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 & 4 description: Hosted by Rev. Liên Shutt & 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 it 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 as a wisdom mirror for organized Buddhism in the West.
Thank you to the Hemera Foundation for their generous support of Season 3 & 4!
Contact us at: Info.Access2Zen@gmail.com
Further Info at: AccessToZen.org
Opening Dharma Access: Listening to BIPOC Teachers & Practitioners
Asian American Feminist Buddhists: Undefined! with Prof. Sharon Suh & Rev. Syd Yang
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Join us for this embodied & inclusive-focused discussion! It'll leave you wanting more so go out and get Emergent Dharma: Asian American Feminist Buddhist on Practice, Identity, and Resistance!
Guests:
Sharon A. Suh is Professor of Buddhism and Associate Dean for Faculty Scholarship and Strategic Initiatives at Seattle University. She is author of Being Buddhist in a Christian World: Gender and Community in a Korean American Temple (University of Washington Press, 2004), Silver Screen Buddha: Buddhism in Asian and Western Film (Bloomsbury Press, 2015), Occupy This Body: A Buddhist Memoir (Sumeru Press, 2019), and editor/author of Emergent Dharma: Asian American Feminist Buddhist on Practice, Identity, and Resistance. She serves as president of Sakyadhita International Association of Buddhist Women
Links to social media:
www.mindfuleatingmethod.com; @mindfuleatingmethod
Rev. Syd Yang, MDiv (they/them), is a mixed race/Taiwanese American queer trans/non-
binary Buddhist Minister, movement chaplain, spiritual counselor and writer who engages decolonial possibilities for shared liberation through their practice, Blue Jaguar Healing Arts. Syd’s work and writing finds its resonance in the stories we each hold at the intersection of memory, body, sexuality and mental health. Syd works primarily with queer and trans BIPOC as well as regularly leads workshops and facilitates community based practice spaces for wellbeing + healing justice, body liberation and recovery.
www.bluejaguarhealingarts.com / IG @bodyliberationchaplain and @bluejaguarlove
A few recent publications: (article) https://www.lionsroar.com/how-i-reclaimed-my-body/, (book / memoir) Release: A Bulimia Story, (podcast guest) Mending with Gold / Kintsugi Therapist Collective, (chapter) Emergent Dharma, (chapter) Q + A: Voices from Queer Asian North America
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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