Opening Dharma Access: Listening to BIPOC Teachers & Practitioners
Welcome to "Opening Dharma Access," a podcast where we hear stories from BIPOC teachers & practitioners about their Dharma experiences and practice, and how those inform the ways they are sharing & practicing the Dharma today.
Season 3 description: Hosted by Rev. Liên & Rev. Dana Takagi
This season, we will have a new focus: Uplifting and Forwarding Asian American/Asian Diasporic Buddhist Experiences in the West.
With our guests and audience, we will explore the specificities of Asian American/Asian Diasporic experiences. We take as given that there are generational differences (hence the historical moment matters!) and we hope to also delve into Asian family norms and values, our inchoate understanding of ancestor worship, issues of identity, representation, stereotypes about sexuality and sexual identity, and Asian American depression.
A theme we'll be using to help guide our conversations is The Disquiet - a term we are adapting from writer/poet Fernando Pessoa (The Book of Disquiet) -- which, in our view, signals a complex recognition of self, mind, and body. The evidence for the foregoing includes scholarly research indexed in aggregate statistics on depression, youth suicide, and other issues in immigrant or first-generation families. While Asian Americans are not alone in experiencing trauma, the racial languages and discourses of othering are different for us than for other groups.
What do we hope is the outcome of this podcast? Our first aim is to give voice to the range and depth of Buddhism in Asian and Asian American generations. We hope, in doing so, we help to shine a light on the limited or myopic envisioning of race in primarily white sanghas. Asian and Asian American diasporic truths about practice are a teaching for contemporary dharma organizations and centers. We recognize the depth and range of Asian and Asian Diasporic Buddhists is a wisdom mirror for organized Buddhism in the West.
Thank you to the Hemera Foundation for their generous support of Season 3!
Contact us at: Info.Access2Zen@gmail.com
Further Info at: AccessToZen.org
Opening Dharma Access: Listening to BIPOC Teachers & Practitioners
Bodhi Leaves: The Asian American Buddhist Monthly Co-Associate Editors Mihiri Tillakaratne and Noel Alumit
In this rich and joyful conversation, Rev. Liên and Rev. Dana talk with Mihiri Tillakaratne and Noel Alumit, the co-founders and co-associate editors of Bodhi Leaves: The Asian American Buddhist Monthly at Lion's Roar. Bodhi Leaves is the first published series of its kind, highlighting and focusing on the experiences and perspectives of Asian American Buddhist practitioners. We learn about Mihiri and Noel's views on their own identities and spiritual backgrounds, as well as about how Bodhi Leaves got started and visions for its future.
MIHIRI TILLAKARATNE (she/her) is an associate editor at Lion’s Roar focusing on Asian American Buddhist experiences. She has a PhD in Ethnic Studies and Gender, Women, and Sexuality (UC Berkeley) and a M.A. in Asian American Studies (UCLA). She studied Pali and Sinhala Buddhist nationalism in post-independence Sri Lanka at Harvard. Her publications include a documentary on Sri Lankan American Buddhist identity, I Take Refuge, a study published at UC Berkeley: Feelin' Diasporic: Embodied Memory in Sri Lankan America, and an article with South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Spilling the Tea: Aunty Discipline and Queer Diasporic Child in D'Lo's To T, or Not To T?
NOEL ALUMIT (he/him) is an Associate Editor at Lion’s Roar, actor and bestselling author. He has a Master of Divinity in Buddhist Chaplaincy from the University of the West, where he is also an Adjunct Professor. He facilitates meditation workshops for LA Artcore and Meditation Coalition. His award-winning books include Talking to the Moon, Letters to Montgomery Clift and Music Heard in Hi-Fi.
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REVEREND DANA TAKAGI (she/her) is a retired professor of Sociology and zen priest, practicing zen since 1998. She spent 33 years teaching sociology and Asian American history at UC Santa Cruz, and she is a past president of the Association for Asian American Studies.
REV. LIÊN SHUTT (she/they) is a recognized leader in the movement that breaks through the wall of American white-centered convert Buddhism to welcome people of all backgrounds into a contemporary, engaged Buddhism. She is an ordained Zen priest, licensed social worker, and longtime educator/teacher of Buddhism. Shutt is a founder of Access to Zen (2014). Her new book is Home is Here: Practicing Antiracism with the Engaged Eightfold Path.