates and lives could be. The priceless freedom of choice, to decide to leave and do something else, to shape my life the way I wanted it to be. That difference was an unbridgeable one.

May Dimples know she was loved

May Wanda and her boys have found a better place in life

May B.K. and her loved ones be happy

May I always cherish what they shared with me

May I remember our essential sameness no matter how different our lives may be

here's an article from the NYT on The Obesity - Hunger Paradox in places like the Bronx. Surprising but true and not only in the Bronx. Indonesia's poorer neighborhoods have a similar phenomenon.

I would like to acknowledge inspiration for this post from a post by Erica at Urban Refuge: http://urbanrefuge.ning.com/profiles/blogs/not-a-cholo and another post by Maia at Jizo Chronicles: http://jizochronicles.wordpress.com/2010/03/14/harmony-of-difference-and-sameness/ as well as influence from numerous others from the surprisingly vibrant and lively Buddhist blogger community. Thank you!    

Race, Diversity and Buddhism: Thoughts and a Proposal

Although I have been an activist for a long time and during my college years helped lead a student protest movement for diversity, to this day I dread discussions about race, the feelings they bring up in myself and others, the conflict that arises, and the ultimate and inescapable dissatisfaction with the ways things end. But recently I've been stirred and inspired by Arun at Angry Asian Buddhist, and even more recently by posts and comments by Nathan at Dangerous Harvests, and Katie at Kloncke.

At the same time I am concerned by the generally unsatisfactory discussion about race and diversity on many Buddhist blogs. These discussions have been full of misunderstanding, misrepresentation, hurt feelings all around, blanket statements, and a general lack of compassion or insight. Its often as if we don't really hear what others are saying but are separately instead engaged in a discussion with ghosts from previous discussions with all the accumulated baggage. At times we shout past each other, selectively hearing and cherry picking what is said for more fuel to add to the fire. It is even more regrettable when these discussions involve Buddhists because there is just extra arrow added on top of extra arrow, increasing suffering and seemingly disdaining the skillful means we as Buddhists should be developing and practicing.

Why have or participate in these discussions then? For me personally at a certain level there really is no choice. From a very young age, standing up to racism or asserting myself in a forum with racial overtones was part of an existential struggle. I felt like if I didn't speak out, stand up and fight back, I would not exist as a person and any risk was worth taking to prevent that. Those times I was silent or didn't fight back, I would torture myself again and again remembering my failure, cowardice and humiliation and despising myself for my weakness.

With meditation I have started to realize that the cost of anger is a steep one - the loss of personal balance and objectifying the focus of my anger which in other words is dehumanization and doing to someone else the very thing I don't want to happen to me. That's not to say I still don't get angry but the intensity has lessened and its not as all consuming. There is the awareness on some sort of fundamental level that the anger is not me and I am more than just the anger. I can be somewhat objective and watch it as an observer.

Also there is the realization that not every battle has to be joined, not every comment answered. We can choose not to accept those "gifts" as Goenkaji calls them (reminded of this by a post on Kloncke). There is something powerful in standing up for oneself and fighting back. There is also something powerful about restraint, abstaining, taking the time and space to just be.  

What comes next after the fighting and then the restraint and abstaining? How about a try for the middle way? I have been listening and working on Gil Fronsdal's Concentration series at Audio Dharma. At one point he describes concentration meditation like fishing - too much slack and the fish gets away, too forceful and the line will break. Perhaps these discussions on race needs to be the same - enough creative tension to get people thinking outside of their normal assumptions but not some much as to make them defensive. Easier said than done but adding compassion, trying out equanimity and remembering we are all in this together could help. What if at the point where someone says something that brings on very strong feelings of aversion and rejection - we try and label these feelings and then watch them with non reactive awareness? What would happen if we could get angry at someone else's limited and seemingly bigoted perspective but then put that feeling in a "larger container" and watch its power fade?

What if we could listen to each other for what lies behind our words?

Could there be a simple and shared desire to be heard, acknowledged and appreciated?

Would this premise be worth testing? How about a Buddhist bloggers' roundtable or panel discussion on different topics related to race, diversity and Buddhism? But the goal would not be to show how someone is wrong or convert others to your viewpoint, it would be to practice what Katie calls "mindful blogging" and do it in the challenging context of a dialogue about race, diversity and Buddhism.  

Sooo... Anybody game? I guess this is somewhat presumptuous since it assumes people are actually reading my ramblings...Is anybody out there?

ps - just in case someone is out there, I want to again acknowledge influence and inspiration from Kloncke and Dangerous Harvests for this line of thought - thanks!

Transformation!

When we look deeply into ourselves,

we see both flowers and garbage...
In the way that a gardener knows how
to transform compost into flowers, we
can learn the art of transforming anger,
depression and racial discrimination
into love and understanding.

Thich Nhat Hanh from: Touching Peace

A Path With Heart chapter 4: Necessary Healing

"True maturation on the spiritual path requires that we discover the depth of our wounds. As Achaan Chah put it, 'If you haven't cried a number of times, your meditation hasn't really begun."

At the end of my first 10 day retreat, before we broke Noble Silence, we were taught metta or lovingkindness. It was if a dam broke. I started crying, at first desperately trying to stop or at least slow it down or do it silently, then was totally overwhelmed as huge wracking sobs repeatedly washed over and through me in waves. The last time I had really cried was as a high school student more than 20 years before that and even then under very difficult circumstances. Since that retreat, I get teared up quite easily... The scene in the Gandhi movie where all the non violent protesters are beaten and massacred... Seeing Martin Luther King, Jr. giving a speech... Hearing about the progress of youth who graduated from the organic farming and life skills program I helped start and still run... But it has been more than just crying. Having spontaneous feelings of metta arise for others come up even in conflict situations... Acknowledging and embracing the heart, feeling the softening and melting, the tenderness and vulnerability of being human... Being present and compassionate for the small moments with one's children... A wonderful and immeasurable blessing!

"Unhealed pain and rage, unhealed traumas from childhood abuse or abandonment, become powerful unconscious forces in our lives. Until we are able to bring awareness and understanding to our old wounds, we find ourselves repeating their patterns of unfulfilled desire, anger, and confusion over and over again."
 
Wounds, pain and rage... I have spent much of my life wounding myself and others... expressing pain and rage... I used to love playing football with ferocity and reckless disregard for bodily health and safety. If there was a cocky white boy playing, I would try and break him. Blocking, hitting, tackling so hard and relentlessly, chasing him all over the field until he would start to avoid me. Sometimes he would fall down as I approached rather than have me tackle. Aggression and domination. It was both euphoric and addicting.

For a period of time I was an honors student in high school. There were very few students of color in these classes. I remember feeling invisible, inadequate and that the other students were smarter and better than me. I remember sitting in class wishing I wasn't Asian, that my skin was not dark, my eyes not slanted, my hair not black and straight. Eventually I started not to care and then even verbally harass and intimidate the other students and then stopped going to classes altogether. I would spend my time with friends vandalizing the school, making and getting into trouble. Outside of school we got into fights, vandalized buildings, parks, offices, "borrowed" cars, broke open tens of parking meters. After a few close calls, we wound up in the police station. My parents were at a dinner party with other Asian American parents who were bragging about their kids' various achievements when the police called them to come get me... At the time I had a bowl cut and the police thought I had fallen in with the wrong crowd and let me go. In one semester I went from honors student to being asked to leave school.

For years, I would throw my sparring partners as hard as I could, sometimes as if I were trying to throw them through the floor. Double leg throws with the other person airborne and then crashing to the floor. Slamming, booming throws from which people would not get up right away or have to stop. I would feel victorious, glad, sick, disgusted and self loathing all at the same time...

"The first area of healing comes when we develop a relationship of trust with a teacher"

One day my martial teacher in the middle of class told me something to the effect that I was afraid of my sparring partner. This was someone that I routinely put a serious hurting on and I couldn't believe it. My friends ribbed me about this and as time went by I continued to dominate and slam this guy around and mentally disregarded what my teacher had told me. Yet a seed was planted. What was fear? And what was its relationship to domination and aggression? Could it be that domination and aggression was a way of covering up and not facing fear? What would be an alternative? Soft throws are not just technically harder since rather than strength they rely more on positioning and timing but also demand we be more open to someone else's energy rather than imposing our own.

Helped by meditation I have started to see the whole process differently. Sparring does not have to be oppositional. Our real opponent is our own fears, desires, egos. But then even these are not our enemies. Awareness of my feelings not necessarily being me and occurring in a larger container. Watching - oh there is ego, there is aggression... Seeing these feelings come and then go without having to engage or manifest them.

Most recently I started to have feelings of care and even tenderness towards my partners. There is an immediacy and intimacy in letting others in, putting yourself in a vulnerable position and letting others throw you. Who throws and who is being thrown? There is joy, grace and interconnectedness in this mutual dance... What a wonderful thing to be alive for! What a wonderful gift! I am thankful to my martial arts teacher, meditation teacher and those who have shared the path with me as fellow seekers, learners and teachers!

May we continue to learn and grow and express our humanness together!

Racial Diversity and Buddhism in the U.S. (2006)

When we speak of Buddhism in the United States, we are speaking of a cultural movement that has brought to this continent ancient Indian, East and Southeast Asian, and Tibetan spiritual teachings and practices. For the first time in history, these teachings have arrived in a land that is racially heterogeneous. At the same time, they are taking root in a society that was founded, by a white majority, on the unwholesome seeds of colonialism, genocide and slavery. In this meeting, the values of community, interdependence, and collaboration come face-to-face with the values of the pursuit of individualism, self-interest and competition. Deep bow meets handshake (1).

With these words, Hilda Guitiérrez Baldoquín, the editor of Dharma, Color, and Culture: New Voices in Western Buddhism, describes the historical and current diversity of Buddhism in America. In the almost one hundred and fifty year history of Buddhism in the U.S., racial diversity has been an ever-present concern. One of the challenges facing American Buddhism today is the need to fully recognize the experiences of Asian immigrants in the U.S., Asian Americans, European Americans, African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, as well as all other people of color who practice Buddhism.

People of color are negotiating spaces within predominantly European American sanghas (Buddhist communities). Buddhist centers across the country are starting to host people of color retreats and meditation groups. These efforts are led by Buddhist teachers of color whose work to reduce the isolation people of color have felt is starting to have an impact. They work in tandem with a handful of organizations for people of color to sustain these efforts beyond just one or two retreats. Additionally, White people active in Buddhist centers are working to understand racism in their own lives and communities. Together, these efforts are attempting to reshape American Buddhism into racially diverse and integrated communities.

This report provides snapshots of the work American Buddhists are doing to nurture racially diverse sanghas—it is not a comprehensive collection of these efforts. The research is based on journal articles, books, email and verbal conversations and interviews with several Buddhists of color in the U.S.

To download the full report as a Word document with hyperlinks, click here.
To download the full report as a .pdf without hyperlinks, click here.

Endnotes:

(1) Baldoquín, Hilda Gutiérrez, ed. Dharma, Color, and Culture: New Voices in Western Buddhism. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 2004: 18.

http://pluralism.org/reports/view/36

Questions For Henry Louis Gates Jr. After the Beer Summit

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14fob-q4-t.html

I like that after all or at least most of the headlines have faded, these two men did get together for more beer...

For me the moral of the story is that decent people can get caught up in extraordinary circumstances that may not bring out the best in us but that there is still time for redemption, reconciliation and more beer...

Although the issues this incident raised were and are still important, fundamentally we are all trying to get by day by day... A little understanding and compassion can carry us a long way...

On race and Buddhism

http://resistracism.wordpress.com/2009/07/28/on-race-and-buddhism/

Guess Who’s Coming to Dharma: Black Women Embrace Western Buddhism

by Carol Cooper published: June 26, 2001


In the half-century since Buddhism re-entered American pop culture via the Beats (having first enjoyed a passing vogue during the 1890s), more and more black females—children of the civil rights movement, champions of black nationalism, feminist iconoclasts, and intellectuals—have been finding their way to Buddhist practice. Quietly, without much visibility or commercial fanfare, these women meditate daily, then take the insights they receive "on the cushion" into their lives as mothers, mates, social activists, and career women. From Tina Turner's autobiographical hat-tip to Nichiren Shoshu to bell hooks's describing her personal synthesis of Buddhist meditation, Christian prayer, and Sufi mysticism in 1999's Remembered Rapture to Alice Walker's outing of herself as a practitioner last year in The New York Times, black women have unwittingly become the world's most spontaneous lay Buddhist preachers.

The public face of convert Buddhism in America is predominantly white and male and middle-class. Historically, the presence of blacks and women within this developing scene has been largely glossed over or ignored, much like the black Beats that contemporary historians are always "forgetting" to include in new anthologies. Martin Baumann in the Journal of Buddhist Ethics estimated there were between 3 and 4 million American Buddhists as of 1997, and concluded that only 800,000 of them were "Euro-American." Lack of official representation belies the truth, and one of the central goals of this week's Tricycle conference in New York City on Buddhist practice and inquiry is to make American Buddhism more comfortable with its own inherent diversity.

From Friday, June 29, through Sunday, July 1, Buddhists from around the world will gather at the Marriott World Trade Center to tackle the secular and esoteric concerns of those clinical psychiatrists, Harvard professors, theoretical physicists, and other contemplative types who subscribe to the abstruse doctrines formulated some 2500 years ago by a Nepalese prince-turned-itinerant-philosopher. (The term Buddha is an honorific title not unlike Christos, and simply means one who has awakened from confusion into clarity.) Among the 40 experts Tricycle's editor in chief, Helen Tworkov, has recruited will be bell hooks and Dr. Jan Willis: two African American scholar-practitioners who each have at least 30 years of Buddhist praxis. Yet Willis and hooks hardly represent the entire scope of black involvement with the dharma (or "wisdom teachings"), and they'd be the first to point out how suspiciously slow Western-convert Buddhists usually are to recognize potential or genius among the black dharma students in their midst.

"I have been fascinated in general," hooks observes wryly, "[by the fact] that white folks have shown themselves willing to follow men of color from Tibet and other places—who barely speak English—but I don't think that white people in America have shown themselves willing to follow any black guru."

Willis, a tenured professor of religion at Wesleyan University, includes issues of class as a factor in this odd reluctance: "I think all of us are affected by our backgrounds, and I think it doesn't occur to people of privilege that they should extend themselves to other people. And I don't think you can really expect that Buddhist sanghas ["communities"] are going to be any different than the people who comprise them."

Although hooks has lectured at Naropa University and Willis gives guest teachings by request, neither woman is yet a formally recognized dharma teacher with a school and/or disciples of her own—unlike a majority of the conference panelists. Traditionally, teachers are expected to anoint their successors—in other words to tell students when they're ready to teach. Thus far no high-profile white lama, guru, or sensei (with established financial resources and pedagogic influence) has chosen a black dharma heir. "I think that people are disturbed," says hooks, "not by a black presence, but by a black presence that seeks to revolutionize" and democratize the power structure of American Buddhism.

Positioned somewhere between philosophy, religion, and psychotherapy, Buddhist practice can be very slow and difficult going. Depending on the school or style of practice you choose, there can be mantras to memorize, mudras to learn, and complex mental pictures to visualize. Not to mention the demanding discipline of sitting-meditation, which leads to a depth of introspection that can be by turns painful, tedious, or exhilarating. Choosing among a plethora of schools and styles—from the austere rigor of Zen to the straightforward efficacy of Vipassana to the seductive complexity of Tibetan tantra—highly motivated black female Buddhists instinctively develop syncretic meditation exercises prompted by the same impulse that made black pianists turn classical music into ragtime.

Willis has been teaching Tibetan visualization techniques to inmates of the all-female York Correctional Institute and has found them as eager and able to benefit from these empowering tools as anyone—anointed or otherwise. "For me the issue is accessibility. So I take it to places where it wouldn't ordinarily go."

Angel Kyodo Williams is a thirtysomething New York-based student at the Village Zendo, studying under its white, female founder, Pat Enkyo O'Hara. Williams adores her teacher and her sangha, but feels neither can adequately support her desire to spread the dharma into the black community. She recently published Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living With Fearlessness and Grace (Viking Compass), her own introduction to the practical aspects of Zen thought for the curious but unconverted. Written in the unpretentious, conversational tone black people tend to use among themselves, Being Black is no more informal or "irreverent" than many books white Buddhists write to attract new people to the religion. Yet little things like Williams's calling the "Four Noble Truths" the "Four Simple Truths" to minimize the aura of elitism that hovers around an archaic term like "noble" in the 21st century makes conservative elements within American Buddhism reject her presentation as heretical. Many Buddhist bookstores have already refused to stock it, claiming "it's a black book, it's not a Buddhist book."

"I think we need interpreters, communicators," Williams says about her style of teaching Buddha dharma. "I thought of building a bridge, but it's not a bridge into the practice of how white Americans practice Buddhism, but a bridge into developing our own language around the practice."

As a young woman of the hip-hop generation whose first exposure to Asian philosophy (like thousands of blacks and Latinos since the '50s) came through the martial arts, Angel Williams is as conversant with Wu-Tang Clan as with the message of the Dalai Lama. She feels a strong connection to both and would love to use Buddhism's profoundly anti-elitist, anti-authoritarian, and antisectarian essence to revitalize black political activism in this country. "Before, when we joined a movement—be it SNCC, NOW, or Greenpeace—we were trying to dismantle something outside ourselves, when we really needed first to have a revolution from within." Later Williams adds, "What Buddhist practice does for black Americans is it solves the identity crisis for us. How? By slowly eliminating our need to be externally defined."

Although it's a fact that every people or nation that has embraced Buddhist thought has added something of its own to the teachings, not everyone can accept the notion that black folk might "jazz up" Buddhism. Nevertheless "black dharma"—for lack of a more descriptive term—is emerging from black practitioners whether the white Western Buddhist hegemony is ready or not.

Willis managed to sidestep the sense of alienation some black students have experienced with white teachers—or even with white-identified Asian teachers—by learning Sanskrit and Tibetan, then studying Buddhism with male Tibetan teachers in India and Nepal. Her memoir, Dreaming Me (Riverhead Books), centers around her "Baptist-Buddhist" conversion and chronicles Willis's hegira from her working-class origins in a KKK-plagued Alabama mining town, to a collegiate flirtation with the Black Panther Party, to her 15-year-long discipleship under a Tibetan lama. It is a contemporary namthar ("inspirational parable of enlightenment") that is no less "Buddhist" for its black American context.

Talk to any black female Buddhist long enough and you will get the sense that they see a straight line of evolution from the galvanizing power of the black Christian church during the civil rights movement to the dormant potential of an entire population of emotionally whole black Buddhists. Was it purely accidental that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. adopted the notion of ahimsa ("nonviolence") from a Hindu holy man or that he nominated the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize the year before he was assassinated? bell hooks, who frequently quotes both King and Hanh in her books, describes her ongoing friendship with Hanh as a communion of spiritual equals. "It was very deep when I met Thich Nhat Hanh. He embraced me as a fellow teacher, not as if 'Oh, you're coming to bow down to me.' He had no difficulty [giving me] that expansive sense of 'Your work has been doing the work of dharma, and I see that.' "

http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/165232

Reflections on growing up

My mother told me that when I was in elementary school and we still lived in Queens, one day I ran home from school because all these kids were chasing me and making fun of me being Chinese. She said I ran into the apartment, grabbed a baseball bat and before she could say something, ran back out.

I don’t remember this happening, but I do remember many times where I fought kids who made fun of my Chinese ancestry. I had one consistent tormentor, Anthony. He was a kid from a neighbor’s family whom I had fought many times and he would still call me, “chink” even though he knew if he did, I would be waiting outside for him after school. The word “chink” would summon a rage so white hot that sometimes I would attack the other kid right there in class.

In fourth grade a friend taught me how to uppercut and the next time Anthony and I fought, I landed a couple of uppercuts right away. I could see he was very surprised by this change and also hurt. He clearly didn’t want to fight anymore. My friend was very excited, jumping up and down and telling me to hit him again, which I did. Anthony stopped fighting back and tried to leave but other kids blocked him since they were really into seeing someone getting beat up. I remember feeling sick to my stomach but I kept hitting him until a grown up broke up the circle of kids surrounding us and Anthony ran away.

This experience changed the equation and Anthony did not want to fight or call me names anymore. There was a cruelty in my heart though and rather than letting it go, I would follow him home from school while hitting and kicking him. This happened regularly until his older brother started to walk him home. I remember still following them trying to get at Anthony until his brother firmly pushed me away.

Victim/aggressor, how quickly that equation changes. From being hurt and wounded to hurting and wounding someone else. The line was so thin as to be imperceptible and unnoticed when I crossed it.

In high school a white friend got into a fight with a football jock over a girl. The jock had many of his buddies there and for some reason I went up to Chris, the biggest guy there and hit him. Probably because of his total surprise, I came off pretty well against a much bigger opponent. Some bystanders broke up the fights. Afterward though he was incensed and wanted to fight again. We were supposed to go outside to fight but he jumped me from behind, threw me down the stairs and then gave me a good beating. A teacher who saw what happened took his time stopping the pummeling and the school suspended me for a week while Chris got off with a warning. I was a troublemaker and hung out with a trouble making crowd. I had the feeling the school authorities were glad to see me get what they felt I had coming.

Afterward much of the football team would pick on me, taunting me with racial slurs and hitting me. Once about 15 of them hunted me in the halls since none of my friends were in school that day. I ran and eventually went home rather than face them. I remember the word “chink” would feel like a whiplash across my back.

Now when I do metta meditation, I cannot feel anything when I remember these people. No compassion, no loving kindness, no forgiveness.

Later in college when I was a different person, someone from my high school and only peripherally related to these football players showed up at a party. I saw him and without thinking I immediately threw him on the floor. Then I started stomping on him until I was pulled off. The rage was intense and so was the pleasure I felt as he collapsed and curled in a fetal ball. I followed him out into the night telling him to get a knife, get a bat, get a gun, anything but I was going to kill him. Later friends told me he hid in someone’s room until dawn and then left. I never explained to my friends what had set me off.

On Race & Buddhism by Rev. Alan Senauke

On Race & Buddhism

Rev. Alan Senauke


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. So this morning I would like to speak about the complexities of diversity, race, zen practice, and our community. Something we've been talking about at Buddhist Peace Fellowship, San Francisco Zen Center, here, and more and more around sanghas and centers in the United States. This is not just about "political correctness," it is about practice and awareness. I must confess that my own thoughts are not entirely clear, but I will try my best not to mislead you. If I sound critical, it is a voice of self-criticism. My own efforts have fallen short and I think we need to work on this together. So I will leave some time for discussion at the end.

After six years of practice, homeless among householders, wayseekers, and teachers, the Buddha sat under the Bodhi Tree with the firm intention of awakening. After seven days of zazen 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, true to the meaning of radical, getting to the root. And his understanding that all beings everywhere have the wisdom and virtues of the enlightened ones leaves us 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. We constantly affirm this vow.

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.

And 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, suggesting that patriarchy has deep roots running through many if not most cultures.

Taking refuge means committing your life to waking up, to taking on the problem of suffering and the end of suffering for all beings and ourselves. This is what zazen is about. Sitting upright in stillness 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 undescore the word experience, because if it we are just caught by an idea 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 just sitting. And 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.

But the way we often live, by habit we see a world thoroughly conditioned by duality. 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 preach: 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 systematic way that is such an entrenched habit we are not usually aware of. I would underscore the word systematic, because as ideas like a virus in society they have a power that goes beyond 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, though 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 and systematic survival responses as someone born Jewish. Several years ago at a meeting of international Buddhist activists in Thailand I realized that in the first day I had figured out who (among the westerners) was Jewish. And even stranger 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 being ghetto-ized, of being the other. It's not a genetic thing. I can remember my mother telling me how to watch out for myself. That some people would exclude and threaten me just for being Jewish. It's so deep that sometimes I find myself looking around the zendo and counting those I think are Jewish. Some of you may find yourself making a similar census. From talking with them, I know that people of color do this.

And yet, let's where our Buddhism come from. Our ancestors come from India, China, and Japan. In June I visited Suzuki-Roshi's temple, Rinso-in and I walked 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. And we owe it to our teachers and ourselves to share this practice with the same generosity and openmindedness. Keeping 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 as a birthright.

So how does it feel to come to Zen practice as a person of color? And they will come; they do come. My friend Sala Steinbach says an African-American woman at SFZC 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. So 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. Dogen suggests we take a step back to turn one's light inward and illuminate oneself. What I see there 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 your life acknowedged, welcomed, explored in the sangha? I suspect that this is sometimes yes, sometimes no. Thoughtless words can turn people from the temple and from the practice. I have seen this happen here and elsewhere. An offhand comment is made about the white, middle class makeup of the community with people of color sitting right there. Again, through the unintended eye of white supremacy (hard words, I know) people are made to feel invisible and uncounted. Maybe I should say something about white supremacy. It is a building block of racism, part of my blindness to my own privilege as a white man. It is at once personal and systematic. If one wants to see it, the practice of individual mindfulness, of turning our light inward needs to be blended 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 because 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 proselytizing, but keep in mind, the Buddha never stopped preaching Dharma. But now we have centers and institutions. To make zazen and Dharma available, we need to tell people they are welcome and invite them to practice with us. Already we are taking practice to jails and hospitals, to people who might not be able to come to us.

The next obvious step is to find ways to open our doors to those who can come to us. I hear that 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. Being pro-active rather than passive on questions of diversity and inclusion.

This is necessary because in America, passivity means white supremacy. It's subtle and pervasive, conditioned by and conditioning our magazines, movies, tv, our clothing, all the things we buy. It is a virus infecting my mind as a person with so-called privilieges, and the mind of someone who might not have such privileges. Last week I was invited to talk about Buddhism and race to a diverse group of teenagers doing an interfaith social action internship in San Francisco. Now maybe I did a good job talking to them, but I was the first Buddhist choice that came to mind for the organizers. There is some irony in that. Buddhism in America gets defined as and by people like me. I have to watch myself carefully not to buy into this.

But the wondeful 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 get the reality of the world deep in our bones and then bring it back out again into the world. We must make a lot of mistakes. Maybe like this talk. Suzuki Roshi said giving a talk is making a mistake on purpose. Make our mistakes, learn the lessons and go back at it. bell hooks, the African American scholar/practitioner 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? Would you think you know the same kinds of things about another white person or someone more like you? This is mindfulness practice, watching one's thoughts about race, or any kind of difference. And it is for our own sake. Not for the sake of political correctness. I think that this is where our personal practice begins.

Then we can take it 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, a little risky, but ultimately necessary. In the wider Buddhist community, it might mean making some 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. This is just another form of basic nourishment.

Maybe when we have closely examined ourselves, and begun to look around and share our thoughts with others, then we have created the conditions for change. If our American 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 zazen would be a golden wind blowing across a meadow of wildflowers. How can we take up this work together. I welcome your thoughts.

From a talk given at Berkeley Zen Center, Berkeley, California August 23, 1997

Rev. Alan Senauke (Soto-shu)
National Coordinator
Buddhist Peace Fellowship
Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

From: http://www.bpf.org/tsangha/senaukerace.html
Photo from: http://www.upaya.org/about/bio/alan-senauke