For Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage month, we’re sharing articles by and about Asian American Buddhists from our archives. This week, we’re exploring how Asian American histories intersect with Buddhist and U.S. histories.
This week, we discover how Asian American histories intersect with Buddhist and U.S. histories. Within the following 5 articles, we discover that Asian American Buddhists’ lengthy presence in North America is marked by fusion and community-building in addition to exclusion and violence.
Vishnu Sridharan discusses the historical past of Buddhism’s relationship with different South Asian non secular traditions. Unpacking the “perpetual foreigner” stereotype, Funie Hsu urges us to recollect Asian American contributions to Buddhism in America.
Following 4 generations of 1 Japanese American household, Lindsay Kyte reveals the lengthy historical past of the Buddhist Church buildings of America. Based mostly on interviews with over two dozen senior lecturers, Derek Pyle offers us an summary of Theravada communities within the U.S., together with Burmese, Sri Lankan, Cambodian, and Thai communities.
We finish with choices from audio system at “Could We Collect: A Nationwide Buddhist Memorial Ceremony for Asian American Ancestors,” organized by Funie Hsu, Chenxing Han, and Duncan Ryuken Williams. Marking the forty-ninth day after the 2021 Atlanta shootings by which six Asian American girls have been murdered, Could We Collect additionally honored our forerunners misplaced to racial violence within the U.S., acknowledging that previous histories of racial violence echo into our current.
As you learn these 5 articles, contemplate: What do you know about these histories and communities? What shocked you? What do you need to discover additional? What Asian American communities have influenced your follow? How can figuring out their histories improve your understandings of Buddhism? How do you join along with your predecessors, identified and unknown, who’ve impacted your historical past and follow in numerous methods?
-Mihiri Tillakaratne, Affiliate Editor
Vishnu Sridharan factors out a blind spot in Western Buddhism — South Asia is exoticized, whereas Buddhism’s origins in South Asian tradition are ignored.
Rising up, I perceived an in depth affinity between Hinduism—the faith of my ancestors—and Buddhism. Not solely have been each traditions rooted deeply within the soil of South Asia, however I had all the time been taught that the Buddha was the ninth avatar of Vishnu, the normal Hindu preserver and protector of the universe (in addition to my namesake). Given this, participating with Buddhism felt like a pure a part of my non secular journey. As soon as I started collaborating in Western Buddhist circles, although, I encountered a mixture of fetishization and hostility towards Buddhism’s South Asian roots that led me to wonder if I used to be misunderstanding Buddhism, or whether or not the Western Buddhists I used to be training with have been misunderstanding me.
Funie Hsu says it’s time we acknowledge the contributions of Asian American Buddhists and handle the racism and cultural appropriation that marginalizes their ongoing function in transmitting the dharma within the West.
Someplace within the soil of California’s Central Valley lies buried treasure. Scholar and Soto Zen priest Duncan Ryuken Williams tells the story of ten-year-old Masumi Kimura and her household. Like many different Japanese American households dwelling in California earlier than World Conflict II, the Kimuras have been farmers, tilling soil and growing irrigation programs for land that had lengthy been dismissed as inarable by white Individuals. They have been additionally Buddhist, a part of the earliest organized Buddhist group in America. Due to their ethnic and spiritual background, particularly Mr. Kimura’s management function on the native temple, the household was deemed suspect by the FBI following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Lindsay Kyte traces the historical past of the Buddhist Church buildings of America — and the Japanese immigrant expertise in America — via 4 generations of 1 household.
When Akiko Rogers sat down for our interview on the Jodo Shinshu Middle in Berkeley, California, she positioned a packet of tissues on the desk between us. I believed possibly she had a chilly. However Rogers knew she was about to inform a narrative that may carry her, and me, to tears.
Akiko Rogers is aware of what it seems like to not belong. Rising up in Cerritos, California, as a combined white Japanese American, she didn’t really feel like she slot in wherever. Like so many younger individuals, she turned away from the beliefs that had guided her household for generations. Little did she know that years later, she would discover the sense of belonging she sought in her dwelling temple of the Buddhist Church buildings of America.
The oldest lineage of Buddhism, Theravada is thought for sharing the earliest recorded teachings of the Buddha. Constructing on this historic lineage, Theravada in the present day is modern and numerous. Derek Pyle stories on the tapestry of communities that make up American Theravada.
Two younger boys obtained short-term ordination — a standard ceremony of passage in lots of Southeast Asian communities — at Wat Kiry Vongsa Bopharam, in Leveret, MA, 2017. Picture supplied by Sakal Kim.
In the USA, there’s a wealthy and different vary of Theravada lecturers, practices, and communities. There are lots of of Theravadin temples, monasteries, facilities, and communities.
To raised perceive the panorama of American Buddhism, I interviewed greater than two dozen senior Theravada lecturers within the US. I needed to attract a extra complete map of American Theravada, however I doubtless omit many necessary lecturers and communities. I hope others will decide up the place I go away off.
Numerous Buddhists united in opposition to anti-Asian violence and racism on Could 4 at “Could We Collect: A Nationwide Buddhist Memorial Ceremony for Asian American Ancestors.” Learn a number of knowledge shared by Buddhist leaders on the ceremony.
On Could 4, Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple in Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo hosted Could We Collect: A Nationwide Buddhist Memorial Ceremony for Asian American Ancestors.
The occasion, livestreamed to an viewers of tens of hundreds, marked the forty-ninth day after the shootings in Atlanta by which six Asian American girls have been murdered: Tan Xiaojie, Feng Daoyeu, Hyun Jung Grant, Quickly Chung Park, Kim Suncha, and Yong Ae Yue.
Clergy representing the Fo Guang Shan, Jodo Shinshu, Nichiren, Zen, Theravada, Thien, Tibetan, and different Buddhist traditions chanted sacred texts, provided dharma teachings, and mirrored on the lengthy historical past—and horrible current—of racialized violence suffered by Asian Individuals.