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
Grow Up in the Dharma with Mushim Patricia Ikeda
Secular & Buddhist teacher Mushim Patricia Ikeda in convo with Rev. Liên on how mature practice can help us deal with the current conditions of our world.
GUEST
Mushim Patricia Ikeda is an internationally-known secular mindfulness and Buddhist teacher working primarily with justice activists and Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) meditation practitioners and with people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. A core teacher at East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, California, she is an author whose writing has been published in Lion's Roar, Tricycle, Buddhadharma and various anthologies. Mushim was selected by Lion's Roar Buddhist media magazine as one of twenty-six "Great Buddhist Teachers" in the January 2022 issue.
Connect with Mushim at:
Website: www.mushimikeda.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/mushim.ikeda
Bluesky: mushimikeda
X / Twitter: @MushimCA1
Instagram: mushimikeda
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mushim-patricia-ikeda-5307279/
HOST:
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. As an ordained Zen priest, licensed social worker, and longtime educator/teacher of Buddhism, Shutt represents new leadership at the nexus of spirituality and social justice, offering a special warm welcome to Asian Americans, all BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, immigrants, and those seeking a “home” in the midst of North American society’s reckoning around racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia. Shutt is a founder of Access to Zen (2014). You can learn more about her work at AccessToZen.org. Her new book, Home is Here: Practicing Antiracism with the Engaged Eightfold Path. See all her offerings at EVENTS
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