Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2016 i Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly

This issue of Buddhadharma isn’t intended as a “one-off” on racism and diversity. It’s the start of a conversation we hope to continue with your help. It has emerged as the fruition of many discussions— recently and over the years—with people committed to addressing the issues presented here. And working on it has been deeply felt by us at Buddhadharma. For me as editor, it has been a humbling experience. More than a few times during the production of this issue I’ve blurted out, “I can’t decide that—I’m white!” Nothing was business as usual. How could it be? With unconscious bias, you’re not able to see the limitations of your view and understanding of racial suffering and oppression. Basically, you don’t know what you don’t know. It was with that…

Q Last year my fellow Californians voted the Death with Dignity Act into law, but I couldn’t join them. I know that many people suffer terribly, but I worry that doctors who provide drugs to hasten a person’s death could be generating negative karma for themselves, even when motivated by compassion. Also, I wonder about the karmic implications for those choosing to hasten their own death. How does Buddhism make sense of euthanasia? SALLIE JIKO TISDALE: We must begin this important question by clarifying terms. There are important differences between euthanasia, assisted death, and suicide. Euthanasia is the act of killing a person or an animal who is hopelessly suffering or terminally ill; one person kills another. Suicide is the act of a person killing himself or herself. Assisted death…

AS BUDDHIST AND MINDFULNESS practitioners, we have an opportunity to understand the dynamics of racial suffering and the flesh we put on its bones. Honoring our relatedness, our belonging, and our impact is a necessity for awakening in general and for transforming racial suffering in particular— in our own hearts, and in our communities and institutions. As an African American Western Buddhist practitioner and teacher, I have sat on my meditation cushion in silence, with hundreds of other yogis, ripening my capacity to live in gentle and wise awareness. I’ve done this, sometimes for months at a time, without ever speaking to the yogi who sat beside me, and within me there was great comfort in knowing that despite our differing paths, we had somehow landed on our cushions and…

LIKE IT OR NOT, we have all been racialized— that conditioning affects each and every one of us. Unfortunately, many Buddhists are not working diligently to realize this, despite Buddha’s instruction that we clarify how dukkha has come to be. We resist terms like “racism” and “white supremacy.” Yet in our current age, we are obliged to see race as a frame for realizing our vows of liberation and no harm if we are to have anything meaningful to say about either. Using broad spiritual terms like greed, hate, and delusion is too often like using a telescope to find a microbe. In our practice of self-illumination, in order to see unconscious thoughts and behaviors, we need more precise frames. The Soto Zen ancestor Eihei Dogen offers a succinct explication…

As the German scholar of religion Max Müller famously said, “He who knows one, knows none.” This view is especially applicable to the study and practice of Buddhism today, as Buddhism continues to develop in conversation with others. Just as early Buddhism developed in dialogue with other traditions in Asia, contemporary Western students and practitioners of Buddhism often find themselves in dialogue—navigating conversations between Zen and Tibetan practices, Buddhist and Jewish rituals, or the findings of meditation and neuroscience. Jay Garfield’s Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy is an attempt to initiate one such dialogue, primarily between scholars of Buddhist thought and scholars of Western philosophy. Garfield argues that in the Englishspeaking world, the study of Buddhism has almost universally been relegated to the category of religion, while the…

The first time I saw Aitken Roshi was in Honolulu. Though I had been practicing at the Koko An Zendo there for over a month, I had as yet not seen him because he was in residence at the Maui Zendo at the time. I began my meditation practice four years prior to arriving in Honolulu, first in Nepal, then in India and Korea. All of my teachers had been Asian. Without really knowing it, I had projected a certain mystique onto them. I bumped into that mystique, or rather the lack of it, at that first meeting and for the next three years of my practice with Aitken Roshi. I found private conversations with Aitken Roshi difficult, not only because I hated being told I was wrong and then…

Just Do This One Little Thing This practice takes only seconds, says Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, and the dharma depends on it. Please, this year, spend five seconds really wanting the buddhadharma to flourish in this samsara. Just simply wishing this will do. I am not even asking you to light a lamp, burn incense, fold your palms, chant a mantra, or sit and meditate. Just a sincere and clear wish from a lot of us, however short, will be the key to the buddhadharma’s flourishing, longevity, and strengthening. This is because the real hardship was borne and accomplished by the Buddha himself, who endured so much difficulty in his bodhisattva days. For the ailing, the bodhisattva forsook his own sustenance. For one word of bodhichitta, the bodhisattva gave his own child,…

Until eight or nine years ago, I would have said that I was pretty conscious about race; I also would have assumed that Buddhist sanghas were welcoming to everyone. My father was an attorney who practiced a lot of civil rights law, and he had a very racially mixed group of friends, which was quite unusual at the time. In grammar school, I was one of five white kids in an otherwise African American school. I’ve also lived for extended periods of time as an outsider, including wearing religious garb—all-white clothing and a turban—for ten years. So I assumed that I was somewhat awake to these issues, but I got the rug pulled out from under me thanks to some friends of mine in the D.C. area who started letting…

THE GATELESS GATE, CASE 13: DESHAN, BOWLS IN HAND Deshan one day descended to the dining hall, bowls in hand. Xuefeng asked him, “Where are you going with your bowls in hand, Old Teacher? The bell has not rung, and the drum has not sounded.” Deshan turned and went back to his room. Xuefeng brought up this matter with Yantou. Yantou said, “Deshan, great as he is, does not yet know the last word.” Hearing about this, Deshan sent for Yantou and asked, “Don’t you approve of this old monk?” Yantou whispered his meaning. Deshan said nothing further. Next day, when Deshan took the high seat before his assembly, his presentation was very different from usual. Yantou came to the front of the hall, rubbing his hands and laughing loudly,…

WE ARE AT A CRITICAL MOMENT in the history of the nation as well as within the Buddhist teaching and tradition in America. This is the “back of the bus” moment of our time. Fifty years after civil rights laws were laid down, it is clear that these laws were enshrined within a structure that continues to profit from anti-black racism. The necessary bias that the system requires in order to perpetuate itself has permeated our sanghas, and in this very moment, Buddhists are called upon to put aside business as usual. If you have ever wondered how you would have shown up in the face of the challenge put before white America when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, upending the accepted social order, now is when…

During my undergraduate years, a budding interest in Buddhism prompted me to explore various Buddhist communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. At meditation centers where older white practitioners predominated, I regularly fielded compliments about my ability to speak the language I consider to be my native tongue: “Your English is so good; I can’t detect any accent at all!” I was further stymied by the frequent follow-up question, “Where are you from?” Having lived five years in my birthplace of Shanghai, six years in Pennsylvania, and seven in Washington State, then moved to the Bay Area for college after a gap year in Australia and Asia, I struggled for a succinct answer. “I went to high school near Seattle” only triggered further questioning. Where was I really from? Cambodia?…

THE PRACTITIONER'S QUARTERLY MEDITATION CENTERS CALIFORNIA AGAINST THE STREAM BUDDHIST MEDITATION SOCIETY 4300 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90029. (323) 665-4300, Fax: (323) 665-4404, service@ , www.againstthestream.org ❖ Founded by Noah Levine, author of Dharma Punx, Against the Stream has two centers in Los Angeles and Santa Monica offering weekly classes, daylong retreats, and special class series. AGAINST THE STREAM BUDHIST MEDITATION SOCIETY 2701 Folsom St, San Francisco, CA 94110. bayarea@againstthestream.org, www.againstthestream.org ❖ Meditation center in the Mission offers weekly classes, day-longs, class series and residential retreats. CHAGDUD GONPA RIGDZINLING PO Box 279, Junction City, CA 96048. (530) 623-2714, FAX: (530) 623-6709, sangha@chagdudgonpa.org, www.chagdudgonpa.org ❖ Nyingma Buddhist center in serene Northern California Alps. Founded by Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche. Daily meditation; teaching and retreat programs; individual retreat facilities. DHARMAZEN CENTER 1025…