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
Meditating on the Dharma Joy and Disquiet of Asian American and Identity
Dana provides us with some reflections and meditations on this season of ODA so far, inspired by some of the discussion around Asian joy in the last episode with Mihiri Tillakaratne and Noel Alumit. She talks about Asian American versus Asian Diaspora being claimed by some of our conversation partners on the podcast. Dana also talks about a colleague Gary Okihiro, who passed away on May 20th, and his deep impact on expanding the field of Asian American studies to go beyond solely the history of oppressed minorities.
Co-Host: Reverend Dana Takagi
Dana (she/her) is a retired professor of Sociology and also a zen priest. She spent 33 years teaching sociology and Asian Am history at UC Santa Cruz, she is a past president of the Association for Asian American Studies. Zen practice since 1998.
Check out more of Dana's work:
2022: Sutra and Bible: an Interview with Duncan Ryūken Williams
2020: Most Intimate, Ordinary Way, Recollections of Katherine Thanas (co-eds. with Eugene Bush; 2nd printing 2022)
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