Letting identity arise
unimpeded: Buddhism confronting racism
April 11,
2016 by Justin
Whitaker Patheos
On
April 22nd the 2nd Race and Buddhism Conference will be held at
Harvard Divinity School. This is a unique gathering of academics,
dharma teachers and activists meeting to explore how engaged
responses to the problems of racism within the dharma world can be
developed, as well as how dharma can be a response to heal the pain
and suffering that racism creates in a more general sense. On a
personal level, this much needed conference will be a place through
which I can continue to explore and share my responsibility to
exercise a greater sense of inquiry to see where it is that I am
operating from as a white vajrayana dharma teacher. This is also a
way to continue in my relationship to exploring how to better
remain open to others, and a way to continue to honor the engaged
approach to practice demonstrated by my root teacher.
My root
teacher was a Sikkimese Tibetan Buddhist nun, who while well known
to those who met her, was not well known by the common standards of
measuring fame in the Buddhist world. She had no nunnery, although
one was created in her memory posthumously, and she lived in a
small apartment in Gangtok, Sikkim where she spent her time in
semi-retreat, dedicated to her practice, and available to those who
came to see her for instruction and clarification. She wasn’t
always a nun, in fact she had a Master’s Degree in English
Literature, was very cosmopolitan and was very much in love with
the world. She was particularly in love with the dharma, very
passionate about it in an engaged, individuated way. Like many a
practitioner before her, she decided that after experiencing her
share of suffering, to ordain as a Tibetan Buddhist nun and go into
retreat. I came to learn that while there was an authentic
experience of world-weariness that had been part of the reason for
ordaining, much of what informed her decision was that as a lay
Himalayan woman she was much less likely to receive the teachings
that she desired and that even as an ordained nun it would be an
uphill battle in some cases to receive the lineage teachings that
she desired to connect with. Indeed, some years later, after she
had taken me as a student and her health was declining rapidly, she
told me, “you look at me and see a nun. I am not a nun.” I have to
admit that at the time I was too enthusiastic and fastidious to
understand what she was telling me, and that I had to go through my
own process of struggling with my identity and practice to
understand her. Ani Zangmo was not a nun, she appeared as one, but
to hold onto that form was to brutally trap her, to deny her
realization, and to classify her in a world of seemingly
ever-shifting hierarchies and worldly knowledge that while useful
for some things, often clouds our direct open experience of one
another and the world around/within us. This was one pointing out
instruction that was a time-release type of teaching, a seed that
was slow to germinate and grow.
Ani
Zangmo showed how the heart-practices of mahamudra and chöd are
related to the reduction of the dissonance of biased perception. By
directly confronting bias, becoming aware of it (through the matrix
of shamatha/vipassana) and resting in where the experience of
awareness of my particular racism, sexism, homophobia, classism,
etc. arises, there is an opportunity to experience the clarity that
underpins the emotional/conceptual anxiety/fear/ignorance of
difference. When treated as temporary “adventious stains” upon the
stainless mirror of the mind, to quote the 3rd Karmapa Rangjung
Dorje, in his Mahamudra
Aspiriation Prayer, we are able to
deeply engage this form of discursive ignorance without falling
prey to over-identification or self-affirming identity in any
particular direction. When we discuss the inequity, violence and
lack of diversity within many sanghas across the country it is
important to remember that we are discussing identity within a
context that begs us to confront and give up self-cherishing,
ego-clinging and patterned conceptuality. So how do we, as dharma
communities do that? How do we hold the pain and suffering that
arises simultaneously with the unchecked violence that occurs with
unconscious, semi-conscious and deliberate bias? How do we
simultaneously confront mindless aggression and allow for
healing?
During
this conference Lama Rod Owens and I hope to workshop a tsok ritual
that we are writing in collaboration towards, exploring the notion
of feeding, pacifying and also subjugating the demons of racism
using the metaphor of chöd and various protector practices. This is
a means of engaging our tradition and bringing the practice
techniques (and blessings) of White Tara and Tröma respectively to
our own experiences of victim and oppressor so that we can further
develop the ability to directly experience all beings for what they
are: diverse reflections of awakened mind.
I am
reminded of how issues around identity and representation are
occasionally pushed aside by senior Tibetan Lineage holders as
“American problems”, yet when we read the stories of why Arya Tara
chose rebirth as a woman, or of the systemic prejudice that Machik
Labdron had to endure as a woman and as a mother, and of how
Phadampa Sangye was considered ugly because he was “dark skinned”,
let alone the whiteness of our sanghas, and the unfair division of
the genders, we see that these problems are neither ours alone, nor
a result of a western emotional hypochondria, but rather human
problems which are causes of (and rooted in) untold suffering. No
one group holds the keys to the cessation of suffering more than
anyone else, and we should heed the Tibetan proverbial warning to
not hand over our “nose-rope” to another, including our teachers
who might minimize the effects of racism, sexism and
homophobia.
The
wonderful beauty of the vajrayana tradition is it’s wide range of
methods through which we can cut through our limited patterned
thinking and gross habitual reactions to the world around us.
However, it is up to us to make use of our tradition, to breathe
fresh life, our own fresh life, into these practices. We must apply
these practices to our individual locations in relation to power
and oppression, anger and resentment, fear and anxiety and perhaps
the most insidious problem of all, the terrible demon of spiritual
bypassing, in order to reclaim our own authenticity. We owe it to
ourselves to deeply engage our heart-practices as a way to begin to
address the specificity of the serious problems surrounding racism
within the Buddhist community. Inherent in this level of practice
has to be an examination of how we fail to see others outside of
our projections of who we believe them to be. For just as Ani
Zangmo was not merely a ‘nun’, no one around us is merely the
product of our patterned biased perceptions, even though we time
and again fall prey to our temporary ignorance of the
other.
I hope
to share portions of this tsok here as well as some of the larger
takeaways from what looks to be a powerful gathering at Harvard
Divinity School in the coming weeks.
Lama Justin von
Bujdoss (Repa Dorje
Odzer) has
studied with and received practice instructions from many teachers
including the late Ani Dechen Zangmo, the late Kyabje Pathing
Rinpoche, the late Kyabje Bokar Rinpoche, Khenpo Lodro Donyo
Rinpoche, and H.E. the 12th Goshir Gyaltsab Rinpoche, who has
ordained him as a Repa and appointed him one of the resident lamas
of New York Tsurphu Goshir Dharma Center where he also serves as
Executive Director. He holds Lama Tsering Wangdu Rinpoche’s Chöd
lineage and is currently a full-time staff chaplain with Calvary
Hospice.