The Continued Exoticization of #Asians and #Buddhism in America: On Brad Warner's CNN Interview About #NYPD Officer Liu's Funeraln

The recent funeral of NYPD Officer Wenjian Liu offered, among other things, a clear window into race relations here in the United States. Occurring in the middle of the current police "slow down," the funeral also was used as another opportunity for members of the more conservative wing of the NYPD to protest NYC Mayor DeBlasio's fairly mild reform agenda. With plummeting arrest rates, and no real rise in public safety concerns in New York, the NYPD's actions demonstrate the highly bloated quality of the department. Indeed, some of the very issues being raised by the #BlackLivesMatter protests - the hyper-excessive arrest rates for black and brown folks, the Broken Windows policy, and the general state-sanctioned violence of police forces - are being shown for what they truly are: racist, classist oppression.

Meanwhile, this morning I saw the video above floating around my Facebook feed and I had a moment of "huh," followed by a sigh. The choice by CNN of Zen teacher Brad Warner as the face and voice for Buddhism in the US, and in particular, the one to speak about the rituals at Officer Liu's funeral, speaks volumes.

1. The Asian as perpetual outsider narrative is totally upheld here. Not only does the mainstream media choose a white male to represent Buddhism, but they also cast the funeral of a Chinese-American officer as "exotic" enough to require explaining to their audience.

2. The ignoring of, and/or deliberate suppression of, Asian-American Buddhism narrative is upheld. Numerous Asian-American Buddhist teachers and community leaders could have been selected to do this interview, but they weren't. Furthermore, the robust Chinese-American community as a whole is ignored here, not deemed worthy enough even after several generations on the continent of narrating the story of one of their own.

3. The narrative of celebrity worship. While Brad Warner is barely known outside of Buddhist circles, he's something of a celebrity amongst convert Buddhists. And while Brad's a sincere practitioner and serious student of the dharma, the public persona he's developed, and which his almost cult-like following has propped up, easily comes off as superficial and rebellious in a boyish, teenaged sort of manner.

4. Which serves to uphold the narrative that Buddhism is either trivial or not really something to be taken seriously by the rest of Americans. I have a feeling that Brad's choice to don the robes he rarely uses for this interview was in part coming from an understanding of this issue. He probably knew that the punk rocker turned rebel Zen priest image just wouldn't cut it for national TV news.

Here's the thing. I'm guessing Brad simply responded to the call from CNN and did his best to offer folks watching some insight into Buddhism. I think he did pretty good actually of giving some Buddhist basics in a forum that's horribly prone to superficial sound bytes. In fact, he sounded heartfelt and caring as well, something that often gets downplayed or erased in these interviews. So, understand that this post isn't about bashing Brad; it's about the complexities of systemic racism, and also the dynamics behind marginalizing minority religions and spiritual traditions in a still overwhelmingly Christian nation.

Your thoughts?

The Silence of White American Buddhists on Ferguson

"Not terribly long ago in a country that many people misremember, if they knew it at all, a black person was killed in public every four days for often the most mundane of infractions, or rather accusation of infractions – for taking a hog, making boastful remarks, for stealing 75 cents. For the most banal of missteps, the penalty could be an hours-long spectacle of torture and lynching. No trial, no jury, no judge, no appeal. Now, well into a new century, as a family in Ferguson, Missouri, buries yet another American teenager killed at the hands of authorities, the rate of police killings of black Americans is nearly the same as the rate of lynchings in the early decades of the 20th century."

Since this is a blog about Buddhism among other things, I'll start with this statement. The majority, perhaps the vast majority of covert Buddhists sanghas in the US will have nothing to public to say about Ferguson. They will not deliberately open their doors, as East Bay Meditation Center is doing today, as a place of respite for the outraged, weary, and sad. They will not issue any public statements about racial injustice, the suppression of peaceful protests, or anything of the like. They will not offer dharma talks on Ferguson, state sanctioned violence, or the militarization of our police departments. They will not show up, in any significant numbers, at protests or solidary events. They most likely won't, in any real tangible manner, demonstrate that the above, quoted reality is a total travesty, and that the only way to stand behind and support our black brothers and sisters is to reject the status quo, and work together to build a more just, and truly peaceful society.

I want to be wrong about all this, but I probably won't be. It's just far too easy for white dominant Buddhist sanghas to minimize, deny, or ignore all this. We don't want to "take sides." We don't want to upset anyone. Politics have no place in the dharma. We don't know the whole story. The list goes on and on.

Part of me has compassion for the fact that this is the karma of hundreds of years of settler colonialist propaganda. That spiritual bypassing, ignorance, and even flat out prejudice and hatred in some cases can drive the words and actions of so many of my fellow white Buddhist practitioners.

The other part of me says for fucks sake, wake up!

I watched the protests in Ferguson on livestream last night for a good hour and a half. Occasionally, I had flashbacks to protests I've been involved in over the past decade. But what they were dealing with was worse. More calculated and oppressive. Tear gas canisters flying everywhere. Military vehicles all over the place. Guns aimed in all directions. It looked like a total war zone.

Apparently, some mainstream media outlets made a huge deal out of a handful of fires. A couple of burning cop cars and buildings. There was plenty of noise made about protesters throwing rocks as well. It sounded way too much like Gaza. Looked way too damned much like Gaza!

We live in a nation built from the fruits of genocide, slavery, and widespread economic oppression. Our leaders support and wage wars across the globe. The United States is, for all intents and purposes, the embodiment of the three poisons (greed, hatred, and ignorance).

Defending the "rule of law," means supporting greed, hatred, and ignorance. Choosing to hang out in the absolute realms, far too common for U.S. Buddhists, especially white ones, means being okay with the endless suffering around us, and within us.

We are a few days from Thanksgiving. A holiday that covers up a legacy of human genocide (that of our indigenous brothers and sisters), while committing one annually against an animal community (our turkey brothers and sisters). And lest this post get consumed by people defending meat eating, I'm not talking about the reverent taking of life to sustain one's own life. I'm talking about 45 million turkeys slaughtered annually, many of them raised in giant factory farms, all for a holiday that is sustained by a settler colonialist myth about the "beginnings" of the nation.
Forgive me for not feeling thankful for any of this.

A few days ago, a 12 year old black boy, Tamir Rice, was shot and killed by Cleveland police. That a boy that young is so readily seen as a "threat" so "dangerous" he must be shot speaks volumes about the state of our affairs. That Darren Wilson is free, but Marissa Alexander in prison and facing another possible 5 year sentence, demonstrates just how fucked up things are - and have been for a long, long time.

And yet, I'm guessing that the coming weeks will be similar to the previous few months when it comes to Ferguson and white majority Buddhist sanghas and practitioners. Mostly silence. And not the kind of silence that comes from meditation practice offering metta and prayers of support to the directly suffering, but more the kind of silence that comes from privilege and settler colonialist thinking.

I spent significant time at my zen center over the past 3 days. I love my sangha, and often feel proud of how far we have come over the years, even on such difficult issues as systemic racism and oppression. And yet, even so, I'm honestly not sure I can go for refuge there on a day like today. I'm just not sure there's space for the mixture of outrage, sadness, and a desire to do more than just sit, although I need - so many of us really - need that too.

This afternoon, I will head to one of our local solidarity demonstrations. It isn't nearly enough, and at every one of these someone speaks to how it's just that: not enough. But until more answers forward arise, we have to do something, say something.

I pray for more awakening, more liberation, to penetrate the hearts and minds of this nation. May the wood of the empire rot, and a new house be built that lets all of us, all beings, thrive.

The Heart-Mind Split in Modern American Buddhism

This will be an incomplete post. One that isn't really polished or backed up with links or really specific examples. I just plan on writing and seeing what comes forth on a topic I've been wrestling with for a while now.

When I look out at the American Buddhist landscape these days, I see two camps have formed, around which rallying flags seem to be quite vigorously shaking.

The first camp is the majority from what I can tell. It's overriding tenants are the following:

1. Practice and the teachings are focused on our individual, every day lives, with a particular focus on emotional states and psychological experiences.

2. Enlightenment or awakening is downplayed, or even eliminated all together.

3. In general, intellectual engagement with the teachings and/or practice is also downplayed. In fact, there's often a deep - if almost unconscious - disposition against intellectual understandings or approaches to the dharma and practice forms. Thinking, in other words, is an enemy to practice/understanding, even when there are direct teachings brought in to counter judgements around thinking.

4. There's a fair amount of openness to more intangible parts of spiritual life and the teachings, such as karma, rebirth, a belief in spirits or underlying energy patterns, etc. However, along with this openness seems to often come a New Agey looseness or lack of grounding. In other words, people say things like "It's my karma" without having any real understanding of what the teachings around karma actually are, and/or how that might actually unfold in their lives. The more extreme members of this camp sometimes sound like fundamentalist Christians, replacing concepts like "God's will" or "Jesus will save us" with karma or reincarnation. When folks speak of the "Protestantization of Buddhism," this is one form of that.

5. The majority of the time, using the teachings and/or practices to address social issues, various forms of oppression, or anything collectively outside of the immediate sangha is simply off the table. Or only considered briefly before returning to our individual challenges.

On the flip side, the other camp (which I see as, in part, a reaction to the first one), has the following characteristics:

1. A heavy focus on that which is empirically "provable." For these folks, science, human reason, and intellectual debate/rigor are the pinnacle. Some of these folks seem to be straight materialists. Others perhaps are agnostic on elements of Buddhist teaching/practice that aren't easily pinned down, or which require faith in some form or another.

2. Along those lines, things like karma, rebirth, even faith in practice to some degree are not only rejected, but often are fiercely argued against. Beyond that, I saw a discussion online recently about the scientific research being done around meditation practice. And for some folks, nothing short of rigorous and repeatable double blind studies was worth considering when it comes to speaking about the potential "benefits" or "impacts" of meditation practice. In these discussions, I saw the hard science/soft science distinction come up a few times, with attendant dismissals of things like case studies as "not real science."

3. Deep textual study and intellectual research + debate are hallmarks of strong practice for these folks. Whereas folks in the first camp talk a lot about being compassionate in a general sense, these folks strive to get really clear and precise about what it means to be compassionate according to the Buddhadharma. In addition, I'd say that the push to strip away traditional forms and rituals (chanting, bowing, robes, statues, etc.) is driven more by these folks than people from the first camp.

4. This group seems much more open to discussing and focusing on social issues. However, it sometimes seems like it's mostly as part of an overall intellectual project that doesn't really extend into actually doing anything concretely in the world. Other than produce lots of documents and discussions.

5. Sometimes, it really difficult to locate the individual, living, breathing, feeling person in the worldview these folks offer. Whereas there seems to be a lot of heart, but not much mind present in the first camp, the second camp is almost the reverse.

In offering this, I'm well aware that few fall completely or neatly into either group. However, the overall split I'm presenting here - which perhaps could be called a "Heart-Mind Split" - feels deeply palpable to me. And also troubling. Because neither camp offers anywhere near a full, holistic expression of the dharma. Both have something vital to offer the other side, and yet both seem pretty convinced that they have THE truth, and that the other side is deluded or lacking in some manner or another.

So, that's what I have to offer today. A sketch. Perhaps a bit of a straw man one at that, but still useful I think. What do you make of all this?

The Navy Yard Shooter and America's "Permanent" State of Violence

The awareness of how fragile our lives are should prompt more compassion, and more willingness to actively pursue the kinds of changes that might bring about a much more peaceful society. So often, though, these incidents quickly devolve into heated, ugly debates about motives or gun control. They are also rife with frenzied attempts to attach or detach numerous labels, as well as a desire to create as much separation from the perpetrators as possible. We seem prone to hurried burials. Wanting to put into the ground not only the bodies of the dead, but also every other aspect of disturbance itself. Instead of lingering with questions, we rush to fixed answers. Instead of living with open grief, and letting it disturb business as usual, we do whatever we can to push through it, or stuff it, and move on. Buddhists do this. Christians do this. Humans do this. It’s something we are wont to do.

And yet, there’s something about living in an empire nation that makes it that much more the case. Quick burials are our specialty. The business of profits and power won’t be blocked by such things. We’ll just bury the dead, offer some tidy narrative about the killers, and privately attend to the grief stricken families. It’s all very predictable.

You can read the rest of the post here.