“Every breath is sacred” David Zimmerman, Abbot, San Francisco Zen Center
“Before this virus, humanity was already threatened with suffocation. ……To come through this constriction would mean that we conceive of breathing beyond its purely biological aspect, and instead as that which we hold in-common, that which, by definition, eludes all calculation. By which I mean, the universal right to breath.” Achille Mbembe, April 2020.
Recently I was in a gathering of POC meditation practitioners to just be, to mourn, to seek solace and love in our togetherness. As you probably know, Buddhists are not necessarily a talkative bunch since our focus tends toward what we call the “backward step”—toward reflection, meditation, and studying our suffering. We felt a need to draw together because of our individual anguish. There is grace in being in community with one another. We spent an hour together in meditation and ceremony. There were some words but not many. By the way, pro tip here, in case you think meditation is a selfish practice, all of us understand our individual world of the self is conditioned by our collective world.
During our short time together we asked/wondered aloud about how Asians and Asian Americans figure into this moment. Rage for sure, grief in equal measure, and a palpable disquiet. For many of us, navigating this… is emotionally complex. We support in body, speech, and mind BLM and we deplore the police use of deadly force. But, we also find ourselves in a psychic tangle. We sit in and between two worlds: the world of our practice life (where we are often minorities in majority white sanghas)** and the current historic moment of global anti-racism awakenings (where our experiences are sometimes a gloss). We are part of this and apart from this. Hence, the disquiet.
Technically speaking, there is no Asian American history or Asian American experience without labor history, immigration history, colonialism, imperialism, histories of racism, and histories of blackness. I say this as a Sociologist and you can @me on this if you like.
Zenju Earthlyn Manuel’s Lion’s Roar essay “Darkness is asking to be loved,” powerfully points all of us toward darkness. Darkness is familiar to practice communities, shadows of the self…. which include our individual and collective society forms of unconsciousness, privilege, pain, and suffering.
The history and study of Blackness casts sprawling reach—over economy, culture, and more. It is inclusive of, and yet not exhausted by the experiences of black people. Sometimes the way we talk about racism limits or corrals our vision of history. In a recent essay in The Atlantic, Professor Imani Perry explains why she and others are wary of the pitying gazes of anti-racism discourse. When you focus on the victim experience, it can be a one-note song. Only John Cage gets away with one-note songs. You miss the other notes, melodies, syncopated tones.
Buddhist practice aims to expand our understanding of self (and other). We strive to change not what we see but how we see. As Buddhist communities think and act on their understandings of racism, it is a fruitful path, in my view, to consider how terms like “anti-racism” may be limiting. I would ask that we consider Perry’s invitation: to be wary of our own speech—and whether we might think about whether anti-racism work in Buddhist communities truly recognizes grace in blackness.
**In another post, there is much to be said about being Asian American in a practice life that that originates in Asia but has been filtered through two or three generations of our beautiful (and mostly not Asian or Asian or Asian American) elders. But not yet.
Thank you to Herman Gray for referring me to Achille Mbembe’s new work on breath and brutalism.
More about Asian Americans and the dharma…. in another post. To be continued.