“It was as if someone got me, and got my outsiderness and the way I saw the world,” she said. But she also never stopped pushing her fellow Buddhists on race. and/or “I studied texts so I could understand what’s at the essence of this — and not interpret Buddhism according to what white folks had said, but instead according to what the need is,” she said. This makes space for a more culturally relevant story. Pratimok?a or patimokkha is a set of rules which govern the life of the Buddhist monks. What is that?”, “We were having Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, all of these things happening, and I’m like, ‘Where the hell are the Buddhists?! In Chinese culture, it was respectful to cover the entire body, including the arms and shoulders. Siddhartha left his home, encountered a new reality, realized he had been lied to, and chose not to return home. As the wandering community of disciples grew, the Buddha found that some rules about robes were necessary. Culture I was a Tantric sex slave For years June Campbell was the `consort' of a senior Tibetan Buddhist monk. With some sectarian controversy, Chinese monks began to wear a long robe with sleeves that fastened in the front, similar to robes worn by Taoist scholars. He enters a place where he sees darker-skinned, unarmed people being shot dead by the police or perhaps by guards who serve to protect his enclosed community. “My Buddhism and my activism grew up together. Eventually, it became common for Chinese monks to wear a split skirt -- something like culottes -- or pants for everyday non-ceremonial wear. “I grew up mostly agnostic. Fortunately, there is mythical material in the Buddhist suttas that offers us that inspiration. Williams sees this as a feature, not a bug. She was threatened with death if she broke her vow of secrecy. For our survival, we need inspiration that reminds us we can only survive together, not through individual awakenings alone. Their absence struck her as a betrayal of Buddhist values. In the Zen tradition, the pattern is said to represent a "formless field of benefaction." Buddhist monks and priests wear clothing that varies greatly, ranging from saffron robes that are worn by monks in Sri Lanka and Thailand to headdresses and elaborate robes worn by the Tibetan lama. “I frankly can’t even remember what it was about.”. I just don’t have to name it God.”. Racism is a manifestation of ill-formed perspective-making processes. When the Black Lives Matter movement emerged in the early 2010s, she noted that other members of her tradition were nowhere to be found. She founded the Center for Transformative Change in Berkeley, California, which—along with her “activist sensitive” spiritual community New Dharma—worked to offer spiritual aid to activists and help prevent burnout. Here are other facts about Buddhist monks … To some, the stark contrast between williams’ private and public life — much less her Buddhist identity and her activism — may seem like a contradiction. As Siddhartha was getting older, so was his father. Then the kashaya (uttarasanga) was wrapped over the sleeved robe. The conclusion I have come to is that Buddhists need to connect African Americans to a larger story than the Buddha’s individual liberation, one that is relevant and inspires them to advocate for their lives in the #BlackLivesMatter age. Surely Siddhartha would have noticed the truth of birth. The result was Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace, a book that quickly caught fire among Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike. Not much has changed. She grew up in a family that “didn’t come from money” and often moved to follow jobs, bouncing from Queens’ LeFrak City to Brooklyn’s Flatbush to Manhattan’s Tribeca. How will they cultivate confidence to rebuild their country post Bashar al-Assad? That’s not entirely surprising, since she also seems to enjoy shattering them. Then, as the Buddha, he proclaimed the first noble truth: there is suffering! A cross-country voter registration drive took her to San Francisco, where she pilgrimaged to Suzuki’s temple in the city. The decor was something akin to minimalist Buddhist chic, but also included trace elements of whimsy, such as the shiny, skull-shaped candle holder that sat atop her coffee table. According to the Vinaya-pitaka, the Buddha asked his chief attendant Ananda to design a rice paddy pattern for the robes. Monks would scavenge cloth from rubbish heaps and cremation grounds. Many girls and women throughout the world are sold into sexual slavery. “The first time I got arrested many years ago was here in New York—it was over by the Hudson River,” she told me. The Buddha taught the first monks and nuns to make their robes of "pure" cloth, which meant cloth that no one wanted. “I just didn’t get the church thing,” she said. These are hardcore black Christians, and they are raising the roof with God in every other sentence. Photos of the demonstrations showed williams walking up front alongside her religious colleagues, giving American Buddhism one of its most visible activist moments in years. She scoured for “a book—any book—with the word Zen in it” before eventually stumbling upon Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryū Suzuki. BUDDHIST MONKS and BLACK MAGIC? I am a person of African descent practicing Buddhism in the age of #BlackLivesMatter. And she could not have been the only pregnant woman Siddhartha saw, or did his father have all pregnant women removed from the village? Siddhartha’s third truth could be “I am impacted by racism.” Racism hurts the heart, as well as the ways it impacts people on a physical level. There is no absolute safety, as Siddhartha discovered, only relative moments of painlessness. Siddhartha was born into a wealthy family. “It’s insufficient to hide in centers and make money off of mindfulness while the world in burning down.”. “We’re not in a MLK world. Would his response depend on how he saw the color of his own skin in relation to those who were being shot dead or becoming ill and dying? Because this particular Buddha story has the absence of logic and the presence of magic, it contains mythological elements. Siddhartha’s father protected him from knowing about the countless ways people suffer. She found herself enamored with the minimalist black brush strokes, and clamored to learn all she could about the ideology that birthed it. “I knew something more about those people, so I couldn’t buy the stereotypes as easily.”, Ain't gonna let racism turn us around! Instead, he entered the forest to learn how to avoid illness, aging, and death. Spellcasting is done by lay-people. A sixth truth might be “Since this suffering is shared, the transformation of this suffering will also be shared.”. According to Gebser, humans are born into a state of “aperspectivalness.” To put it another way, they are born without a perspective. “We’re not in a MLK world,” she said. It wasn’t long before she found herself joining with other black Christian clergy as they descended on Washington, D.C. to protest the proposed repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Often times the ascetic, Lersi, who was not actually a monk, but was a master of the spirit world, guides black magic spells and rituals. “For all intents and purposes, I am a secular priest.”. What is the point of that? Let us think about the various ways people suffer and allow ourselves to be more culturally competent and creative in how we share the Buddhist teachings. Being with others through love to collectively transform our suffering could even be a ninth step in the Buddha’s noble path, with confidence as an eleventh transcendent perfection. Williams, like many other Buddhists, describes herself as a “non-theistic Buddhist,” meaning her approach to the tradition doesn’t attach itself to a concept of the divine. I was more of a science person.”. In June of 1963, Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk Thích Quang Duc burned himself to death at a busy intersection in Saigon. “They were going around talking about what church they’re from, and I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m the not-Christian of the group,’” she said. This is the second in a series of profiles examining leaders of what is often called the Religious Left, detailing their origins, beliefs, and tactics. African Americans encounter death well before they become teenagers and young adults. Williams’ rise to prominence eventually caught the attention of Auburn Seminary, a key organizing force for leaders of the Religious Left. Let us dwell in the spaces in the Buddha story where there is no reason and no logic. Siddhartha, at age sixteen, twenty-one, or some other youthful age, was shocked when he saw that people actually got sick, old, and died.