Buddhist Action Coalition NYC

ASIAN AMERICAN BUDDHISTS:
A CONVERSATION WITH
CHENXING HAN AND BELINDA JU
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 2022

Transcript 

This transcript is organized into three sections: Introduction, Conversation, and Q&A.  Please excuse any errors.

You are welcome to check out the: event page, video recording, audio recording, and photos from the event.

INTRODUCTION

Dorotea Mendoza:

So thank you again for coming, and I'm not sure about everyone here, but this is my first event in person.

And welcome to this beautiful space. There's a lot of history here at Union Theological Seminary, one of the co-sponsors of this event of Asian American Buddhism, a conversation with these two beautiful women, whom I'm going to introduce in a few minutes.

So I'm Dorotea, I'm with the Buddhist Action Coalition. Eric, over here is also a member and there are other members around. Now I've forgotten what I was going to say. And this is co-sponsored by Eric-- please, behave-- Buddhist Action Coalition, like I said, and also by the Buddhist Council of New York. Yes, please clap, they're doing a good job. James Lynch, the president, was on his way here and then he got called back home because there's some electrical problem at his house. So, he sends his love to everyone. And it's also co-sponsored by the Thich Nhat Hanh Program for Engaged Buddhism of the Union Theological Seminary. And I'd like to invite Peace to say few words.

Peace Twesigye:

So hello everyone, my name is Peace Twesigye and I'm the Assistant Director of Buddhist Studies here at Union Theological Seminary and the Thich Nhat Hanh Program for Engaged Buddhism.

As Dorotea was saying, there is a lot of history here. And one of those fun facts is that Thich Nhat Hanh came and studied here at Union, which is a wonderful honor that we can walk in the halls that he did and really study and gather together, engaging with Buddhism in the world.

So I just really wanted to welcome you and just say again, how glad I am that we are together physically in this space and sharing this wonderful conversation that I know we're going to have. So welcome and enjoy.

Dorotea Mendoza: 

So for the two speakers for tonight: Belinda and Chenxing. Belinda is also a member of the Buddhist Action Coalition. They're looking at me like I'm going to divulge some kind of personal information they don't want me to divulge, but I won't. Don't worry, I'll behave tonight because this is being videoed. So let's start with Belinda. She's a coach, writer, dancer and convener of a meditation community called Potluck, Sit, Sit?

Belinda Ju:

Potluck + Sit.

Dorotea Mendoza: 

Potluck + Sit.

Belinda Ju:

But we do it in reverse.

Dorotea Mendoza:

Oh, okay. She's passionate about spiritual community and spiritual friendship, yes. She started Potluck + Sit in 2018, which continues to thrive as a co-creative sangha. Through her writing and dance, Belinda explores the concept of care as a practice of freedom and vehicle for liberation in the present moment. She makes and performs work as a dancer and a dance maker, and she's currently completing a memoir. Whew, another book, yes! Belinda also serves as an executive coach for founders and leaders in tech and she is proud to be a member of the Buddhist Action Coalition. Thank you, Belinda, for being part of this conversation with us tonight.

And, of course, our guest honor, Chenxing Han, how are you, dear friend. She's the author of Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists. And she's got a forthcoming memoir as well, also from North Atlantic books. She's a regular contributor to Lion's Roar, Tricycle, Buddhadharma and other publications, and a frequent speaker and workshop leader at schools, universities and Buddhist communities.

And she's actually here for the conference that's happening this weekend, which is the...

Chenxing Han:

“Future of American Buddhism” conference up at the Garrison.

Dorotea Mendoza:

“Future of American Buddhism” at the Garrison.

[transition]

Belinda Ju:

I think we can actually just project, if everyone can hear us.

Speaker:

Whatever works for you.

Belinda Ju:

Okay. I think we can do the mic, it feels a little weird to pass it back and forth. I think we're hoping for a real conversation here tonight, not just between the two of us, but I think with all of us in the room. And so one beautiful, I think, part of this event...Also, this serves as the New York City launch of Chenxing's book, Be the Refuge, since it was published last year. And so we're excited to host this really auspicious event.

And we also wanted to open with just a light poll. How many folks have read the book, just out of curiosity?

And how many haven't? Awesome.

Okay. That helps us calibrate our conversation together.

So we also wanted to, in the spirit of having this be a collective conversation, invite folks to popcorn up what your name is, if you have a sangha affiliation, what brought you here? We probably won't have time for all of you, but maybe five or so folks. Feel free to just speak up and stand up and just project to the room.

Dorotea Mendoza:

Bob, I know you want to stand up.

Speaker:

Hi, I'm Father James DiLuzio. I'm a Catholic priest with the Paulist Fathers. We were the first order of Catholic priests founded here in the United States. I am our New Director for Ecumenical and Multi-Faith Relations, which is my desire to learn more about Buddhism. I'm a friend of Joy Daniels. We're both on the committee for the Religions for Peace USA and that's why I'm here.

Speaker:

Hi, good afternoon, good evening. My name is Cheryl. I have learned about this event through Venerable Bhante Bhikkhu Bodhi and I'm happy [inaudible]

Speaker:

Hi, I'm Brian Wong from Brooklyn Zen Center here in New York. I heard about this book when it came out, I'm very excited for it. And at Brooklyn Zen Center there's a group of us of Asian American ancestry, or who identify as Asian American, looking at race and heritage and quote-unquote convert communities and how that all fits together.

Speaker:

Hi everyone, my name is Vera Ruangtragool and I grew up with the Dhammakaya Meditation Center originally in Thailand, but in California here, And here in New York, I am a part of the Community Meditation Center here in the Upper West Side and a few other personal groups. Thank you.

Speaker:

Okay, hi. I'm Ravi, nice to meet y'all. I am part of BAC and I practice with Zen Mountain Monastery.

Speaker:

Hi, my name is Doyeon Park, I'm practicing at Won Buddhism. I'm very proud to be in support of the Buddhist Action Coalition here and the Buddhist Council of New York. I also serve as a Buddhist religious life advisor at Columbia University and New York University. Thank you.

Speaker:

My name's Chimyo Atkinson. I’m a Soto Zen priest out of uniform tonight. I'm not affiliated right now anywhere, but I'm a board member of the Association of Soto Zen Buddhist, the national Buddhist Association. It's very nice to be here.

Speaker:

Hi everyone, my name is Dedunu. I grew up in the Sri Lankan, Singhalese Buddhist community in Staten Island, New York and I was happy to be interviewed for the book. So it's really exciting seeing it come to fruition.

Speaker:

Yao Obiora. I was with BAC from the very beginning right here. Right here in this room right downstairs, yeah. It's been, interesting seeing you move. My practice currently now is the preliminaries in Ngondro Tibetan Buddhism. I'm also on the Advisory Council with Empty Cloud Monastery in West Orange, New Jersey, also known as Buddhist Insight. And I'm just really glad to see everybody here, really glad. Thank you.

Dorotea Mendoza:

Thank you so much. Great. You want to go?

Speaker:

Hi, I'm Virginia. I'm not affiliated with any Buddhist traditions or organizations, I just grew up going to a lot of temples. This is my childhood growing up in Queens. I do go to try and monastery regularly to volunteer in the kitchen.

Speaker:

Hi, my name's Nathan Shepherd. I'm a student here at Union in the Buddhism and Interreligious Engagement Program and I'm actually one of the founding co-chairs of our Buddhist student collective here. And one of the reasons why our program decided to form this group was because we looked around and noticed that our program has been disproportionately white and disproportionately Zen. And so the impetus behind forming this group was to find ways to increase the racial and religious diversity within our student body here.

Belinda Ju:

Thank you so much, Eric, for shepherding the mic around, and I hope that we all feel a little bit closer, especially since this is our first in-person event, knowing where the diversity of where everyone's coming from.

CONVERSATION

Belinda Ju:

So I wanted to open this conversation with kind of just a sharing for each of us of our journeys in our relationship to Buddhism as a way to set the stage. So would you like to start first?

Chenxing Han:

Sure. First I just want say how delighted I am to see all of you here. I'm getting a little glimpse of your different backgrounds and really struck already by the diverse streams of just really experience that are here in this space.

And just really kind of overwhelmed to be here with all of you, be it friends, some old friends and many new faces, and really honored. Eric, what, over a year ago? That we were exchanging emails, inviting you to do a Zoom event and that just kept never happening. And then I was going to New York. So thank you all for being open to this experiment of gathering together in person.

Belinda, you worked so, so hard on this. I've just been blown away by just your perseverance of the emails and spreading the word.

Oh my gosh, Dorotea, so many people to thank. I don’t know where Dorotea has gone, for arranging all these chairs that were more comfortable, doing the flyer, doing so much. Peace, you were receiving these books, which just arrived hours ago. We were on tenderhooks thinking they might arrive tomorrow. I know I’m leaving people out so I just want to thank everyone who has made it possible for being here for this conversation today. So briefly about myself.

Belinda Ju:

Do you want to use the mic?

Chenxing Han:

Oh, maybe I have a quiet voice. Thank you. And I have a softer voice. Awesome. Okay. I'm not going to repeat all that, but for those who couldn't hear, I was thanking many people. All the many, many people who made this time together possible.

Let's see. A little bit about my Buddhist background, how I came to Buddhism and those of you who've read the book have got glimpses of it since the book is partly memoir.

I was not raised Buddhist. My parents are Chinese American and grew up during the Cultural Revolution. So I think it's quite common for people of third generation to be atheist or even sort of anti-religious. So that's sort of what I was raised in. And it's in many causes and conditions brought me to Buddhism, many deserved breadcrumbs along the way, forming this loaf that is the substance of Buddhism. Although, I feel like I should be using a rice metaphor instead of a bread metaphor. The metaphor I used the book actually is coming to Buddhism felt a lot like water becoming tea, just that over time, Buddhism seeped more and more into my life. I steeped in it.

I was very blessed to meet Buddhists during a gap year in Asia, especially traveling through Nepal and Thailand and Tibet. But then also during my college years in the Bay Area, getting to visit a lot of different Buddhist communities and starting to get a glimpse of the enormous diversity of tourism and feeling very much like we all... I have this issue where use too many metaphors, but that we all really do come from this common family tree with really deep roots, many branches sometimes like any family there could be conflict, but I've always just been really interested in meeting the other Buddhists.

We're only about 1% of the American population, but two-thirds are of Asian heritage. And part of the impetus for this book as a kind of baby Buddhist on the path, which I still very much feel like as a kind of ecumenical or nondenominational Buddhist, but part of the impetus was just really wanting to understand where are all the Asian-American Buddhists, particularly the young adults? I just wasn't seeing them so much in either predominantly Asian heritage temples or at predominantly White convert communities. And so this book came out of my own loneliness, I think, also my curiosity.

Belinda Ju:

So I grew up with the Tibetan Buddhism [of my dad] that I believe my dad was a convert, too. And then going to Chuang Yen Monastery (I also grew up in Queens), which is a Chinese Buddhist monastery, and that was with my mom. And so grew up with sitting meditation, grew up with really memorizing and recounting a lot of the mantras, being steeped in the ritual of it.

And that was kind of something that I grew up with. And then didn't quite know what my relationship was with Buddhism. I mean, it was something I grew up with and I think I did a sixth grade world history project on Buddhism to just try to understand what it was. And I was like, "Oh, Four Noble Truths. Okay. I guess maybe that might be Buddhism."

And actually did not in any way affiliate, I think, with Buddhism until I guess I took a meditation class in college because I was so burned out and then there was a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction class taught at the med school of my college. And I took that. And that was kind of my entry back into meditation in some ways, that I never had—I never maintained a practice beyond growing up with it and kind of doing it because my dad did it.

And I had went and worked abroad in Southeast Asia after college. And after finishing my work, my job there, I went and did a 10 day silent meditation retreat at Wat Suan Mokkh, which is in the Thai Forest Tradition in Thailand and that got me back into Buddhism. I was like, oh, this feels like a Buddhism I can actually get behind, in part because it felt not religious to me was really kind of what appealed to me about it.

And I think that was really what opened me back into this Buddhist path, which I'd always thought it was like a very unique wandering journey and found actually in the course of reading this book, "Oh my God, there's so many other people who have this particular experience, too."

And so I'm really looking forward to speaking to the real diversity of experiences that Asian American Buddhists have. And I think Chenxing and I each are already represent two of the three types of Asian American Buddhists that she really centers on in the course of this book.

So maybe we'll just dive right into that. And so the history and the origin of the book is... You can feel free to share the origins of it. And then we can dive into some of the three...

Chenxing Han:

Sounds good. You know, I was just remembering when you're talking about Southeast Asia, we know each other from college, actually. Belinda being Belinda organized this really amazing women in social entrepreneurship class that I took. But this is our first time seeing each other—we had dinner the night—in more than a decade. We've been like ships passing in the night. We both have spent time in Cambodia. I was living in Cambodia and Thailand for much of the last presidency.

Belinda Ju:

As a unit of time.

Chenxing Han:

It really was. It was actually very surreal to land back in the US during this pandemic for many reasons, to be gone those four years and to be back in March 2020. So we might talk about that at some point.

I think I already hinted a little bit to the origins of this book, but I should say that it started really as a master's thesis to connect the dots in retrospect. But I guess I'll begin with the Institute of Buddhist Studies. So around, I think it was 2009 or 2010, I was doing the Sati Center Buddhist Chaplaincy program, which some of you, maybe from California, might be familiar with. It's based in Redwood City, California. It's a year-long program for people interested in Buddhist Chaplaincy, now in its 22nd year.

So [inaudible] and Jennifer Block, Pat Haller are the teachers of that. And I did that program and that program happened to count for academic credit for place called the Institute of Buddhist Studies, which I had never heard of. So this is a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist seminary begun in 1949, so really the oldest Buddhist seminary, and Jodo Shin as a branch of Pure Land Buddhism is one of the oldest forms of American Buddhism that came in the 19th century. And I was very perturbed to not really know anything about this community. It was really eyeopening and to realize how foundational this Japanese American and Asian American Buddhist community has been so integral in this book, there are fourth, fifth generation monks, say Japanese Americans and also people of mixed race. It's not just a Japanese American organization. It's actually quite a diverse tradition.

So I need a master's thesis topic. And yeah, it's at one point it sort of just clicked, I'm really curious about this question again. Where are all the young Asian American Buddhist? Why is it that when I pick up Tricycle or Buddhadharma, the faces seem to be predominantly white convert, which is one thread of this tapestry of American Buddhism, but hardly the whole cloth. And so it just puzzled me and I didn't think anyone would talk to me.

So it was really intense interview group. If I find someone I'm just going to sit them down and ask every single question that I ever wanted to answer and people were incredibly generous with their time. These interviews were between an hour and a half and five and a half hours long.

I found 26 people to speak to me in person and actually many, many more people wanted to speak to me, but I didn't have the resources. And they were all over the US. So I adapted my interviews to an email format and 63 more people came and spoke with me. So in the end, there are 89 people who are a full of partial Asian heritage who may or may not be card carrying or wearing, out Buddhists, to be frank.

I was also really curious about some of the reasons some Asian Americans might actually not be that comfortable openly identifying as a sort of double minority, minoritized by both their race and their religion. And it puzzled me. There are many books on Asian American Christianity. They have a very strong presence on college campuses. But just that particular intersection in thinking about race representation, culture, family, it just seemed like there was so much there.

And yet I hadn't seen a book that really brought us together and really a pan-ethnic and pan-Buddhist way. I really did not set out to write a book. It's a lot of work, as I talk about in this book. And I think frankly, maybe we'll get to this by the end if we have time.

But I think there are a lot of barriers for Asian Americans, for people of color, for women to publish. You can just think about when's the last time you read an Asian American Buddhist writer who was a late person or a young woman. And so there are definitely barriers. And yet at a certain point, it just felt like there are all these really rich voices. It feels really unfair to have these wither away in a master's thesis that no one is ever going to read. So your interview, all of these other interviews, it was like your voice and all of these other voices that I just felt were encouraging me and propelling me to make this more broadly available.

Belinda Ju:

Thanks for sharing the origins and kind of some of the methodology, too. So you are this chaplain, right? But your undergrad was in anthropology. And I think that really shines through in the book because you have these interviews with 89 young adult Asian American Buddhists, or however they might relate to that identity. And it's interesting to see how this book very much is a collection and is arising out of these interviews. And I think it makes political statements about young adult Asian American Buddhists and the representation, the voice that we have. And you kind of spoke to that already in terms of where are they and why are they not represented as much?

And the three categories that you categorize for interviews and introduce us to in the book are who you term trailblazers, bridgebuilders and integrators. And I think in each of these different types of Asian American Buddhists, they each challenge the expectations or stereotypes that are out there.

So I thought maybe we could go and discuss them. So the trailblazers, you've kind of actually already spoken to, which is the multi-generation, Jodo Shinshu Buddhists, whose Japanese American forebearers brought Shin Buddhism into America.

And I think for me, very much like what you just reflected, in reading that section of the book, I was just so surprised to learn about how these Japanese Americans literally brought Buddhism to the West. They were the first practitioners on American soil. And you wrote to how the Japanese immigrants who came to fly in 1868 came as migrant laborers, 99% of whom were Buddhist. In 1899, there were two Shin Buddhists who came to San Francisco. And for me, that section, as someone who, when I think about, "Oh, who brought Buddhism to the West?" I think in my head, I think about White people who went to Japan, came back and set up Zen temples, or went to Burma or India and came back and set up Theravadan traditions. And for me it was, I think, so eye-opening to learn this history that I think is a history that I feel some association with that I never knew. So I don't know if you felt similarly, but that was so eye-opening for me in reading that section of the book.

Chenxing Han:

Yeah. There's so many threads in there I want to respond to. One other person I really want to acknowledge in terms of the origins of this book is the person who brought us the Angry Asian Buddhist, Aaron J. Lee.

Aaron would be really happy to see this group here.

So Aaron's mom was Ashkenazi Jewish. His dad is Taishanese American. So this way he was actually raised Jewish, but got really interested in Buddhism, meditated... So, here already is someone who's multiracial, multiethnic, multi-religious, his grandmother was Buddhist.

In many ways, I think of this book as a tribute to Aaron who passed away at the age of 34, back in 2017. He's actually responsible in so many ways for this book. From the first time I read this Angry Asian Buddhist blog, it just took me aback. It's like, "Oh, we don't expect Buddhists to be angry. We don't expect Asian Americans to be angry. What is this about?" And as I read every single blog post, it became very clear, this is someone who deeply loved the community, but was disturbed by the gap between the representation and the reality.

And he was particularly disturbed about what kind of effect that would have on young people. I was just actually talking with Andy Sue and Joyce Chang last night, they run the summer camp at Chuang Yen Monastery. And Andy, who's interviewed in this book, was talking about how, when he was in LA, he met Aaron. And the first thing Aaron did was just drive into all these Buddhist temples, including the Jodo Shin temple. And for Andy, who'd been raised second-generation Taiwanese-American and [inaudible], and going to Chuang Yen, it was so eye-opening to just meet other Asian American, but it's from a different ethnic background from a different way of relating to finding the points of commonality and difference. And that's just what Aaron did. He would just go to all these communities. Like he knew a lot of languages. He just had a lot of joy. And I think a lot about how this book really holds to transmit his spirit.

And in fact, I had an original version that was very master thesis for like fighting against like white male scholars. And there was like 400 footnotes. It was 90,000 words long, but it was kind of really boring actually, you know, and then Aaron died and it just, that book just didn't make any sense anymore. So I threw the whole thing out and I wrote it anew and I wrote it so that I could speak to Aaron.

And so that I could speak to you so that it could be taught in colleges and high school. So that for the first time someone learning about Buddhism in college could see themselves, could see their family, could see themselves in a way that wasn't a denigration that wasn't saying, oh, you're just like superstitious or like the real Buddhism is what converts brought to the US. Again, that's an important strand of American Buddhist history, but it's been so eye-opening to realize, like what happens when we send our Asian American Buddhists. We can't start the timeline in 1960, we start the timeline in the 1800s, and it's not just Japanese American Shin, but it's a Japanese American Buddhists from other backgrounds. It's certainly Chinese American, but it's for various historical people, immigration laws, racist immigration laws. For various reasons, the Chinese American communities have not had that kind of institutional longevity that something like the Buddhist churches of America have had.

And so one other person very briefly that I want to acknowledge, I was just thinking, I was talking to Cheryl earlier, you know, we were talking about Filipino Buddhist, and I was saying like, oh, I wish I'd been able to speak to more people who are Filipino American for this book.

But Noel [inaudible], who is a University of the West alum writer, a chaplain. It was actually my interview with him that inspired the entire structure of this book. So he was saying like, you know, I grew Catholic and I sort of think of myself as this sort of first generation Buddhist. I know we often think about generations as an immigrant generation, which is also relevant. I identify as like 1.75 generation because I was born in China, but came to the US at a young age. And I was like, I think we can apply this to Buddhism as well.

Like I'm the first generation in my family to be Buddhism in America. And my friends here at US whose parents immigrated here and raised their kids Buddhist, their kids are kind of like second generation Buddhist, second generation American Buddhist. And then my Jewish friends, they're multi-generation Buddhist. And so that kind of flipped the order, but that's the order of the three main parts of the book. Multi-generation, second generation, and then first-gen or what I call integrators.

And it was interesting. I chose that because actually I've heard people from different, not even Asian backgrounds, saying they really resonate with this, that sometimes the word “convert” doesn't feel like quite the right fit for how they can do Buddhism maybe because of the sort of Christian connotations. And so this sort of heuristic, if you will, of generations and it's not meant to be airtight. Aaron himself, you can probably make an argument for like all of these categories.

He kind of wove between these categories, because he would say as a multi-generational American, there's not exactly Toisanese American Buddhist population, but I've met Toisanese American Buddhists. So I feel this affinity with the multi-gen Asian American Buddhist, but also, you know, someone whose grandmother was Buddhist. There's some kind of this sort of second generation dynamic going on. You know, his dad had sort of practiced Buddhism before converting to Judaism and his mom and also this sort of, there was this sort of first gen common dynamic too, because really it was in college. I think that he started to deepen a lot more. And so what I appreciate was just Aaron really invited us to think more broadly about our categories to go beyond this two Buddhisms.

This kind of tired, like white Buddhism, Asian immigrant to Buddhism categorization to think broader, but then also to play with our categories, right? Like as Buddhists, we know these categories are always constructed and there's ways that we're co-creating them. And we can think like, are these categories actually conducive to broader connection? Or are they actually dividing us further?

Belinda Ju:

Yeah. I love how you complicated those three categories because even in the book you complicated it, right? Because you identify as having, atheist parents and you know, a first gen so to speak integrator is what you called it. And yet, and yet in the book you realize that Buddhism was in your family, that Buddhist chants were something that your grandmother had heard, that your mother had heard, and it was this like realization that actually it was in your heritage and life, even if you did not grow up with it. And you complicated that, right? Like you identified primarily as an integrator, but you have these, you have these roots still.

And then I think for me, I very much resonated with the bridgebuilder Asian American Buddhist, second gen. And yet I could totally relate to some of that integrator journey in terms of my journey of reclamation of Buddhism, where I grew up with Buddhism. And it was a religion that I kind of passively inherited because it was what my parents did. They brought me to temple and I sat in our living room with cushions.

But it was an active choice in college and after college and the journey kind of going on retreats and really actively understanding, oh, what, what actually is Buddhism actually, like what is, what are the main, main tenants of it? What does it mean for me? How do I want to practice it? And you really spoke to the second gen experience being one — reclamation often featuring in it — as one that isn't, it's influenced by the parents’ Buddhism. But it is not the same. And I think I so resonated with that.

And I think I also really resonated with what you shared in terms of gaps in language and culture being barriers to being able to practice in the Buddhism of my parents. You know, I actually did go to summer camp at Chuang Yen Monastery as a child, but as an adult, I wouldn't understand any of the words. Like I wouldn't be able to really follow along. And certainly when you're trying to understand a religion and the really abstract philosophical concepts, that totally escapes my mastery of Chinese.

And so I also related to what many of your interviewees said in terms of really learning about Buddhism in white spaces. Because I learned about Buddhism in white spaces and in retreats that were majority white with a handful of people of color let alone Asian Americans or those of Asian descent. And that being a very peculiar experience, I think, right? And I, and I wouldn't feel at home, I think, going to my parents’ temple either like I wouldn't, I can't read Chinese.

But I loved— And I think you really speaking to some of the ways in which your question that motivated your master's thesis and then what became this book was where all the adult Asian American Buddhists, what can we learn from them? And I really feel like what you, through their words, you really present a more pluralistic, inclusive, not simplistic, complicating narrative and vision, of what Asian American Buddhists and Buddhism look like. [inaudible] speak to any of that? And I think one of the ways that you complicate…there's so many, I think. 

I think of the book as a political book and I think one of the stereotypes that you complicate is this notion of the two Buddhisms. The Buddhism of the immigrants with devotional practices and the Buddhism of the white converts who center meditation as a practice. And you write in your book quote, "As an Asian-American immigrant, whose parent tradition is atheism and whose Buddhist practice has spanned chanting, ritual, and meditation, which of the two camps am I supposed to belong to?" And so you embody that complication to the simplistic narrative that's posed and each of these three, I think, types of adult, Asian-American Buddhists that you described really complicated it.

Chenxing Han:

I mean, I think I can just briefly say that, yeah I think when I started writing this book, I really had the notion that to be a good Buddhist, I needed to be a white meditator, if I’m being totally honest. I'm not going to be white in this lifetime. But seeing meditation is not actually my primary practice and there are so many other forms and coming in with that lens and then spending time in Cambodia it's like, does this render this entire country full of bad Buddhists?

I mean, just start just thinking again more deeply about what it's like for young Asian-Americans who might be interested in Buddhism, maybe raised with it, maybe not, but to encounter Buddhism that is where Asian people, even language, just Asian culture is entirely erased. The pain of that. What kind of message does that send to them about belonging, how they belong in this country, how they belong in Buddhist spaces?

And so it took writing this book, I think, and seeing all of these young adults as my teachers really and my benefactors in many ways, to realize wow, there are as many ways to practice Buddhism as there are just people. There are so many, 84,000 Dharma Doors. There are so many ways to come to Buddhism. There's not really a right way. It was profoundly liberating for me to realize that. It sort of, I think really birthed in me an aspiration to create spaces or to help co-create these spaces where we can have greater inclusivity, greater diversity Buddhist practice.

Of course, we'll have more affinity for certain practices than others. Of course this will change throughout the course of one's life, but recognizing that and having those, all those Dharma Doors be open and supporting them versus like, "Oh, here's the one Dharma Door. Take it or leave it." It seemed like a way to exclude a lot of people if that was going to be our model.

Belinda Ju:

So one way that you ended the book was by saying, this book was a real refuge for you to write and you gave a blessing that, may this book also be a refuge for others to read. And I think one of the ways in which it served as a refuge and kind of one of these political statements that you made really, is recognizing my own internalized racialized stereotypes and my own internalized white supremacy for what American-Buddhism is and what I thought it was and what it looked like. And that was kind of a journey that I went on in reading this book.

And I think another really radical statement that you made in this book is simply proposing this concept of a pan-ethnic, Asian-American Buddhism, that that can exist. Just simply that can be, is totally radical. And you wrote, when you were starting, when you were first contemplating your Masters thesis topic, you quoted in the book that there was quite skepticism in the scholarship that could even be possible. And you wrote from a book titled Buddhism in America, "It is hard to imagine external force that could galvanize disparate Buddhist immigrant groups to forge a shared Asian American and Buddhist identity."

And you wrote, "Seager seemed to be saying that my topic wasn't viable, that I better choose a specific ethnic group." But I thought it was interesting you said "But I was greedy." Quote, "I wanted to explore the contours of a shared Asian-American Buddhism identity, whatever that might mean."

And you ended really by saying, “I started this project feeling very much alone, unsure if ‘Asian-American Buddhist’ even made sense as a category. Now I see that Asian-American Buddhists are everywhere. Even if we aren't a trending topic, I see how Asian-American Buddhist is a meaningful category, even if we're all still trying to make sense of what it means.”

And so on that note, we're going to open it up to the audience and we really invite your thoughts, your reflections, your questions. We really want this to be a conversation amongst all of us. So I'm going to give this to Dorotea or Eric. Thank you, Eric, for ferrying this around. So thank you all.

Q&A

Dorotea Mendoza:

I posted the announcement for this event on Facebook and then I shared that post to pages and groups. Is that what you call them? Yes, in Facebook. Then a couple of days later, there were a couple of notes saying that the post was flagged as inappropriate content or something like that. When I saw it, I thought, what kind of negative reception has Chenxing and this book have received, if anything at all. Because when you start talking radical stuff, the negativity comes out.

Chenxing Han:

Yeah, that was a tough question. Who knows what was going on with the algorithm there, we cannot control anything about the game that is social media.

I think I overall felt quite fortunate. I think this book came out of spiritual friendship and I think of Ruth Ozeki's latest book, The Book of Form and Emptiness. I see some nods, so maybe some people have read Ruth Ozeki's latest book. She talks about how books have a karma of their own. They're kind of like their own karmic beings and so, I felt this book is much more outgoing than me. I mean, I had no plans of coming to you. [inaudible]

Certainly you can contact me through my website and people do and some of those messages are odd, peculiar or sometimes angry. In those instances, it's the social media thing. I just try to approach it as I would chaplaincy. Chaplaincy with a lot less information.

Yes, it's scary in the moment. I think sometimes those can feel unpleasant, and whether that's saying "You're being racist against white people, let me tell you how white people experience racism," or whether it's like, "Why aren't you centering South Asians at all?" And actually there are a lot of South Asian voices in this book, but part of what this book hopes to do is actually be generative. I would say one thing is, I really welcome dissent and disagreements. That's what this book hopes to actually invite. When people say, "Why isn't this book here?" I'm like, "Yes, please, we need this book. We need the book about queer Asian Americans, we need the book about South Asians, we need so, so many more books." This does not want to be the only book on this topic at all. Can it be generative, right?

We were talking earlier about Wanwan's film Youth Group. Can we create more films? Can we document? So much of Asian America, especially Buddhist Asian America, is just not documented, not shared. So many stories are out there. There're multiple ways to answer your question there, but I think I've been fortunate that I haven't received the levels of vitriol that I think even some of my colleagues like Funie Hsu, or even Aaron used to receive.

In some ways it's funny, you call this a political book. I didn't write it that way, per se. I really tried to take this long approach. I have a certain personal politics. I have beliefs around that, but I also needed to honor 89 different voices and these 89 people came across a very broad political spectrum. Actually, last month I was on an Asian American studies conference and someone was really challenging me, "Why isn't this more radical? Why aren't your interviews more politically engaged?" "Yes, we need that book too." Someone ranted that. The cause and conditions weren't going to happen for this nine years in the making book. It was not going to be that book. But we need that book too. Let's hear more of these stories.

Speaker:

I have two questions. Shall I stand? I'll just sit. Y'all don't need to see me.

The first is on the flip side to that question, which is the positive feedback. It's been out for a year or so now, just really curious to see what effects have taken place since you published it.

Also how the book itself has been a refuge for you? How has it inspired you to whatever next works that you're doing and some of the things or themes or questions you have or are thinking about?

Chenxing Han:

Thanks, Jay. I can think of two very concrete examples. One of the first is where we met on this retreat, that my partner, Trent Walker and I, called Story and Song, Cambodian Buddhist Chants. Trent is a scholar of Southeast Asian Buddhism in Literature and he studied [inaudible] to kind of Cambodian [inaudible] traditions. And we were invited by the Barre Center to create a retreat where we could do chanting together and study these stories and apply to our lives. Jay was there and none of us knew what to expect. Trent and I had never been to the Barre Center. I think William Edelglass, the Director of Programs there has been a really amazing job diversifying over these past two years, the offerings at the Barre Center. But I also knew just the demographic there's predominantly older and [inaudibl]. So we just didn't know what to expect and who showed up was actually two various Asian American and American, Vietnamese, Chinese, and very multi-generational, from high school students to the mother and daughter who are kind of grown.

It was just, it was what this book had always dreamed of. I talk about us gathered together [inaudible] Buddhist, someone who is Hindu came and he's very involved in queer activist circles and his religious communities. So, it was just such a beautiful space that we really co-created and co-cultivated together right off the page and in the flesh. I dream of more spaces like that. I felt that when we were together in that space for the first time after the pandemic, just sitting in a circle, hearing our voices united and chanting both in English and in [inaudible]. Just trying on these different languages, honoring a tradition that we often, Southeast Asians and South Asians, often aren't even thought about, my focus in East Asian. There were many tears for me, and I think for others at that retreat.

One other thing that's been really energizing for me this particular spring came out of a Twitter message, actually, Andy Housiaux, who teaches at Phillips Academy Andover.He's been teaching there for a dozen years, Asian religion philosophy. And he invited me to speak with his 10th graders. So they were some of the first high school students to read this book and they were so thoughtful about it. That was really energizing. And then a few months later, Andy emailed and said, "We're doing this experimental class in the spring. A small group of seniors is going to drop all of their usual five to six classes and just take one class, we want to do a Buddhism project. Do you want to help out?" "Sure, that sounds really fun. We don't know what to expect." We just wrapped that up. It's called Listening to the Buddhist in Our Backyard. We began with eight days of immersion and the Mirima valley, Thai, Cambodia, Chinese, Vietnamese temples. Later, they visited a Lao temple, that incredible amount of Buddhist diversity just in their backyard.

And to watch these students who weren't getting a grade, who weren't being told what to do, create blog posts for [inaudible], create temple profiles for [inaudible]. And also for forests that the American wisdom association, [inaudible] to write these profiles for the pluralism project of Harvard, which are usually written by grad students. Just last week, they gave really moving, both in person symposium, and an online conference to close to a hundred people, if you added up both of those audiences, but from very diverse backgrounds, people interested in pedagogy, experiential learning, people in the Buddhist media, Buddhist chaplains, professors. That has been so profoundly humbling. I think we don't recognize the potential, the capacity of young people and what they're capable of.

It has me really thinking about, how do we teach Buddhism? Why do we always start with the vulnerable truth? How does it look like when actually our first visit was going to the temple and they invited us in and then we were all bowing together. Then we lit incense together and we sat in a circle and to hear from the students, what did they learn? One of them said to me last week, "You know Chenxing? I think what I most appreciated is that you didn't answer my questions, asked you the question, that you would say, what can you think? It just made me actually passionate to learn." We went to these samples and suddenly they were practicing something called See, Think, Wonder or what I like to think of a Sense, Think, Wonder. They just went in and without preconceived notions, they suspended that, and just noticed there are three Buddhist statues.

And what is this object that looks like a tree that's made out of shiny wrapping paper? Then what does that make me think of? And then now what do I wonder? What questions do I have? And that particular tree, I just have to say, is used in the Cambodian New Year. In Cambodia, it's usually made out of banana leaves, but those aren't easy to come by in America. So, they use shiny green wrapping paper and one of our teachers or one... I say teachers and I mean students, but I actually also mean teachers because they were my teachers. One of my students just said, "That's adaptation to American culture right there."

And so I think in this moment, what I'm really curious about is continuing to learn more from the youth and to start connecting them, whether or not they're Buddhist; our students came in with very little Buddhist background and they may never go on to study Buddhism or never become Buddhist teachers. They're going to go do amazing things for their life I'm sure. But something about a seed that was planted in their lives and how much collectively I, but also the broader public, learn from them has me just really excited.

Speaker:

Thank you so much. I feel very welcomed here. I'm sure I feel a real minority. I would see if I inferred correctly some sense that because so much of Buddhism that came to the US was done by white America, European Americans, is it that they whitewashed the essence of Buddhism, they assumed or in some way, denigrated the Asian national and ethnic dynamics of it? And if that is what you're saying, in what ways did they actually do it? So that's part one.

Part two, my limited ignorant sense of Buddhism was always that it was extremely universal. They're trying transcend the suffering to find a deep inner peace that was sort of meant for everybody. You're bringing in something that's surprising to me, but also very respectfully important, because like in Catholicism, we're coming from people from all over the world.

And on one level, Catholics try to celebrate the universality that we're all these nations. But on another level, we haven't succeeded in going beyond the ethnicities or the nationalities of people who follow Catholic Christianity. And your book and your talk seems to be somewhere in the middle of that. It's not an either or, if you know what I mean. I guess first, did the Americans and Europeans whitewash Buddhism? Did they take something essential away from it by not honoring the ethnicities? And then the second part is, what about the universal dynamics, how does that dialogue with your perspective?

Chenxing Han:

Thank you. Very rich questions, big questions. I have one thought to finish, actually my answer to the last one. If you're interested in learning more about that project, listentolocalbuddhists.org. The students made a website, so I just wanted to complete that thought.

So to your first question about whitewashing Buddhism, I think I'm very comfortable saying, the whole group's whitewash Buddhism, I have very close friends who are white, who I think have honored Asian Buddhist traditions, continue to carry it forth. And so it's hard to say this whole group of people has done this one thing.

I think that there are a lot of debates within what is the circles. For example, if we take secular mindfulness as an example, something that's very popular, that's making a lot of money. I think there's some people who feel, and not just Asian people who feel this, I think people of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds are just asking questions about what are the implications of teaching mindfulness as a tool in various areas but divorced from ethics, divorced from the precepts, divorced from foundational concepts like Dana, generosity.

Those high school students, one of the first things they noticed was generosity, was Dana. They were so moved by the generosity that they were met with, and in fact, moved to the extent that they wanted to offer that to others. But we don't often start there with Buddhism. So in a way, it's sort of like, where do we locate Buddhist authority? Do we locate it in a textbook? Do we locate it only in Asia? Do we say like, "Asian Americans, that's not really as pure as Buddhisms in Asia or it's not as pure as this sort of transcendent white convert meditation."

I think for my book, I'm very uninterested in attacking or critiquing specific people. I'm very interested in thinking about the rhetorics we use and the stories we use because those stories are out there. That there is a superior white Buddhism that practices meditation that has transcended this cultural baggage, you hear this language. It's not superstitious. It's not devotional. It's really this scientific tool. And I think the invitation is to understand that is one strand of Buddhism, that is one interpretation, but it's not the conquering call and that makes in it superior one. So that's how I would maybe answer that first question.

Then the second question... I'm not sure I'm fully understanding it, but I guess maybe I'll say there universalizing aspect. Well, certainly this book is not proposing a one Buddhism. Sometimes you'll hear people talk about the many Buddhisms in America, in the world. And I would say that it's very different. I think the Catholic church is structured in a very different way than Buddhist traditions. There's so much Buddhist diversity out there that I think what this book has taught me is just how little I know. The more months pass with the more book events I do, the more I realize how little I know about Buddhism in America. It's deeply humbling, actually. And so I think some of our frameworks for understanding religion that come from Christianity just don't quite fit.

I'm not sure I'm fully answering your question, but maybe I'll say one more thing. A big point I'm trying to make in this book is around this notion of a culturally engaged Buddhism. This is something that I think everyone can engage in, that we are always shaped by actually multiple cultures, not limited to our race and also just how someone appears racially does not tell us anything actually about what kind of cultures shaped them. Everyone has a very unique and complex complicated story. So the invitation is really, instead of having a Buddhism that is totally transcendent and philosophical, it's a reclamation of the cultural baggage. Can we engage cultural means, that is how people enter through these Dharma doors, the 84,000 Dharma doors take many cultural forms.

So can we just be more astute, more aware about what types of cultures, what kind of histories are informing this particular, say sangha, that we're creating with this particular community and realize that it probably has strengths and limitations. To me, it's a very empowering to be able to say to someone like, "I hear what you're looking for. I think maybe my Buddhist community here might not fully be the best fit, but have you checked out our friends in this other neighborhood?" People come to the term with their own karma, with their own cause and conditions and to be able to see that. And so to be able say, "You're not a good fit." Or to not say that, but in lying or make people don't feel welcome and then they just give up. They think there's no other Dharma door.

Speaker:

At this point, I get it, the way you explained it. We do the same in Catholicism. There's the universal dynamic, but we've learned, "Look, you're coming from Mexico. You have a special avenue into Christianity or you're coming from Nigeria. We have to honor your way of coming in." And I think that's exactly what you're talking about honoring within the Buddhist community, if I got that. Thank you.

I realize that there are totally many different types of Buddhism. But the one collective takeaway that I want to walk out of here with tonight is that Buddhism, Buddhist are those people who find their fate and spirituality through the sutras. Would that be a bible takeaway for me to walk out of here tonight with? Because I know there are many, many types of Buddhism, that's a given [inaudible]. But I need to walk out of here tonight with something solid [inaudible].

Chenxing Han:

I think that's a very viable takeaway. It's not an accident that refuge is in the title. The three refuges of the Buddha, the dharma, the sangha. The Buddha, I think we can define that in many ways. We can make a historical Buddha, but also just enlightened beings of all gender different backgrounds. We can think of the dharma, the teachings of the Buddha that are transmitted through sutras, but I would also argue, transmitted just in very embodied ways through what people do, how people give. And the sangha, this community of people who have devoted and given and stewarded this Buddhist fate to make it possible for us to practice, to have these teachings. That's a yes. My short answer to your question is yes.

Speaker:

I like short answers. Thank you.

Belinda Ju:

I've spoken to how I think one journey I had in reading this book was to recognize my own internalized racialized stereotypes and internalized white supremacy from reading this book. I think one of the things I really appreciated, and the points that you made, was that different people have different avenues for Buddhism in terms of the kind of main tenets of compassion and wisdom and of [inaudible] that folks of my parents' generation, who are immigrants, might be able to practice that and learn that in ego-minimizing ways of bowing, of chanting. And that those are just as viable as the practices I do, even if I don't do those. So I think really honoring that validity and that that is also Buddhism, too, even if it may not be the way that I practice it.

Speaker:

Let's say, hypothetically, your baseline is Buddhism, but being that in spirituality, there are many other things. The more understanding you have of other faith, the more tools you have in your utility belt. So you may have a... one speaking by me in particular, I have a baseline, that's my practice Buddhism, but I find that spirituality is an ever evolving aspect of my life. And I found that I found some answers in Christianity. I found some answers in Native American culture, but does that takeaway my Buddhism? Or I'm trying to put it together like a puzzle.

I'm an Asian, but I'm Asian American, so I'm practicing Buddhism, but I don't feel that comfortable in China temple. I'm practicing at a Korean temple and it's all a puzzle. So I guess I'm just trying to figure out through your perspective on, the baseline is Buddhism, but yet you have other [inaudible]. Be in Christianity, Islam, Native America culture, many, many other faiths. What is your perspective on that?

Chenxing Han:

Sure. So your question is my perspective on maybe engaging with multiple faiths? And you're talking yourself as someone who has Buddhism as a baseline, but also have learned a lot using this metaphor of like a massive—repeat the question, and I'm probably not doing it very eloquently—but these tools and the tool kit of engaging with Christianity or Native American religions.  I think my perspective is that it's wonderful that you find a connection and find teachings that are meaningful to you from different faith backgrounds. And I think that…yes, that's my simple answer to your question.

We could get into a bigger question I think that people have been talking about and thinking about around essentially cultural appropriation. What does it mean to engage with respect? For example, let's say with Native American traditions, when we know that we have a history of genocide Native American peoples. I think we're just thinking about dynamics of power and privilege I think can help us be more respectful engagers of these different cultures, but Buddhism has throughout history always just embedded in different cultures and mixed, syncretized, whatever word you want to use. You know, it's always mixed, there are so many different forms. And so I think what you're doing is just living out what Buddhism is, following a lineage of 2,600 years of how Buddhism has adapted to different cultures. Thank you.

Speaker:

I'm just curious, you've done a really wonderful job sort of weaving a diverse and cross-sectional tapestry. Was there a person or a place that you were surprised to find practicing? Just, I guess, a person and place where you were like, oh wow, you're Buddhist, how? Was there anyone that really surprised you just in terms of their practice, in terms of where they were in their lives or just generationally.

Chenxing Han:

That's so fun. Well, one person actually decided not to be interviewed for my book because they didn't like the diversity that I was representing. So they felt very strongly about their particular Buddhist tradition being the right one. And so there was that, which I think was a valuable vantage point. There was that. I actually really love the stories of people's parents. I want more stories out of people's Buddhist parents and just how some of them were like, yeah, my parents actually can't do but the closest place was the Buddhist temple. So we just went there and I'm like, oh wow, I want to hear their stories.

So I think again, part of the critique of Buddhism is I think it's profoundly flattering for all parties involved. I sometimes strip two Buddhism is one Buddhism, it's white Buddhism and it's Asian foil that it kind of made of so yeah, in other words, I talk to people who are white and who are saying, well, my parents are converts and I don't feel like a convert because I actually feel like a second gen Buddhist, but I feel like there's not a space for me to talk about that dynamic. So I really like that. I think that's a really interesting question, but those are answers that come to mind.

Speaker:

Okay so this is less about and more about what you guys said at the very beginning. My husband and I were also in Asia during the pandemic and the last presidency. And so we came here at the beginning of the fall. So straight from that into this postapocalyptic world. And if you don't mind talking about how you've reintegrated, because I've really struggled with that as I'm Catholic Buddhist and speaking about the universality of Catholicism, it was easier to find a place just finding a Catholic church, but to find a sangha, when we were in Japan, we sat with plum village and before that we sat with a different sangha tradition, but coming here, it's been hard to find a place. So if you could speak about how you guys have felt coming back to America, especially with the pandemic and political environment.

Chenxing Han:

And just to clarify, when you say here, do you mean here in New York specifically?

Speaker:

Just the US-

Chenxing Han:

Oh my goodness. That's a really big question. It was really a struggle to integrate back here. The conversations that... I didn't write this book to be, it's a funny thing to say, race was not necessarily a central focus of this book. Like it was very interesting culture. The race piece was there, but it's not primarily a book about race. It's an aspect but it's very interesting to come back at a time of such heightened tensions and so much racial anxiety, anger. It was just like, I felt like it was stepping into this whole new world and I didn't have a lot of context like, okay, Stephen Colbert was helping us understand right. That in Bangkok, but is not the thing as having been on the ground. So there's a lot. Black lives matter. Anti-Asian violence. In some ways I think the book was, I mean, it's a little, for example I didn't think there would be any book events.

And there have been like 70 and sometimes the way that people have framed this book is like, okay, like, wow, I'm just learning about some of the costs of representation. Tokenization. There is very complicated dynamics happening there. So that's one piece of what it's been like to integrate back. Another piece is just very human, just so much grief. So my next book, which is coming out next spring, it's a memoir. The title is "life long listening: a meditation on Buddhist [inaudible] grief and spiritual friendship." And that came out of my time working in an oncology unit and a medical unit, just working with people as an intricate chaplain, but also it's very much a love letter to a friend who died actually just the year before Aaron died, also a blood cancer at the age of 29, someone who I was very close to and the collective levels of grief, anger, like there's so much going on.

And I think I could see how race was so much a part of that. And I think to your question about community, I think this pandemic has opened up some pretty incredible possibilities with Zoom and connection. You know, Dorte, you were just talking about a group of activists and how you've been able to gather every single Sunday in ways that wouldn't have been possible. Organizers from the Philippines and from Holland were all over. So that has opened up possibilities, but I've really missed being able to gather like this in person. I do think something is still lost, right? Something is lost when we can't go to the temple and just experience it with all of our senses. I remember going to the temple for the first time during COVID, it was shortly after the killing of [inaudible] January of 21, I'm getting years... A Thai American elder who'd been pushed and killed.

And we realized from actually the New York Times photo that with his daughter holding her father's picture like, oh, we've actually been to this temple in San Francisco. So that's where Trent and I actually went. The first temple we went to and then we actually went to another local Chinese temple nearby with our masks, being very anxious about like, is this okay? And I just wept when I went to the first temple, just like something about the body of being able to foul something about, we couldn't light the incense because you know, smoke, but just to be able to hold it and both in gratitude for that space, but also in sorrow that people couldn't be gathering as that space was meant to do, to connect people intergenerationally. So your question is such a beautiful one. I kind of want to hear everybody in this room's answer.

I want to hear people's answer to this question. What are you dreaming into being like in what ways are your current spiritual communities nourishing you? And in what ways do you want more? What do you want to be co-creating because I think maybe a big thing I've learned through this process is that sometimes we have to create the communities we want to see, our critiques will only take us so far. That's an important part of the process, but we can get stuck in this kind of critique criticism, what we don't like. The harder thing to do is what do we want to see? What are we going to try to do? And then we'll realize, well, this is hard, this is messy, but it can also be deeply meaningful, deeply joyful.

Speaker:

Thank you. First of all, thank you for the wonderful presentation. You had said somewhere along the line, I think, that when you were talking about there are many other types of Buddhism besides meditation-based practice and that's not even your primary practice. And I was wondering if you could say more about your practice.

Chenxing Han:

This is always such a difficult question for me to answer. I often reflect how in like other Asian languages I'm not sure I know how to even translate the question. What is your practice? You know, so yeah, T, it's like many things. It's chanting. It's the work with the students. It's just friendships. It's this right here, right now, listening deeply to all of you, knowing that this very precious moment where we will never all gather together in this room again, just remembering that and thinking how, what are the karmic seeds? What are the merits, the merits that come from this time together benefit.

Belinda Ju:

I think it's so interesting that your answer to that question is both communal and service-oriented, which is such an Asian expression of the practice.

Maybe our last question. [inaudible] Okay, second to last.

Speaker:

Thank you so much for this offering. I guess I'm very excited to read the book because what you both have shared today has really resonated. And I guess as I find myself resonating with a lot of different experiences that you both shared, and my question is, and maybe it's already answered in the book, but do you have an ask now that you've shared this? Do you have an ask for Asian American Buddhists or non-Asian American Buddhists? What do we need to do going forward to raise, highlight this or move forward in a way?

Chenxing Han:

I look to the high school students and maybe to ask to visit your local Buddhist temples. And even if there's a language barrier, even if it's scary, just maybe extend friendship, learn from them and maybe ask how you can serve them, make connections, just make friends, right? Enjoy a meal together, have a cup of tea together. I think I've learned so much that what can come out of a relationship if I never met Aaron, if we never became deep friends this book never could have came to be. And so just start there and find a way to make it feel really life-giving for you. Right. We all have so many gifts to offer. And so find a way to just to give.

Belinda Ju:

The subtitle of the book is "Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists," and I think one of the most beautiful parts of the book is the way in which this is a tribute to Aaron. And reading about how he inspired you to get your voice out.

And I think that's one of my takeaways, is to feel empowered and to be in community, to also have my voice heard. So that's what I was thinking.

Speaker:

All right, you've got the last one.

Speaker:

Just a quick question then. I'd love to hear more about internalized white supremacy and how that plays out in all of this. I think that, like, Belinda, you just said, there was a little comment in there that was like, "Oh yeah. And this had to do with community, and had to do with service and the living in the culture of white supremacy and the white supremacy that's lived within the Buddhist world, with American Buddhism since, or maybe not since the inception, but since, you know, what we popularize it in the inception. Even in this moment, I'm saying since the inception, right? Like yeah, can you make any comments on that? How it plays out and how it affects the experience of Asian American Buddhists, your experience, your experience that you’ve seen. Also, it might affect the experience of non-Asian American Buddhists.

Belinda Ju:

I think for me and my exposure to Buddhism, it's really been—I'm recognizing in reading the book, how limited it was, because my exposure as an adult has very much been in white spaces. It's been modeled by white teachers. It's been limited to meditation. The chanting and the bowing has largely been stripped from the meditation retreat centers and places that I practice. And I think that it is a recognition of what can be possible in terms of my practice. What are ways in that, for millennia, people have connected to this practice that I've not given myself permission to, or even been educated on how to do so.

That I think for me, not denigrating my parents' Buddhism, and you write about this, Chenxing, where, you have a whole chapter titled "Compassion." And it's the journey that second generation Asian Americans have in accepting or welcoming or recognizing and respecting the religion of their parents, which is different than theirs.

And so I think for me that there are many valid Buddhisms and there are many valid Buddhist practices. And I feel very much empowered in this spirit of pluralism that you’ve really, I think, highlighted and encouraged. And in this book, I feel very encouraged to open to more Buddhisms, of what it looks like, of what it can look like for me and my practice, and that inclusivity of it. So that, I hope that answers your question, Ravi.

Chenxing Han:

We’ll be sitting here all evening if we're going to enumerate all the examples of white supremacy, yes, an entire lifetime. Iwould say I'm so grateful to so many of the Black Buddhist authors, whose writings we have, [inaudible]. I've attuned all the people in Black and Buddhists, this anthology. I think they can speak very deeply to some of these ills. And of course the Black experience is different than the Asian American experience, but I think there are also interconnected ways that you can learn.

So I think it's not an accident that I wrote this book in Southeast Asia. I'm not actually sure I could have written this book while located in the US, just the daily grind of it. For me to be in a space where I'm not fluent at all in Khmer or Thai, but just to be around people who look like me. There's something that happens in the body that can just relax a bit. And it gave me some distance to think about.

And so this is kind of an indirect way to answer your question, but I find that it's like that story about the Buddhist parable about the person who’s shot with an arrow and you can sit there and ask like, "What type of arrow is it? And what are the feathers made out of? And what is this... Who shot this? And what is the profession of the person who shot?" That you can go on and on and on. And the question's really like, "How do we pull out this arrow?" Right? Thinking about it, Elizabeth Dias for the New York Times wrote a piece yesterday called the Arrow America's Heart. She actually had interviewed me... By the way, if anyone has a copy of yesterday's New York times, I would love to see it. Because I would love to see it in print, but I've just been thinking about that metaphor lately.

And so one way to answer your question is to enumerate all the ways. And I think we have brilliant thinkers in this country that are teaching us all the ways that white supremacy manifests, not just in Buddhist circles, like we're deluding ourselves if we think Buddhists are free of these dynamics, right? It's all integrated in the culture. But I think the harder question to answer is, "Okay, so how do we root out this... These, yeah. The toxins, the poisons, of fear, hatred, delusion in ourselves and in our communities." And for me, a small way to do that was just to keep returning these practice, like, "Okay, what is it like to, again, just resend the Asian American witness experience?" My first book was still within this context of responding to white supremacy. I was fighting against white male authors. And then I realized like, "Do I really want to spend my energy and time doing this?"

Who's my audience? Who am I speaking to? Nah, actually, no, no, I'm just... So it was a practice to cite people, I'd be like, "Oh, I'm citing so many white folks and white male people. What is it like to cite a lot more Asian American?" Like that was a practice, right? So there's this decentering or reentering of the marginalized. And maybe, to answer your question, that's also part of the invitation for people to actually practice centering Asian Americans and also Black Buddhist native, what is that? Mixed raced, just, there were so many queer Buddhists start really listening to these stories, listening deeply and then starting to ask, "Oh, what do we need to change to help everyone really feel included?"

[applause]

Dorotea Mendoza:

So, okay, mic. Thank you again, everyone, for coming, for being in person and thank you Belinda. [applause] for doing [inaudible] and also doing a lot of the logistical work as well. Thank you so much. And Chenxing, we celebrate you.

So we have a lot of work to do. We do know what's going on in the world, but also there are joys and gatherings like this and like Chenxing and Belinda just said, if we don't see it out there, we create them. So thank you so much again. [inaudible] Buddhist Action Coalition. You can look on our website. buddhistaction.org. Thank you.

[applause]

Chenxing Han:

Can we do a group photo together?

Speaker:

Let's do it.

Dorotea Mendoza:

Oh, also people ordered your books. They're in the back.

Chenxing Han:

Yes, yes. Yeah. You're welcome to buy both stage.. I know it's late. Thank you for sitting here for so long, but please meet each other. There are so many amazing people in this room. Just meet each other. I'll be around. We'll be around. Let's all take a group photo and then yeah, I'll be in the back if you want books signed.

[fadeout]