June 2008
Dear Friends in the Dharma
Over the past 8 to 9 years that I have offered teachings in the Dharma, my efforts have been focused on making the Dharma accessible to diverse folks from different backgrounds, with a special emphasis on multicultural communities. While I teach everyone, and I believe that the Teachings are for everyone, I often get these questions of “Why do we need retreats for People of Color or Lesbian and Gay communities? Isn’t that fostering separation which is NOT the Dharma?” “Isn’t the Dharma, just the Dharma?” “What does culture have to do with the Dharma?”
I wanted to explore this topic since it still arises, even though I may not be able to provide all the detail that the subject deserves in this short space.
Culturally-specific practice opportunities have proven invaluable in bringing People of Color (POC) and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) communities into the Dharma, by providing a safe place to develop spiritual community and supporting their experiences in the Dharma so that transformation can deepen in their lives. People come into practice in order to find a nurturing environment to explore who they really are. Even in 2008, within our cultural mainstream the experiences of People of Color and LGBT communities often are different, and are therefore unseen, ignored, or dismissed (sometimes violently) by the larger culture.
“When few around you look like you, and when the cultural expressions used to teach the dharma are not your own, it can make it really challenging to practice.”—a practitioner of color
Under these conditions of our collective cultural unconsciousness, it is difficult to feel safe and relax into the intimacy of spiritual exploration which allows our true nature to be revealed. This refuge of culturally-specific practice venues provide the chance to: 1) see and hear similar life experiences, 2) see role models in other teachers who can share and/or reflect similar experiences, and 3) come to an understanding of how the Dharma can transform the particular circumstances of all of our lives. The life experiences of folks who are different from the pervasive dominant culture are often not named, mentioned, or even alluded to in retreats directed towards more mainstream audiences. In my own early retreat experience, I even left a retreat because of the suffering of not feeling that my own life experiences were understood or seen.
“This
is one of the first retreats where I didn’t feel talked to or at. I felt like I was joined where I was & we were sharing this experience together vs. being a divide between teachers and yogis. Other dharma talks……are so disconnected from the world we live in—no mention of social change and its relevance to the dharma and our practice.”—a yogi after one People of Color retreat
Creating the broadest access to the Dharma for all populations can only further enrich the expression of the Teachings in this time, in this place, and in this culture. The benefits of this cannot be overstated. POC and LGBT retreats provide a safe container where people can have the trust in their environment and surroundings to delve deeply into their own experience and their true nature. This true nature leads to the universal connection to all beings. However, this trust in the process is a luxury that may not occur in our day to day lives, where our conditioning is to have some level of defensiveness or contraction as a constant companion to protect against very real experiences of harm or oppression in the external world. In addition, it is very clear that our current social and political dialogue of our householder lives is filled with the issues of Race, Culture, Orientation, Gender Identity, and Difference. You just have to open the daily newspaper or open the website of your email program. You just have to listen to the messages underlying the current political campaigns. Our ability to bring our spiritual practice to these very real issues that face us as individuals and as communities, is where the rubber meets the road of our collective spiritual practice.
“In the company of heterosexuals, I am always to some extent on guard. I am old enough that when I came of age being queer was still listed as a mental disorder. Boys in my high school used to boast of going and 'rolling queers.' With a very few precious exceptions, sex was something desperate and dangerous, done with someone you didn't know. Nowhere I looked—nowhere—were there any positive messages or role models. All this comes from the unquestioned heterosexist privilege that is, to a great extent, still with us. A person doesn't just get over growing up in that kind of environment. I have dealt with crippled self esteem and depression all of my life.
So. In the retreat last weekend , I experienced a momentary thawing of my frozen heart that I am quite sure would not have happened in an all-inclusive retreat. It was so beautiful to me to be in the company of other gay/bi men, each having humbly come to practice. This huge lump of unprocessed pain began to move....I have work to do, and I will seek out queer Buddhist environments to do it in.”
Culturally-specific retreats have also been of critical importance for people from all cultural backgrounds to explore the Dharma, strengthen their practice, and thus expand their ability to practice in any retreat, in any location, with any teacher. That is the ultimate intention of these retreats. Again, the intention is to be able to experience the inter-connection between us all. However, as with any practice, it is an incremental process. These culturally-focused retreats are Dharma gates for people, they are not intended to be the Dharma destinations for folks. There are the precious opportunities where people can find their way into the experience of having a practice that is not dependent upon external conditions.
In many ways, just as Women’s retreats have proven invaluable in strengthening and deepening the experience of Dharma and meditation practice of women in the West, so the retreats of different cultural experiences offer the same gift to diverse communities.
“As is probably the case with everyone, I became involved with Buddhism because I was suffering.
Helpful as I found Buddhism, however, I also had experienced some painful misunderstandings when white dharma teachers, meditation instructors and yogis seemed to be threatened or baffled by my bringing up experiences with racism. “Why would they be interested? Don’t they have their own churches?” one visiting dharma teacher asked me.
“…..it was affirming to sit in meditation and to be surrounded by others of color and to look to the front and see an array of beautiful, compassionate teachers of color.”—a practitioner on a People of Color retreat
Ultimately, we need POC and LGBT sanghas and retreats for the same reasons that we need mainstream retreats and meditation centers that European Americans have created for the larger mainstream culture. I say this because long before the larger European American sanghas were formed in the US, there were and are (since the 1850’s) many Asian temples and centers within which to practice—Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, and more recently Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese among others. Why did European Americans not practice in THOSE temples? Why did European Americans feel the need to form their own sanghas and retreats in spite of existing Asian practice venues?
I suspect that it is because European Americans did not see themselves reflected within those Asian centers which developed from their cultures of origin. European Americans did not hear their life stories in the way the Teachings were languaged. They did not experience how the Dharma was relevant to their particular life conditions. So, European Americans created sanghas centered around the experiences of European Americans for the exact same reasons that POCs and LGBTs also need to create culturally relevant sanghas.
Indeed, regardless of our cultural differences, we are the same….in that we respond in the same way to many of the same cultural circumstances. We all (not just People of Color, or Women, or LGBT communities, but also European Americans) create sanghas based on identity issues—because we are all human. We all have that need for safety and community, especially in the beginning of our practice. In this respect we ARE all the same—even in how we manifest our differences.
As the Dharma moves into Western society and culture, the practice and refuge of Sangha….in particular, the practice and refuge of multicultural Sangha (within most Buddhist lineages in the West) are literally in their beginning years and nascent development. As we know “practice” is incremental and takes time. The creation of culturally-specific practice venues, like POC and LGBT retreats, is not intended to be the final goal of practice, but merely a skillful means to create access for communities who have not been able to previously access the Dharma due to our collective cultural unconsciousness. Eventually, we know that the Dharma invites the deepest intention from all these sanghas—European American, People of Color, Queer folks, and otherwise—to be able to practice anywhere, with anyone, under any circumstance....but that intention will take some time for all of us to grow into collectively. It reflects a vision for our world that one of the current presidential candidates has described as narrowing “the gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of our time.”
We are slowly beginning to address hundreds of years (if not more) of cultural conditioning and separation….we should not be attached to the outcome that this should be able to be accomplished overnight….or even over decades or even our lifetime. Until we collectively live into our vision of multicultural Sangha, let all of us allow everyone the generosity to be the same, by allowing everyone the generosity to be different.
As the great African American civil rights activist and organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, Bayard Rustin, said:
“God does not require us to achieve any of the good tasks that humanity must pursue. What God requires of us is that we not stop trying.”
Anumodana (“Sharing in the goodness and merit of your actions”) to all those who have supported and continue to support the efforts towards offering the Dharma to as many multicultural communities as possible. It creates the possibility of freedom for greater and greater numbers of people.
Many blessings to you and your loved ones,
Larry |
