Part of a special section on American Buddhism, Race, and Power. This paper explores the question of Black–Asian solidarities in American Buddhism in response to Rima Vesley-Flad’s examination of the possibility of Black–Asian Buddhist solidarities being stymied by historic tension and aversion among Black and Asian American communities. Rather than lingering on anti-Blackness, I focus on unpacking how Asian American…
Tag: American Buddhism
Introduction to the Special Section on American Buddhism, Race, and Power
To say that the United States is experiencing a tumultuous existential crisis of cultural and political identity may, indeed, be an understatement. Race, especially, is at the heart of many current cultural divides and political battles. From debates over Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, to fearmongering over Critical Race Theory (CRT) in public schools, to racialized policies over citizenship…
REVIEW: American Sutra, by Duncan Ryūken Williams
American Sutra is the first comprehensive study of the history of Buddhism in the incarceration of Japanese Americans during the Pacific War. As Williams notes, this is a topic that has heretofore been relatively understudied in the history of a country that continues to be seen as white and Christian.
Beyond Mindfulness: Buddhism & Health in the US
This article describes an unprecedented survey of a wide swathe of American Buddhists of diverse racial, cultural, socioeconomic, and sectarian backgrounds about their attitudes toward health and healing. The final section describes a follow-up study investigating how a segment of the survey respondents benefited from their practice of Buddhism during the Covid-19 pandemic. The most important overall finding is that American Buddhists see their participation in a wide range of Buddhist activities as a source of mental, physical, emotional, and social wellbeing. In light of this result, I argue that Buddhism is playing a larger than appreciated role in shaping Americans’ attitudes about health, and that the entire range of Buddhist approaches needs to be taken into account beyond simply meditation.
Review: Be the Refuge
“Where are all the young adult Asian American Buddhists, and what can we learn from them?” In answering these questions, Chenxing Han’s Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists combats the erasure of Asian American Buddhists in representations of American Buddhism. Despite making up two thirds of the American Buddhist population, Asian Americans are frequently left out of histories of American Buddhism. In “raising the voices of young adult Asian American Buddhists,” Han has created a new American sutra that is at once memoire, ethnography, history, and cultural critique.
Review: American JewBu
American JewBu: Jews, Buddhists, and Religious Change. By Emily Sigalow. Princeton University Press, 2019. 256 pages. $29.95 (hardcover). ISBN-13: 978- 0691174594. In her book American JewBu: Jews, Buddhists, and Religious Change, Emily Sigalow brings an ethnographic study of self-definition into the scholarly conversation about Jews in the United States, Buddhists in the United States, and how nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first…
Review: Mind Cure
Mind Cure: How Meditation Became Medicine. By Wakoh Shannon Hickey. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 324 pages. $29.95 (hardcover). ISBN 978-0190864248. The primary concern of Mind Cure is the broad, diffuse Mindfulness movement that includes Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) developed by the microbiologist Jon Kabat-Zinn and “all the therapeutic derivatives of MBSR, collectively called MBIs [Mindfulness-Based Interventions]” (p. 8).…