From “Just Culture” to a Just Culture
Why embodying the cultures from which Buddhism came helps the dharma work on us from all angles.
For the past three years, I have had the good fortune of living at Daihonzan Chozen-ji, a Rinzai Zen temple and monastery in Hawaii founded and still led by Asian Americans. This is exceedingly rare in American Zen. For decades, Zen (but also Theravada and Tibetan) Buddhist institutions in the West have been handed down to younger generations of mostly white leaders by founders from Asia who didn't fully understand racism in America and who may not have been aware of their own biases. Although Asian or "heritage" Buddhist temples and churches have existed in the West for more than 100 years, many convert Western Buddhists don't know or dismiss the role they've played in the flourishing of Buddhism here. The faces of Asian teachers—whether Sri Lankan, Tibetan, Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, Burmese, Thai, Japanese, Bhutanese, or Cambodian—rarely grace magazine pages or ads for teacher trainings. (This is all against the backdrop of the history of the imprisonment of 120,000 Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II, who were often targeted because of their Buddhist beliefs.)
Even before the recent wave of protests against police brutality and for racial justice, more Buddhist teachers of color have been gaining prominence. They bring with them an honest reckoning with how racism shows up in and shapes their own sanghas, or communities. This is part of a broader effort on the part of many Buddhists to support a collective awakening around racial justice that is much needed and long overdue. Still, from where I sit, I see one area in our own house that calls out for attention: the erasure of Asian cultures, and of Asian and Asian American people, in mainstream Western Buddhism. There is no equivalency to be made here between Asian erasure in Western Buddhism and the murder of Black people in America. But confronting and learning about this erasure of Asian cultures is necessary in order for us to address the full spectrum of racism and white supremacy. Doing so will make it possible for us to truly wake up in the broadest political and Buddhist senses of the word.
As a Korean American Buddhist, now an ordained priest and monk at Chozen-ji, I am for the first time experiencing an authentic and lively Asian American cultural life—Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Filipino, as well as Native Hawaiian—suffusing throughout a serious Buddhist training environment. Over the fifteen years before coming to Chozen-ji, I sat with more than a dozen different Buddhist communities where I was often the only Asian and sometimes one of the only non-white people in attendance. When non-Asian Buddhists (particularly at American Zen centers) wore Japanese clothes, bowed to me theatrically, referred to me as "Cristina-san", responded to requests in English with "Hai!", and expressed rigid attachment to the technical accuracy of certain Japanese and Buddhist forms, it looked more like cosplay than a means to enter Zen. These actions were, in retrospect, performative rather than being a way to sincerely throw away one's small self through the embodiment of Japanese and Zen culture.
Today, in contrast, I feel a new comfort in my own skin, seeing myself reflected in the faces of a majority Asian local population wherever I go. In my time here, I have also learned a new way to approach Zen and Buddhism altogether.
Seeing how Asian Americans in Hawaii and non-Asian locals approach Buddhism and sangha has truly transformed my Buddhist training. I have repeatedly been amazed by the local students who grew up in a majority-Asian state where Buddhism is the second most practiced religion. They show up to Chozen-ji ready to give first rather than receive—asking to pull weeds or clean bathrooms, for example, to earn the privilege of learning zazen (seated meditation). Right now, the fridge is bursting with homegrown papayas and avocados from dojo members who know we have monks to feed. Several days a week, one of our Zen priests comes to trim the grass for hours in the hot sun, his visage covered in grass clippings. We practically have to force him to get reimbursed for equipment repairs. A few months ago, a new student who had sat zazen with us only a few times made an unceremonious, unexpected, and very large donation—a gift reflecting his planned future attendance or perhaps just to express his appreciation.
Now that I’ve seen this—now that I've lived it—I cannot unsee it. When people from outside Hawaii come to Chozen-ji, and when I see emails or social media from mainstream, non-Asian convert Buddhist centers, I cannot ignore the glaring absence of Asian cultures and people in their communities and institutions. This is one symptom of how Western convert Buddhism has extracted itself from the foreign cultures of its roots, and it shows how the very institutions of mainstream Western Buddhism—even with sits specifically for people of color and programs in white allyship—can be vehicles for the continuing erasure of Asian cultures that were home to Buddhism for millennia and from which the dharma is inextricable. How can we truly dismantle racism—especially its deepest and most insidious forms in anti-Black racism—in our sanghas and in society without addressing a history we’ve overlooked?