Asian Buddhists

Buddhist Bloggers Celebrate Asian America

| arun

It’s so great to see other bloggers celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month!

Yesterday, Maia Duerr posted about ten Engaged Buddhists—nine from Asian America including Anchalee Kurutach, Anushka Fernandopulle, Canyon Sam, Duncan Ryuken Williams, Sister Jun Yasuda, Kaz Tanahashi, Ken Tanaka, Mushim Ikeda-Nash, Ryo Imamura, plus the redoubtable Thich Nhat Hanh. Go visit her post to read more about them! Jack Daw followed with a post about Rev. T. K. Nakagaki, a very unique Shin Buddhist minister in New York City.

Replying to my suggestion to welcome in the voices of Asian American Buddhists, blogger Chris Hoff invited me to publish a guest post on his blog, which you can read here. Maia Duerr also invited me to do an interview with her by email, which I hope we’ll be able to pull together in the near future. I’m eagerly looking forward to reading the interviews by @ohiobuddhist “with three Japanese-American Buddhists, two of whom were in Japan when the tsunami hit.”

If you know of other Buddhist bloggers who’ve chosen to celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line in the comments. As I mentioned on Dharma Bum, APAHM provides an opportunity樂威壯 for Asian Americans to write about these issues in a way that might feel awkward at any other time of the year—and these pieces, written about Asian Americans by Asian Americans, provided an opportunity for my father to share with me some of his struggles as an Asian American that he had never felt comfortable talking about before.

I hope that we as Buddhist bloggers can help foster that sort of connection—and not just for Asian Americans! This particular APAHM given me a new appreciation for these cultural celebrations and also shown me a way that I can participate, even when I might not identify with the celebration itself. Hopefully we can all join in together and bring the community just a little bit closer.

Asian American Holiday Musings

| arun

Of the five holiday interviews I’ve conducted this year (Magha Puja, Ohigan, Thingyan, Songkran and Vesak), each one has reached out to a different Asian American voice in a different part of the world.

The goal of the holiday interviews has been to expose my readership to the diversity of Asian American Buddhist voices and to let these voices speak for themselves. For those of us who have limited contact with Asian Americans in the Buddhist community, our understanding of Asian American Buddhists far too often comes from poorly-deduced conclusions penned by non-Asian authors. I’d like to think that these interviews provide plenty of evidence that we might actually have some unique perspectives to offer.

Take for example the recent Southeast Asian New Year celebrations (i.e. the Other Lunar New Year). If you were to refer solely to the descriptions on Barbara’s Buddhism blog (“think egg hunts at Easter”) or in a comment left on this blog (“it’s really not a Buddhist holiday”)—both accurate but superficial and incomplete perspectives from outsiders—you would have missed out on the viewpoint of the Thai American meditator who takes this holiday as an occasion to renew his Buddhist practice or the Burmese American student activist who sees the new year as an opportunity to embrace the precepts, generosity and respect.

But I have a humiliating omission to confess. For all my dedication to highlighting the voices of Asian Americans, I’ve actually failed to bring forward the voices of our community’s largest demographic.

Namely, women.

All of the people I interviewed in the past are men who I met and interacted with online. The vast majority of Buddhist bloggers are men—a proportion that is even more extreme when we look at Asian American Buddhist blogs. It’s not prohibitively difficult to reach out to our Asian American Buddhist sisters—it just takes a little more work. I have to step out from behind my fig leaf of pseudonymity and actually reach out beyond the Buddhist blogosphere.

My only excuse for not having a Gotan-e post was that I had made the commitment to interview Asian American Buddhist women, and then I was too hesitant to take that extra step. This excuse is not a good one, and I’m not going let this opportunity slip by.

My plan is to continue to reach out for this interview—simply because it’s worth taking that extra effort to reach out to the women in my community. It’s worth the token sacrifice of my pseudonymity to bring a fuller diversity of Asian American Buddhists to the readers of this blog. It would be shameful to do otherwise.

If you’ve gotten this far, I’d also encourage those of you with your own blogs to take a similar step. This month is Asian Pacific American Heritage month, a celebration the United States established to spend a little extra time noticing the contributions of its APA citizens, and so it would be great if the Buddhist blogging community took advantage of the eight remaining days in May to spend a little time—maybe just one post—recognizing the voices of Asian American Buddhists.

I encourage you all to celebrate this month by publishing an interview with or a guest blog by an Asian American Buddhist.

Of course, you could reach out at any time that works for you, but just as it’s never to soon for me to publish the voices of Asian American Buddhist women, it’s never too soon for, say, Danny Fisher or Jack Daw to publish that interview with or guest post by Asian American Buddhists. When was the last time you did so? In fact, if you’re someone who agrees with absolutely nothing I write here, then here’s a fantastic opportunity to invite an Asian American Buddhist to post about how they think my blog is full of crap!

Ultimately, if you really believe that we are also American Buddhists, then please welcome us into your blogs as you welcome other American Buddhists. Let’s celebrate this month together.

Will the Real American Buddhists Please Stand Up?

| arun

One of the frustrations of being an Asian American Buddhist arises when people routinely exclude us from “American Buddhism.” We are American and we are Buddhist. No less, the vast majority of us practice Buddhism differently here than the way it’s practiced in Asia—in ways that are uniquely American. But when it comes to talking about “American Buddhists”—or just simply “Americans”—time and again, we are left out. This attitude was evident in a comment on yesterday’s post, which responded to a question by Barbara O’Brien on the number of Asians at the upcoming Buddhist Geeks conference:

How many Indian’s [sic] were at the monasteries in Tibet at the time of Atisha? Or in Japan at the time of the 3rd Patriarch? This US event is bound to be dominated by American faces…

This sort of slip is not confined to White Buddhists; you’ll frequently hear Asian Buddhists make these same sorts of assumptions too. I’ve even had a commenter use the words of Thay Thich Nhat Hanh to suggest that Asians recognize that “American” excludes the Asian, “Please show me your Buddha, your American Buddha. […] Show me an American bodhisattva. […] Show me an American monk, an American nun, or an American Buddhist Center.”

This exclusion of Asian Americans is often termed “perpetual foreigner syndrome.” Even when we act completely American, our basic “Asianness” casts us as foreign. It’s the sort of attitude that underlies statements by those such as Tricycle founder Helen Tworkov that Asian American Buddhists “have not figured prominently in the development of something called American Buddhism.”

Just for good measure, I’d like to remind you why we are American Buddhists.

Let me reframe the credentials of Asian American Buddhists. We are Buddhist because that’s what we call ourselves, because that’s how we practice, because that’s the religion we choose to follow and identify with. We are American because we were born here, we went to American schools, we salute Old Glory, we pay American taxes, we speak American English, we vote in American elections and because we fought, bled and died for American freedoms. We are as American as chop suey, fortune cookies, competitive team taiko and home-baked apple pie. And our Buddhism is American Buddhism because no matter how superficially similar our local practice may seem to the way that Buddhism is practiced in Asia, we have had to significantly adapt and alter our traditions to fit our American community and context here in North America.

The exclusion of Asians from “American” is an abhorrent trope in American society. When it comes to American Buddhism, this is one piece of American cultural baggage that’s better off checked at the door. Please don’t exclude us from our own community.

Happy Ohigan!

| arun

Today marks the start of Ohigan (or Higan-e), a Japanese Buddhist holiday. To learn more about this holiday, I had the honor of interviewing Rev. Harry Gyokyo Bridge, resident minister at the Buddhist Church of Oakland. On the blogosphere, you may be more familiar with Rev. Harry’s podcast, the DharmaRealm, a Shin Buddhist podcast, which he produces with Dr. Scott Mitchell. Rev. Harry can also occasionally be found teaching at the Institute for Buddhist Studies.

Who are you?

A half-Asian Jodo Shinshu Buddhist minister. Also a musician and cat lover.

What is the Buddhist significance of this holiday?

I think several explanations are possible. “Higan” means “Other Shore” – in other words, the Other Shore of enlightenment. At the spring and autumn equinoxes, when night and day are the same length, the Japanese considered the Other Shore to be at its closest point, and thus an important time to practice, especially the paramitas. In fact, the term “paramita” can be interpreted as “reaching the Other Shore.”

Having lived in Kyoto, which is bone-chillingly cold in winter and unbearably hot and humid in summer, I wonder if monks found the mild weather of spring and fall to be more conducive to extended practice and lectures?

What does this holiday mean to you?

I usually view Ohigan in terms of balance. With night and day of equal length and mild weather neither too hot nor cold, I see the Middle Way in action.

What do you plan to do on/for Ohigan? 

My temple held its Ohigan celebration a week early. Not for any particular reason, things just worked out that way. One interesting result was that our service was on the first day of daylight savings time, so that things were kind of thrown out of balance. This was reflected in the world, since our service was a couple of days after the earthquake and tsunami in northeast Japan. But although part of my Dharma Message was about the sadness we feel for those suffering, I also went ahead with my initial plan for a call-and-response funk version of the Golden Chain, calling on everyone to aspire to be the best Buddhists we can be, to try and be kind and gentle to every living thing, with the wish that all beings attain perfect peace. 

You can follow Rev. Harry on his blog, The Nenju, and also on Twitter (@gyokyo). Last year, Rev. Harry participated in an all-Asian American interview about Buddhism in America, which I blogged about. If you can’t tell, I’m a big fan of Rev. Harry and his work in the Buddhist community.

All my best wishes for your practice this Ohigan.

Letter to BuddhaDharma

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It took more than two years for me to finally take up Barry Boyce’s invitation and, with my partner in crime, submit a letter to Buddhadharma. If you’re curious, you can find similar thoughts in the post “On White Women and Buddhism.” The editors reprinted our letter word-for-word, as far as I could tell, except for the last two paragraphs. The omission was a good call. Aside from taking up space, those lines were not as clear as they could have been. Here they are, unedited…

This year is just one example of a well established pattern. In a previous forum on “the future of Buddhism in a post-baby boomer world,” Asians were again excluded from the conversation entirely. In fact, of the 34 panel discussions since Buddhadharma’s launch in 2002, Asian Buddhists landed a spot in less than half, averaging one or two participants per year. The only two exceptions involve a panel on prayer and a forum on Buddhism’s ethnic divide.

Those last two exceptions amply demonstrate that Buddhadharmacan achieve diversity—if it chooses to. One more forum or article on diversity will not remedy the problem. The solution to exclusion is inclusion. Rather than just report on diversity, Buddhadharmashould lead the way.

These thoughts might need some elaboration. In a typical year, Buddhadharma has four discussion panels (one for each issue), averaging about 14 panel spots a year (that’s three-to-four panel spots times four issues). Last year was one such typical year, where just one of these spots was allocated to an Asian Buddhist (Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche). A diagram might illustrate the starkness of this disparity.

Illustrative diagram of racial diversity
in the 2010 Buddhadharma forums.

When every Buddhadharma forum was dropped into a graph, it became clear that most years were not much different than 2010 (i.e. one or two Asian participants). But two exceptional years stand out; in 2003 and 2006, Asian Buddhists occupied an otherwise unheard of number of panel spots. Nearly 40 percent! What could possibly have made these years so exceptional?

A look into the details was revealing. The 2003 Buddhadharma forum focused on prayer (“Do Buddhists Pray?”), featuring three Asian Buddhist panelists. In 2006, a forum on ethnic diversity (“Diversity and Divisions in American Buddhism”) featured another three Asian Buddhists. These are the only two instances in the magazine’s history where Asian Buddhists comprised a forum’s majority.

Importantly, when an “ethnic” topic arose, the editors successfully sought out “ethnic” voices. (Is “prayer” a particularly Asian topic? It’s complicated.) My takeaway is that Buddhadharma knows how to reach out to Asian Buddhists—they managed it twice—but that for the most part, the editors don’t make the effort to do so. My simple advice is for them to invite Asian Buddhists to participate in more discussions, and particularly discussions that don’t necessarily have to do with “ethnic” themes. Welcoming in the true diversity of Western Buddhism is not quite this simple, but I’d like to think it’s a good place to start.

Fun with Asian Names

| arun

Barbara O’Brien wrote something the other day that really got under my skin. In her post about a few of the issues facing mae chi in Thailand, she threw out one flippant line singling out the name of a Buddhist university:

Ooo, Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University. How awesome is that?

Anyway…

A commenter responded with a joke, noting a university basketball tradition where cheerleaders spell out a school’s name (‘Gimme an M! Gimme an A…’)—to which O’Brien extended the ridicule that the “game would have to go into overtime to let them finish.” Just retyping these words is quite painful.

This lighthearted banter summoned up memories of all the times that white Americans made fun of my Asian name, mocked my ancestral language with ching-chong routines and done the good ol’ chink-eye to my face. In case you’re unaware, it can really suck to grow up Thai in America—because you might just have to live your entire life with people like Barbara O’Brien making fun of your family’s long name, only to then hide behind, “Relax! It was only a joke!”

Most painful is that O’Brien’s mockery is completely inessential. Her post argues a more noble topic, where she decries the marginalization of women in Thai Buddhist institutions. She even tentatively wades into the complex relationships of Thai Buddhism to the Thai State. But in making light of a Thai university’s long name, she perpetuated the unfortunate tradition to which so many Thai Americans with long names are subjected to, and so ridiculed the very culture of the mae chi she sought to champion.

These long names stem from a specific quality of Thai culture: that spaces are not so ubiquitous as in English. It wouldn’t be difficult for O’Brien to uncover that the university’s name roughly translates to “King Chulalongkorn Royal Academy”—Chulalongkorn being the university’s eponymous founder, not to mention also namesake to Thailand’s most prestigious university. Now you have the translation, it doesn’t sound so amazing—or ridiculous—does it?

This cruel little joke on a Thai name encapsulates a recurring dilemma for Western Buddhists of Asian heritage. We are embraced by white Buddhists, even while we are culturally denigrated. Without a doubt, Barbara O’Brien deserves credit and commendation for her advocacy of the rights of Buddhist women of all colors, but that does not excuse her casual mockery of Asian culture.

Losar Musings

| arun

Today marks the Tibetan New Year, Losar. In line with my most recent holiday post, I planned to invite a local Tibetan American to write some personal thoughts on celebrating Losar. You will probably see a number of blogs today post about Losar, but for the most part, you’ll be reading about white Buddhists describing a Tibetan holiday.

For the record, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with white folk celebrating Tibetan culture. In fact, I feel it’s absolutely important that we hear the voices of white Buddhists who practice Tibetan Buddhism, and who feel an abiding bond with Tibetan culture, including Losar. But what you’ll be missing out on is what they can’t tell you. For example, they can’t tell you what Losar means to them from growing up in a Tibetan family.

Amid all my criticism of white Buddhist publishers, writers and bloggers for their rampant neglect of Asian America, I operated under a silly assumption that these same individuals would realize that they were effectively excluding Asian American Buddhists from the conversation of Buddhism in the West—and then do something to change things. It’s become increasingly evident that the closest thing to inclusion we can expect from these writers is the appropriation of Asian American narratives and relating them through their own white-privileged perspectives. We hear white Buddhists speaking out about Wat Lao Buddhasampham—but where are the voices of the Lao Buddhists?

It’s not necessary to have an ethnic Tibetan talk about Losar to understand what Losar means—nor is it necessary to hear from a Lao Buddhist in Kansas to understand the injustice currently facing Wat Lao Buddhasampham. But the continued displacement of Asian American voices from the discussion of Buddhist America sends the implicit message that these voices are not worth including. By simply not changing the way we go about our research, interviews and writing, we accept the inequity of the status quo and thus support the continued subjugation of our diversity under the weight of the white privilege so tightly woven into Western Buddhism.

Then again, whose words are you reading here today, other than my own? I have no interview with other Asian Americans to present today for Losar. A death in the family pulled me away from my preparations, but that’s really no good excuse. If I’m going to castigate Buddhist publishers and bloggers for keeping Asian American Buddhists out of the spotlight, then I’d like should show them exactly who they’re missing. If you know of people you think should be interviewed on Angry Asian Buddhist, please don’t hesitate to drop me a comment below, and I’ll be more than happy to look into setting up guest posts and interviews.

Until then, tashi delek!

Don’t Blame Islam

| arun

One or two times in the past, I’ve seen anti-Islamic sentiments bubble up in the comments. Conflicts in Southern Thailand or Bangladesh’s Chittagong division are frequently portrayed as religious conflicts where Muslims are launching a jihad against Buddhists. In reality, the issues lie along much deeper socio-economic fault lines upon which religion has simply been overlaid. To this end, I was pleased to read an article in AsiaNews, a Christian news service, which emphasized that the land conflict in Chittagong is primarily not a religious issue.

The authorities make no attempt to stop the settler attacks, nor to resolve the situation. The tribals, says our source, are really “abandoned to themselves, often when they try to make a complaint, the police do not accept it. Because it’s convenient to see the tribal disappear, or at least take up less Bangladeshi land so that there is an outlet for the overpopulation. Moreover, since the people are in some way favoured by the army, the government does not want to go against the military. There are moments in which it operates, when it tries to do something, but in essence the problem is never resolved.”

The issue therefore, is not religious, even though the perpetrators are Muslim and tribal communities, however, mostly animist (the majority), Buddhist and Christian. “The question—in fact, specifies the source for AsiaNews—it’s only land. It becomes religious in consequence, because the tribal are not Muslims and are more vulnerable, considered inferior, but in any case these are not attacks of a religious or national background. Although the tribals say, ‘Muslims have done this,’ it is only because—he concludes—in everyday language, as they see say it, Bangladeshi is synonymous with Muslim.”

The bottom line is that religion is not the driving force behind the conflict in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. In other words, Bengali settlers are not moving into CHT because the locals are infidels. They are colonizing the area because they see economic opportunity, and they look down upon “less civilized” locals who speak other languages—or worse, languages that otherwise sound to the settlers like mangled Bangla. If we report on this situation as a religious conflict, we then do a disservice to CHT Buddhists (and Christians, Muslims and all others) by neglecting to address the conflict’s actual causes.

Discrimination Against Buddhists in Kansas

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Fox 4 Kansas City reports on alleged neighborhood discrimination against Buddhists in Kansas.

The Lao-Buddhist Association [Wat Lao Buddhasampham] is trying to move it’s Olathe temple to a location along 119th Street in Olathe. But the Johnson County Board of Commissioners has so far denied the group a conditional use permit. Neighbors say that the area the Buddhists have chosen is zoned residential, but Lama Chuck Stanford of the Rime Buddhist Center says that discrimination is the real reason behind the opposition.

“This is clearly just ugliness of ethnic and religious prejudice,” said Stanford. […] Standord notes that Christian churches are common in residential areas, and that comments made by residents during a January zoning board meeting indicate fear and ignorance. At the meeting, people raised concerns about traffic, water pollution and “animal sacrifices,” along with noise from gongs, which Stanford says are no louder than church bells.

You can watch a video and read the article in full at Fox 4 Kansas City. I’m very grateful that Chuck Stanford has the integrity to go out of his way and stand up for the rights of Lao American Buddhists.

Elsewhere on this blog, I keep track of vandalized Buddhists temples. I’m not including Wat Lao Buddhasampham on this list simply because vandalism (fortunately) doesn’t appear to be one of the issues. Even so, if you have updates or more information on this community situation, I encourage you post in the comments section below!

Magha Puja

| arun

This year I’ve decided to celebrate Buddhist holidays by opening my blog to the voices of Asian American Buddhists. Buddhists across America will be celebrating Magha Puja this weekend, a lunar holiday that took place two nights ago. I decided to ask a good friend about this holiday and what it means to him.

[Archivist note: regrettably, the rest of this post was lost in transition to the new server.]