Introducing my interview with the Young Buddhist Editorial
And an update on how to support Maui's recovery
#MauiStrong
Thank you to everyone who has been asking how they can help support the victims of the wildfires on Maui. If you are able to and have not yet made a donation, please consider contributing to one of these local funds:
Kākoʻo Maui Fund from the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement. Your gift will be doubled by matching funds!
I worked with both CNHA and HCF on the 2020 Census and was amazed at the depth and reach of their relationships throughout the islands. I trust that they are distributing money strategically and quickly, and in the most effective ways possible.
Both organizations are also looking to the long term recovery of Lahaina. And everyone here, from the grassroots to the governor, are very aware of the need to keep affected lands in the hands of Native Hawaiians and Maui locals, and to prevent more displacement of local families. This is a robust conversation that has been happening here for a long time, led by Native Hawaiian and local voices.
Recovering and rebuilding Lahaina will not just be about mourning those loved ones lost, detoxifying the land, and constructing new buildings. It is indelibly connected to the larger work of reconciling Hawaiʻi's present day reality with the history of America's overthrow and colonization of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi.
It's going to be a long road. Thank you for your continuing support.
Back to This Week's Newsletter:
Introducing my interview with The Young Buddhist Editorial
I've been working for a long time now on the transcript of an interview with the Young Buddhist Editorial (YBE). It's been awfully hard to cut down—I just love so much of what YBE leaders Devon Matsumoto and Koki Atcheson have to say.
So, rather than shorten it too much, I'm sharing a preamble to the interview this week here and next week, I'll share the edited transcript under a new section of this newsletter where I focus on Asian American Buddhist Renewal.
In June 2022, Devon Matsumoto, one of YBE's original founders, approached me at a conference to say hello. But first, he apologized.
He didn't mean to be weird, he said, but he wanted to let me know that he had been hoping to meet me ever since my participation in the May We Gather 49-day memorial for victims of anti-Asian violence the year before. I quickly responded that I had been equally hoping to get to know him! I had heard a lot about YBE and the fact that he was a panelist at this conference was, in fact, one of the reasons I was there.
I later learned that another YBE member, Koki Atcheson, lives right here in Honolulu and I was thrilled to meet her, too. In the end, we actually met through the Honpa Hongwanji Hawaii Betsuin, a Jodo Shin Buddhist temple only fifteen minutes away and with whom I've done some work.
I first heard about YBE in the spring of 2021. Amidst a nationwide rise in anti-Asian violence, many news outlets found YBE to be a clear and hopeful voice for the Asian American community. YBE, which had started out as just a group of friends, began then to take shape as a network of young people addressing social issues that mattered to and impacted them—and how they did this was informed by their shared Buddhist background. YBE first organized Zoom calls and healing circles for those dealing with the trauma of anti-Asian violence. And then, following the murder of George Floyd, they addressed the difficult topics of police violence and anti-Black racism within Asian American communities.
"We really wanted to have a conversation about uprooting anti Blackness within our community and addressing systemic racism that even we uphold as Asian Americans," Devon said.
"We really wanted to have a conversation about uprooting anti Blackness within our community and addressing systemic racism that even we uphold as Asian Americans."
Meanwhile, they published articles about their experiences as young, Asian American Buddhists in a sort of online magazine. It has an energetic college newspaper kind of feel.
Today, YBE has blossomed into a national and global network with members from a variety of Buddhist sects, though most members are still Americans of Japanese Ancestry (AJA) who grew up as Jodo Shin Buddhists. Jodo Shin Buddhism is the most popular form of Buddhism in Japan and in the US and here, most Jodo Shin Buddhist temples fall under the umbrella of the Buddhist Churches of America (BCA). The BCA name and many of the hallmarks of the BCA—services on Sundays, ministers wearing shirts and ties, hymns, sports, and scouts—reflect the need for communities to assimilate to White American culture following the internment of more than 125,000 AJAs in concentration camps during World War II.
As Duncan Williams lays out in his book, American Sutra, Japanese Americans were more likely to be arrested and displaced during the war if they were Buddhist (versus Christian). This should really inform how American Buddhism is understood and how it's represented in popular culture in the US but, unfortunately it doesn't.
Today, as many as 70% of American Buddhists are Asian, mostly practicing in predominantly Asian Buddhist temples. But yet, we are conspicuously absent from Buddhist media and the mindfulness world, which is derived from Buddhism. This is only slowly beginning to change. Within convert sanghas that are predominantly White, as well as within sangha led by People of Color but the recent roots of which are in White-led spaces, the Asian cultures that are the practical embodiment of Buddhism continue to be erased. This is a detriment not just to diversity and equity, but to the efficacy and transformative potential of the teachings, themselves.
Today, as many as 70% of American Buddhists are Asian, mostly practicing in predominantly Asian Buddhist temples. But yet, we are conspicuously absent from Buddhist media and the mindfulness world.
It was partly for this reason that, in our interview, I spent a lot of time asking about Devon and Koki's upbringings as young Asian American Buddhists. Their childhoods, full of of playing basketball and soccer in the San Francisco Bay Area's Asian Leagues, and picking raspberries in the woods of the Pacific Northwest at Buddhist summer camp, have an idyllic quality. These childhood memories were also remarkably clear and accessible to them, which made their stories feel warm and alive.
When I asked Devon and Koki what their early experiences of spirituality were, they echoed the sentiment I've heard in other interviews, which is that, as children, they associated Buddhism and spirituality with community and their Japanese American culture.
"I think I at first equated being at a Buddhist temple with Japanese culture," Koki says. "I don't think I separated the Dharma school activities versus the Japanese cultural activities. All of that was wrapped up into the temple community. I guess my briefest answer is that my early experience in spirituality was community first."
This natural and reciprocal interweaving of Buddhism and Asian culture contrasts with how Western converts usually identify something as Buddhist. Five years ago, when I interviewed two prominent Hawaiʻi politicians about their Buddhist upbringings, they struggled to identify what exactly about their childhoods was Buddhist aside from going to temple. And yet, there were clear Buddhist values and behaviors informing and flowing through their lives.
Both Devon and Koki went to a lot of children's programs at their Buddhist temples, such as Lotus Preschool and Dharma School, and when I asked what made these programs Buddhist and not just daycare, Devon made a point that, to me, felt profound:
"I don't even think you have to be teaching Buddhism… for it to be a Buddhist preschool. Because by just being at the Betsuin and being a preschool that Buddhist temple members are a part of, that makes it inherently Buddhist. You're deeply embedded in Buddhism without having to say, "we're gonna teach them about mindfulness today," etc. Just being affiliated with the temple and that everyone involved is Buddhist, it is inherently Buddhist."
“You're deeply embedded in Buddhism without having to say, "we're gonna teach them about mindfulness today," etc.”
In casual conversation, Devon and Koki are free with Japanese and Buddhist words and phrases. They don't miss much of a beat by translating or qualifying these, or at least they didn't for me, even though I'm not AJA and am not Jodo Shin Buddhist. That feels like a gift. Living here in Hawaiʻi, I hear untranslated words in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, Hawaiian Pidgin, and Japanese often and they land for me like an invitation to be a part of the local culture and community. There is an acceptance inherent in not stopping the conversation on my behalf, as well as a trust that, if I don't know a word, I'm grown and smart enough to look it up.
Maybe it's more of a reflection of the fact that I'm now in my early 40s, but there's something about YBE that also makes me feel like their older Buddhist sister or cousin. When they talk about the steps they've gone through to formulate YBE's mission and vision, and when they wax poetic about the structures of accountability and power they want to encourage or oppose, I can't help but see their youthfulness, their Gen Z-ness. It's something they exude so purely and sincerely, with nary a hint of my Millennial cynicism.
To me, YBE possesses the same wide-eyed and gentle presence that characterizes Gen Z at large. This presence defies the grim specters they've grown up with: a regular tempo of mass shootings, losing the right to reproductive healthcare, racist police violence, and the climate crisis. In the face of such existential threats, how does Gen Z find the hope and determination to move forward and find meaning? I am convinced that Buddhism will play an important role—and who gets to count as an American Buddhist, how American Buddhism is represented, and, to Devon's point, what is even identified as Buddhist will matter.
Who gets to count as an American Buddhist, how American Buddhism is represented, and what is even identified as Buddhist will matter.
Stay tuned for the transcript of my conversation with Koki and Devon, landing next week. I'm very curious to hear whether it resonates with you and if you walk away feeling as I do: Separated from them by cultural space and generational time, but with a warm and close kinship still.