This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. It's our pleasure to be with the Sangha on Saturday morning and our intention is to open a conversation about about Tenzing's book, Be the Refuge, raising the voices of Asian American Buddhists. But also, you know, the world has changed a lot since the book first came out. And we'd like to also touch on and open other topics that are relevant for all of us as practicing Buddhists. And we may not have answers, but we'd like to bravely go forward. conversation. Just before we start, I wanted to say thank you to a couple of people.

[01:07]

First, let's see, to the head of practice, Nancy Petran, for inviting us to be here with you on a Saturday morning. We realize that it's not necessarily kind of a typical format for us to do this kind of conversation. but also to the basial leadership behind Nancy Petran. And then a special thank you to Siobhan Cassidy, who's the program director at San Francisco Zen Center. And then also a very special thank you to two people who should be known to most of the people online today. One person is Reverend Len Chen. And in fact, our being here today was her idea. So thank you. And then also very special thank you to Zeju Earthland Manuel, who actually over Twitter mentioned Chen Xing's forthcoming book to me maybe in December or something last year.

[02:12]

So thank you to both of you. So let's see. You know, we have not scripted this in advance, so... Let's see, how should we begin? How would you like to begin, Chenzing? I know often you like to begin by reading a section of the book. Would you like to do that this morning? Goodness, I could. Yeah, we talked about doing that in closing. I would also like to begin with some gratitude to many of the people you mentioned, Nancy and Siobhan, and also Kodo for helping with the technology side of things. And... Thank you very much to Reverend Leanne for bringing up this idea. Also to Senju, who was, I think, the first person I got to be in conversation with in October. We were celebrating her new book as well, The Deepest Peace. And it's just really moving to see everyone here. I see familiar names and also new friends here.

[03:14]

So thank you all for joining us this morning. Yeah, so I could read a section or we could dive in because I know we don't have a lot of time. Well, she didn't come obviously prepared to read a section. I did for the ending. I thought there would be a nice way to end. But I'd be... happy to read a section if I can find it or we could also dive in. And I know you wanted to share some images as well. Why don't we dive in then? So this is sort of the most scary part of doing a Dharma talk is having a little bit of like technical stuff. I'd like to do a screen share to start. And then I'd like to ask Tenzing to talk with us about kind of the

[04:15]

the origins of the book and how this has been since the book was first published in January 2021. So let's try the screen share first. Let's see. Can people see a screen share or not? Maybe not? Not yet. Not yet. Okay, hang on. How about there? Are we on a share? I think we're on a share. So let me raise it up. I wanted to first alert people to the Chenxing's website. And also I wanted to say that the book not only is available from all these places that are listed on the website, but also... there's an audio book coming.

[05:16]

So just in terms of kind of widening the accessibility for this book, I think there's a lot that's happening with the book. The second thing I wanted to say is that since the book came out in January, 2021, I know that Chen Xing has been on a, we call it the book tour and has been speaking once, twice, three times a week, maybe for several months. And this is kind of a special end of May event because one, this is the end of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month. And so I know that she's given many talks in connection with AAPI Heritage Month, but this will be the last one. And it sort of marks maybe an ending and a series of beginnings that will come in the summer. The third thing I wanted to say is that if you go to her website, she's very humble.

[06:20]

She describes herself as a Bay Area author, but she's actually really an independent scholar. And if you go on her website, there are approximately 20 articles she began writing. I believe the earliest piece is maybe 2009, and there may be other pieces that I haven't seen, but these are the ones that are listed on her website. And she has been working for a long time and thinking for a long time about the relationship of Asian Americans to Buddhist practice, the invisibility of Asian Americans, and thinking about both the kind of larger historical questions as well as the kind of specific sangha, direct experience kinds of questions. So I just wanted to alert people to that. And at the end of this, I will... um in chat put all of the links in so that for those of you that want to dig a little further after we talk feel free okay so back um so I guess I wanted to ask you a little bit about the origins of the book I think many people online with us today have maybe they have the book or they've heard of it they they've read a little bit about it can you tell us a little bit about what brought you to write this

[07:38]

in the first place. Sure. So now I think I can weave together the first request of reading and this question. So I'm going to read a very brief section from the tension chapter of this book. And it touches a little on my personal experience because in many ways, this book came out of a personal curiosity, loneliness, confusion about the invisibility of Asian American Buddhists. All my ancient, twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, born through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow. A dozen voices echo in the room where I have come to memorize this chant, our solemn monotone reverberating off pine floors, absorbing into black sabutons, awakening wintry morning air, as a vow constricts into a haunting, hallowed silence.

[08:39]

Years later, Trent and I will intone these words before exchanging wedding rings, but for now we are living in our first apartment, juggling multiple part-time jobs, me, and a fellowship, him, while applying for grad school, both of us. At this sun temple just down the street from us, the practice style differs from the Insight Meditation Center, where I learned the loving-kindness song. The demographics do not. After a month of morning zazen, I work up the courage to ask the vice-abbot where I might find other young, non-white Buddhists and meditators. His frank reply, you should look elsewhere. Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, when deeply practicing prajnaparamita, clearly saw that all five aggregates are empty and thus relieved all suffering. It's no problem following along with the English version of the Heart Sutra on the page in front of me, but I get lost in the clump of Roman letters rendering the Japanese.

[09:57]

I can't help but wish the service book included kanji and hiragana in addition to the romaji, like I've seen at the Shin Buddha's temple a mile north of this Bay Area center. And then in this part of the book I have the actual Japanese. I can decipher the meaning of the kanji because they are virtually the same as the Chinese characters, and reading hiragana is one of the few things I've returned, retained, from high school Japanese. But even if I couldn't make sense of these glyphs, there's a beauty to the depth of history they convey. In a tradition so focused on lineage, it's odd to see these roots erased. Of course it's the Zen Center's prerogative to print the chants only in Roman letters. Maybe there wasn't enough space on the page. Maybe they assumed their Sangha members wouldn't feel any cultural connection to the kanji and hiragana. It's very rare to find Asians in these communities, Manoj acknowledges.

[10:58]

Raised Hindu in southern India, Manoj began exploring Buddhism after moving to America and discovering an affinity for Soto Zen. He reached out after hearing about my project from another Zen practitioner, though he wasn't sure if he qualified for an interview. I am Indian and hope it counts in the Asian category. After assuring him that Indian very much counts as Asian in my book, here we are. braving blustery winds at an outdoor table in a cafe by the bay. And so I go on to describe a little bit of my interview with Manoj. And, you know, he talks about things like how he gets annoyed when his fellow practitioners mangle Sanskrit words. And he remembers one time at a Zen temple in Minneapolis where a Japanese man pointed out to them that... the biography was printed upside down. Which says, diversity is always good because you know it's going to give you more ideas. It's going to be a more enriching experience.

[12:01]

And then finally, I just want to read briefly from this section. So I have, actually, you can see all these sticky notes. This is the portions I've read from in previous book events. And I've read this section maybe once before. So there is an anthology called Making Visible. making the invisible visible that some people in this call might be familiar with. It's a collection of many different Buddhist voices. It must have been written. There are many iterations of it. So, you know, it's been that document's been around. Surely 15, 20 years. So it's online for people who would be interested. And when I read through it, I was struck by there was a 27-year-old Asian-American Zen practitioner who talked about how she, a yonsei, came to find out about Zen Buddhism through a predominantly white Zen center rather than a local Japanese-American temple. And it's interesting for me to have read this section, I think, maybe once before the Atlanta area shootings. And then after Atlanta...

[13:04]

The words, you know, these words were, yes, published in 2000, so 21 years ago. And yet what she writes about still resonates. So she talks about some of the more charged moments that she's faced. For example, an older white female practitioner patting me on the head and petting my hair while speaking to me in what I perceive to be patronizing tones. Or hearing residents comment to me that my parents, who recently visited, are so cute and feeling as if they were describing a teddy bear. And she tries to relate to these encounters as fertile ground for practice, though it's rarely easy to do so. So I just wanted to read these two paragraphs that she wrote, because in many ways, I think the spirit of these paragraphs really captures a lot of the spirit of the interviews, where much like this conversation, we dove into certain questions that we didn't know the answers to. But we really felt urgently that it was well overdue for us to start asking these questions together.

[14:06]

So she writes, When I have felt like residents are putting down Asian people and things, how to be fully present for the initial fuzziness, the disbelief, and then the hurt and annoyance? How to make contact when sensations and remembrances arise of past experiences when Asians have been relegated to the category of subhuman, often in order to deny opportunities or resources, and to not get stuck or lost. When I feel like young men are looking at me through their stereotype-pumped lenses, how to be present for their rising disdain and for the remembrance of other not-so-pleasant encounters I have had with certain men being told such things as, you are so exotic, I really like special exotic things. How to make space for the rising impulse to close off and become all business-like, as well as the deep desire to be open and to meet each person in the moment as human. How to be present for all of these things and neither suppress or overemote.

[15:13]

And when I can't do this... how to remember to just give myself a hug and to not notice. So I reflect in the book. These words were published in 2000, but every time I read them, it feels like they could have been penned yesterday. I'm always struck, too, by how startlingly rare it is to hear voices like hers. And I think now that's beginning to change, but it's taken a long time. I know she's not the only Asian American experiencing racial tensions in her sangha. Following the advice of the vice abbot, I went further afield, or more precisely, I circled back to the bigger Zen temple, where I first learned the Makahanya Haramita Shinkyo. I told the abbot about my desire to connect with other Asian American Buddhists. He offered to introduce me to a Sangha member, thinking she, a Chinese American, would be better equipped to discuss these issues than he, a white man. The interaction didn't go quite as expected. A good lesson in beginner's mind?

[16:14]

The practitioner cut off the conversation with a curt, she's a banana, and walked off. The dumbfounded abbot quickly excused himself. I was unsure how to parse the situation, though the encounter certainly disabused me of any notions of Asian American Buddhists being a unified harmonious. So I would say the impetus for this book was wanting to understand Asian American Buddhists and all our complexity, our humanity, our messiness, all the tensions within this community to really begin. And I know when we were preparing for this conversation, Dana, over the past few months, you mentioned Dr. Elaine Kim talking about this feeling after the LA riots that people talked over the heads of Asian Americans. They talked about us, but they didn't talk to us and with us. And that's how I thought about Asian American Buddhists. We were sort of talked about or stereotyped, but we weren't doing the talking. We weren't in on the conversations. And I wanted to change that with a book that could really center our voices.

[17:18]

Thank you. Thank you. I don't know if people are aware, but for this book, Chenxing did a fair amount of research. There are about 89 books. respondents, if you happen to have read the book or plan to read the book, there are just, what, like a dozen or 20 voices that get sort of lifted up a bit more. But there's quite a wide and diverse array of people who have provided the direct experience for the book. And I mean, I guess one of the questions I'd like to ask is, as you talk with people and they express their frustration, their hurt, their anger. And we'll come back to anger because it's such an important part of being the refuge, I think. Maybe for not completely typical or expected reasons, but as you spoke with people who you interviewed for the book, how did they go beyond if they did?

[18:32]

Or was that even a part of the conversation that you had with your respondents? Yeah, you know, reading from the tensions chapter, which is really from the portion of the book focused on what we might say are convert Asian American Buddhists or what I am calling first gen Buddhists in the sense of being the first generation in their family to be American Buddhists. We're getting some of this, you know... especially more of this heaviness, right? And more of this intensity. I think the first portion of the book, for example, focused on multi-gen Asian American Buddhists, particularly people of Japanese American heritage in the Jodo Shinshu tradition. I think that some of the going beyond just looks like a sense of belonging in their communities. And actually the questions they're grappling with might be a little bit different. They're thinking about how to stay culturally rooted, but also open their community as it continues to diversify through intermarriage and then just through other people being interested in their communities. And so I think some of the sort of going beyond is already happening in communities, right?

[19:40]

Just in so much, I think. Like when I look to the Jodo Shin communities, I see so much intergenerational inheritance. I see so much... familial celebration and understanding of history. And I was just talking to Drew Baker the other day. He has a book on basically second generation white convert Buddhists, so the children of convert Buddhists. And he's talking about how in his ethnographic work, in the interviews he's been doing, he finds quite a few people actually are drawn to the Shin Buddhist temples because they figured out a way to continue to transmit their tradition over multiple generations. And then I think I'd also just add the second portion of the book. So there's the multi-gen Asian Americans, and then there's the second generation Asian American Buddhists. So people whose families immigrated, whose parents and grandparents immigrated to this country, raised them as Buddhists. But of course, there are gaps in language and culture. It's completely different to grow up as a racial and religious minority in this country compared to their parents who are usually a racial and religious majority as Buddhists.

[20:48]

Sri Lankan or, you know, Thai or Laotian or Cambodian, et cetera, Buddhists. And yeah, I think some of the, so these tensions are, again, a little bit different than I would say Asian Americans who are practicing predominantly white convert Buddhist spaces. And so, you know, in the book, I highlight, for example, the ways that youth groups are forming to make Buddhism more accessible. led by young adults, since most of the 89 interviewees are all young adults like myself. That was partly just pragmatic because I needed English as a lingua franca across all of these different ethnic backgrounds. And also it's because I was curious about, you know, where were all the young adults, right? Yeah, so I don't know if I'm fully answering your question, but I would say that there is anger in this book and there is these sort of intense emotions that what I just read, highlighted but I also and this has been reflected back to me by a lot of people in book events people find just a lot of joy in this book and a lot of like spiritual friendship and I think a lot of that joy is coming from spiritual friendship so maybe that's the short answer to what you say how do people you know

[22:01]

hope in let's say in community right in their practices yes but especially I think in community and in intergenerational community and in looking to the past not only for its pains and its suffering but also for its lessons of resilience and strength which is something I think that you know Duncan Rick and Williams who I know I'm sure has spoken at here at San Francisco Zen Center, but he does that so powerfully in his book American Sutra by recentering the history of Japanese American Buddhists during the World War II era. It's interesting. As you were speaking, I was thinking we use this term Asian American as if it were a singular thing, and in fact, there's such diversity that is based on time of immigration, historical period of immigration, whether one is second, third, fourth, or in the case of Japanese Americans, fifth, sixth generation. And so that's one thing I just want us to kind of lift up a little bit, because I think very often we sort of flatten out Asian American as this category that is known for us, when in fact there's probably more diversity within the category Asian American than there is

[23:22]

contains Asian American and white sanghas. So that's one thing I was just reflecting on. The other thing is that I was thinking as you were speaking, well, I'm one of those like convert Asian American Buddhists. You know, I have practiced primarily in a white sangha. My training at Santa Cruz Zen Center was almost exclusively with white people. And while I had this kind of ambient awareness of of race issues. You know, it's an interesting kind of consciousness that one works with internally to stay present. And I also wanted to say, as you were talking, for those of you that read the book, you'll see that there's a lot of discussion about kind of the relationship between temples and communities and how young people are part of a broader community. whether they like it or not. And I know that when I've been to Jodoshin temples, I feel very much at home.

[24:26]

They may not be my root, but there's a familiarity, particularly among Japanese Americans, that is just like it's in my blood or it's in my kind of DNA from growing up in the Bay Area. And it's difficult to talk about these things, actually, I find, because As I say, it's like an ambient awareness as opposed to a very kind of detailed, this person said this and then this person did that. It's way more than kind of the everyday interactions, I think. You know, I want to make sure that we talk about anger because... Maybe I should say why I think it's important that we do this. First, it's that Aaron Lee figures very prominently, or at least to my mind, he figures prominently in your work.

[25:30]

And his death in 2017, in some ways, is the title, becomes the title for the book. I mean, some of the things that he's written and talked about, Be the Refuge. And aside from the pain and loss of a dear friend, I wanted to, let's see, I don't know if I can screen share this. Let me just check. I think I might not be able to, but at the end I will do a link to, it's a website, Angry Asian Buddhist. I started following the Angry Asian Buddhist on Twitter. a long time ago and I saw that he was sick and you know the angry trope which he picked up I think he says or has said that it is a kind of homage to a kind of busting of myth making about Asian Americans you know and also Buddhism for example that we're not supposed to be angry people we're supposed to always be calm and you know

[26:42]

floating on the water. But he especially, or maybe it was you who wrote this on the archive website about the Angry Little Girls Club. For those of you who don't know, this is actually a pretty interesting kind of cultural phenomenon among Asian Americans. A set of books written by Leila Lee called the Angry Little Girls Club. And I myself used to sport one of those t-shirts with Kim because she always had her fingers in the inappropriate finger position, giving people the finger. And I used to wear those to faculty meetings. So it was one of my great subversive pleasures as a professor. But can you talk with us about anger? Because clearly there is anger and frustration. I think anytime we feel misrecognized or unseen, there is that anger, particularly around questions of lineage, for example. when for Asian-American Buddhists, we know that... Is it Christina Murn's article we were here all along?

[27:54]

Or is that Foonie's article? That's Foonie. That's Foonie's article. We've been here all along. There's been discussions about this in the pages of Tricycle and Buddhadharma and Lion's Roar for probably a good 10 plus years. And so please... speak with us a little bit about the trope of anger and how you're thinking about it and how your respondents are thinking about it. Yeah, and I just want to check, when I'm speaking, do you hear a kind of scratchy noise in the background? This is just a logistical thing. Or it might be on your end. Those are my robes. That makes perfect sense. Someone was commenting, so I just wanted to acknowledge that comment. Anger, it's a really, yeah, it's such a big question. I think that what you mentioned, I think, is really important. So, you know, if you think about here, I always like to show a picture of Aaron.

[28:57]

There's Aaron Lee, the Anger Asian Buddhist. And as you can see, he's a beaming person, kind and generous, is how I've always known him to be. And I think that this love for his Buddhist communities that he had, this love for just so much, like all the friendship and goodness that he saw in those communities and that he didn't see represented at all, that he just saw erased, marginalized. It makes sense that anger or some kind of passion for wanting to see those voices lifted. it makes sense that that is a response, right? I think about the anger that arose out of, in response to the Atlanta area shootings. And who are we to judge that anger? I mean, I think I'd be more disturbed if people felt nothing in response. So you're right, that anger and stereotypes, I think it was really powerful what Aaron created this...

[30:02]

He always said, you know, anyone could be the angry Asian Buddhist. You didn't even have to be Asian. You didn't have to be angry. Like you didn't, sorry, you didn't have to be Buddhist necessarily even, but it was almost like this trope that was shaking us, I think, out of a kind of complacency and out of our stereotypes, out of our narratives, out of our received narratives that Asian Americans are model minorities who are... and who are not supposed to rock the boat, who aren't supposed to be angry. And then furthermore, that Buddhists are that way. And that if you have anger, you're not a real Buddhist. I mean, how easy it is to just start erasing and dismissing whole groups of people. Yeah. And so it's been really interesting. This topic of anger has come up a lot in these book events. And, you know, I think maybe with anger, with, you know, Related to discussions of racial justice as well, I think there can be just such a rush to want to get rid of it. That it's something bad, and then we just need to cure it.

[31:04]

Let's get through, find the procedural checklist and check, check, check. It's like, where's the, what's the word? Almost like the repertoire of things we do. And then let's get rid of it, just like we can get rid of racism. But... of course, is much more complex than that. The reality of that is much more complex. Earlier this week, I was in conversation with Holly Hisamoto, who's a Buddhist chaplain. And it was striking to me. It was actually my first conversation with someone I'd interviewed for the book. And anyone who has read Be the Refuge will know that Holly is very much woven throughout the book. And she and I were both friends of Aaron. And it just struck me the kind of... space that we were able to create in that conversation, it feels actually quite a bit like this one, where there's just the terrain. And in that terrain, there's anger, and there's grief, there's joy, there's a lot. But we don't pretend anger doesn't exist as part of the terrain. And then we also learn how to walk that terrain to a certain degree. And, you know, I think it's fitting that there's a small flame on the cover of the book, because I think the energy of anger feels that way often, like heated, outward.

[32:14]

And Flames can warm us and bring us together around a bonfire, or it can burn us in a hell. And so there's a lot about learning what we do with anger. I think in the section that I read, we see that as well, like learning how to be with these flares of anger and how to channel them constructively, talking to a friend who's a... Shingon practitioner recently, he talks about Fudo Myo and that kind of wrathful manifestation of Mahavairochuna, the manifestation of light. So these are different manifestations that I think we need to make room for, actually. Because true, I think, let's say Buddhist kinship, spiritual friendship, doesn't necessarily look like politeness, doesn't necessarily look like political correctness. I think there's something that's deeply missing if we aren't able to invite in and understand anger and its roots into our Buddhist communities.

[33:16]

I'm a little bit mindful of the time here, and I want to make sure that, you know, without closing a discussion on anger, I wanted to move a little bit to one of the ways that as a result of the book and many of the Many things that have happened with regard to anti-Asian hate that we talk a little bit about, may we gather as well. I'm pretty sure many people online today know about this event, may we gather. And I'd like to do a screen share if I could. Please apologize to Duncan that I stole some pics from the website. Hopefully he won't mind. Hang on a second while we have the potential for another technical glitch here. people seeing the screen share I hope okay very good so I wanted to say that this is for many of you that have that saw this I think you're probably very moved by it this was an event that took place earlier in May in the aftermath of the shooting in Atlanta and it was organized by co-organized by Duncan and

[34:39]

Reverend Duncan Rukin Williams, who's also a professor at the University of Southern California. Many of you will know him because of his book, American Sutra. I know he'll be speaking at San Francisco Zen Center with Chen Xing and Funi later, maybe in June sometime. I wanted to say that I was introduced to Duncan at a conference through an academic venue. And many of you might not be aware that his first book in 2005 is called The Other Side of Zen, which is about Soto Zen temples in Japan and the function of priests in Japan. And a very interesting book, I think, that sort of challenges some of our understandings about who priests are and what roles do they serve and really kind of uplifts the ordinariness of priest practice. The other co-organizer, of course, was Chen Xing.

[35:43]

And Funi Xu is a professor at San Jose State University. She works broadly in the areas of colonialism in the Philippines and works specifically, I think, on language issues or language as a form of colonizing and domination. And I wanted to just show a couple of stills from this event because I think one of the... features of this event was that it brought together Buddhist sects many different Buddhist sects and you can see from this bottom picture on the right kind of the range of robes which I think demarcates kind of different sects both of these pictures with people leaving the temple and also kind of dramatize or kind of illustrate the kind of range and diversity of sex.

[36:44]

And I think one of the remarkable things about this event was that, to my knowledge, it's the first really kind of pan-Asian Buddhist event that commemorates Asian ancestors. And it was really perhaps sparked by Atlanta, but actually, this is... kind of what in Soto we would call the ihai, the memorial tablets up here, represent a range of victims of anti-Asian violence, even going back to the Rock Springs, Wyoming massacre. So very kind of trans-historical, really, as well as, which is to say that this moment contains all these other moments and histories, and we're often not very aware of what those histories have been. So, you know, one of the things I wanted to ask you about this event has to do with lay practice.

[37:46]

Actually, it has to do with kind of the diversity of Buddhist practice, but also about lay practice. Because this was an event that featured many, many priests who gave talks about each of the paramitas. And you and Funi were moderators and commentators and also spoke. And... I wanted to ask you, because I don't think it's revealing any deep secrets to say that you're a committed lay practitioner, and how do you think about that practice, as well as kind of the co-organizing of this event? Yeah, that's such a big question. And... There is something that was really powerful about, of course, seeing monastics from different traditions, but also so many lay people being... you know, part of this event that the host was Higashi Honganji Temple in Los Angeles, talk about a deep history, right? That's been there since 1904.

[38:47]

Reverend, or, sorry, Bishop Ito spoke of how when we had this idea of having the six paramitas, he said, oh, my father used to, when he and I briefly actually led this temple together, my father used to give these talks, one every week, up to the 49 days. And it was very much an event inspired, you know, Inspired doesn't quite seem like the right word, but it was formed into being by so many causes and conditions. It felt both very timely and also extremely overdue to center Asian American Buddhists, including, of course, lay leaders or including the Shin Buddhist tradition where I've been in several events recently, especially with young adult Shin Buddhists. and talking about how they're in high school, and they learn about Buddhism, and they just don't see their form of Buddhism reflected at all. They face expectations that they're going to be some kind of oriental monk figure, that they're all going to be celibate, they're all going to be vegetarian. None of this is part of their Buddhist tradition, right?

[39:47]

You can think of Shinran as a shatterer of stereotypes as well. And so they practice, I think, so many different forms. And of course, it's a backbone of Buddhism throughout millennia, right? We wouldn't have Buddhism without truly the fourfold sangha, the lay people who support it as well. But I think in this American context, this question I think that arises for maybe all of us Buddhists of all backgrounds is a question of transmission intergenerationally. And what does it mean when we have so many different traditions and sects and lineages? And often... So many of my interviewees, myself included, we've woven in and out or been influenced by so, so many different Buddhisms. And there's something that feels very American about that, I think. It's not that there aren't multiple different Buddhist lineages in Asia. There very much are. And there's also very much mixing and interconnection there. But there's also something special about... having had this in Los Angeles, where you have so many different Buddhist sects that we could bring most of the people came from a pretty small radius because COVID times and we had more people who wanted to come, for example, Burmese Buddhists, but the ones who would have been able to make it were in the Bay Area and it was too far because of COVID reasons.

[41:02]

So I'm not sure I'm fully... getting at your question, but I just think about the kind of reflections we've been hearing after this event. People saying it felt so healing, and that it felt historic, and especially the news coverage afterwards. Even that felt healing, I think, to combat erasure, to combat exclusion, to combat these deep, deep histories of violence. Recently, Duncan and Funi just the other day were talking about anti-outouts. not far from where I am right now in California, how the mayor just issued an apology for how badly they treated the early Chinese American residents who were laboring on rebuilding railroads and how there were sundown lots there. So they were barred from even being on the streets after sunset. So there are underground tunnels in Antioch, which is, I think, a testament to their resilience of how do they you know, continue to meet and cope. And so I think about, and then their Chinatown was burned down in the 19th century.

[42:03]

So I think that, you know, I bet there was a temple or multiple, maybe, you know, in that Chinatown. So much of Asian American Buddhist history is literally erased and marginalized. And I think a lot about Buddhism as a religion that takes death very seriously and that gives us rituals for... dying and the dead and also that means rituals for the bereaved so 49 days was very deliberate right it's a symbolic number 49 days after Atlanta hence May 4th so there's much there's much to say but I guess yeah maybe I will just leave it at just may we gather I think I still find there's you know I hope it's a start of many many more gatherings because there's still so much more to do almost to honor the ghosts of Asian American Buddhists and their contributions and then the ongoing erasure. It takes a lot of work, right?

[43:04]

I think of Duncan's book and how many decades of work are in that book. It just feels like it should be required reading for all American Buddhists. Yeah, so the work continues. You know, maybe since we're straight up at 11 o'clock, that would be a good... time for us to at least conclude this part of our event this morning I'm aware that maybe we haven't kind of gone as deeply or explored as widely on a number of issues one issue I think that sort of left is our issues of the future and solidarity and I didn't really get a chance to ask you about what is next for you but maybe that will come up in the Q&A but for now I'd like to just say thank you to the Sangha for being present with us this morning. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive.

[44:06]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[44:21]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_95.96