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
Speaking Truths Through the Eightfold Path with bruni dávila
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
bruni dâvila talks about the fourth precept, not lying/honoring truths. What does that look like in practice? bruni gives some examples for the times we are living in together.
GUEST
BRUNI DÁVILA (she/they) has practiced Insight and Zen meditation since 1995. They graduated from the IMS/IRC Teacher Training Program, and has been guided and supported by various wonderful teachers and sanghas, and her ancestors of Puerto Rican heritage. bruni’s practice is grounded in the teachings of Mahasi Sayadaw and Sayadaw U Tejaniya. She teaches at IMC, in Redwood City and in the wider Bay area, in English and Spanish.
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