Episode 16, Intersections of Dhamma & Race: "The Rocky Road of Dhamma"
This is a very different kind of show than any previous episode we’ve ever brought you on the Insight Myanmar Podcast.
Regular listeners may remember that a few months ago, we interrupted our usual run of sit-down interviews to produce a special series on the spread of the coronavirus in Myanmar. In those episodes, we checked in with monastics and practitioners as to how they were responding to the pandemic, and highlighted the voices of meditators dealing with the world shutting down.
As we were working to respond to the relevancy of that moment— itself no easy task for a skeleton crew volunteer team— another historic moment engulfed the United States and resonated with people around the world: the Black Lives Matter protests over the murder of George Floyd by the police. We feel the need is just as compelling to meet the needs of this moment as our podcast series.
So, the following is the first episode is a new series from Insight Myanmar Podcast, called “the Intersection of Dhamma & Race,” in which we widen the scope of our programming to examine the intersecting lines of Dhamma practice, racism and social justice. Aishah Shahidah Simmons, a long-term Black American vipassana meditator formerly in the S.N. Goenka tradition and an award-winning cultural worker, joins our volunteer team as co-producer of this series. The name of this episode is “The Rocky Road of Dhamma.”
With the impetus of recent events and growing appreciation of the Black Lives Matter movement, many people, as well as social and cultural institutions, are starting to seriously examine themselves for implicit bias and whether they may be unintentionally contributing to the perpetuation of social inequities. We hope that the current podcast series can be a platform for continuing to explore this perspective in the context of American Mindfulness and vipassana communities.
The United States has been witnessing an explosion of multiracial bravery inspired and led by Black individuals speaking truth to power, standing up against racism and for social justice, from well-known sports franchises to giant corporations. While these acts may at times be confrontational and even put an individual’s job security in jeopardy, they highlight uncomfortable and too-long-ignored truths that societies must finally face, both people as individuals, and collectively. The nature of these challenges to power and the status quo was at times uncomfortable to hear, but mostly they were offered in the spirit of positive change, to push the needle towards initiating—at long last—an honest and open dialog about has been avoided or unseen for far too many years. In this same spirit, even if some of the interviews that follow may provoke discomfort or unease, we hope that this series can be a platform for bringing a similar sort of conversation about entrenched practices, protocols and attitudes within the vipassana and mindfulness communities.
The guests you are about to hear from all eagerly agreed to an interview, willing to share openly about a sensitive topic that has taken them a lifetime of difficult inner work to come to grips with, and learn how to respond to with compassion. After all, how can you really make sense of society’s systematic abuse and oppression against you, just because you are Black? These speakers were hit with a blunt edge of systemic racism early in childhood, in one case coming to grips with the overt prohibition that her family was not allowed in an amusement park, and in another, the assumption that he didn’t belong in the advanced math class he qualified for. And these discriminatory experiences have continued unabated in both explicit and implicit ways throughout their lives, including into their involvement with spiritual communities at the hands of White meditators, including even Dhamma teachers.
We hope that you will find this episode and the upcoming ones in this series as compelling and thought-provoking as we did in putting them together.
Victoria Robertson, an African American was the first Black person world - wide to be appointed as an AT/Senior AT in the tradition of Vipassana under S.N. Goenka.
Victoria Robertson’s first vipassana retreat in the tradition of S.N. Goenka was very difficult, and she was sure the first course would be her last! Of all things, it was ultimately the lunches that helped her change her perspective. It wasn’t the deliciousness of the food, but rather knowing that an entire crew of volunteers was devoting a week and a half of their lives solely to selflessly making sure that she and the other meditators were fed. Having been raised by parents who stressed the importance of service, this made an impact, and for her very next course she signed up as a Dhamma server.
From there, Victoria further deeply immersed herself into the Dhamma world, going on to become the first Black American Senior Assistant Teacher in the S.N. Goenka vipassana organization. In this talk, she shares openly and honestly about her experiences as a Black meditator and teacher within a largely White organization in the tradition’s US centers.
While Victoria never expected that 10-day courses (or even the subsequent 60-day courses she would eventually attend) would “solve” the challenge of racism, she did see hope for an active interest by the organization in addressing this concern. When Victoria would later bring this topic up to other senior people in the organization, she found that it was deflected as being her own “problem.” She felt that due to their own discomfort surrounding the issue of race, they simply avoided it. This confounded Victoria, because while race had certainly made her uncomfortable, she had discovered that the best way to come out of something was by facing it directly. Yet when she pushed further, she was warned that she risked being seen as a “racist,” which left her speechless.
Victoria’s first memory experiencing racism came as an eight-year old. She was watching TV and a commercial for a local amusement park came on. She excitedly pointed to the screen and asked her parents to take her there, but got no response. She figured they just hadn’t heard her, and so when that same commercial came on a couple more times, she again asked for them to take her but still got no answer. Finally, they broke the news to her that she couldn’t go there because “Negroes,” as Black people were then called, were prohibited from entering. She assumed they were joking, and couldn’t imagine how such a thing was even possible. Even at her young age, she understood that if her parents had no control over something like this, how could she? This watershed moment helped her realize that things might not always go smoothly in her life. She became acutely aware of segregation in society as she grew older, and continued to encounter racism as a college student and into adulthood.
Her entry into meditation was largely influenced by her desire to understand the pain wrought by racism. On one 20-day course she found herself thinking about some incident that arose at work, reflecting the unfairness of Blacks routinely being denied jobs and receiving lower wages. She couldn’t understand why White society systematically discriminated against Black people, who had never personally done anything to them to deserve such treatment. But then listening to Goenka’s discourses, the answer suddenly became as clear as day: when one is miserable, one doesn’t keep that misery to oneself, but rather shares it with others. In other words, societal prejudice was an outgrowth of individuals’ inner suffering. Essentially, she realized that while it didn’t make her feel any better about racism, it at least helped her to better understand it.
As Victoria got more deeply involved with the tradition, she hoped that meditation could be practiced alongside exploring bias directly. But rather than face the issue head-on, she charges that the typical response from White teachers in the organization was that by continuing to practice, positive changes will happen automatically. However, Victoria feels this separation between inner work and social engagement mainly serves to sidestep on-going injustices that continue to hurt people now. In a way, the proof is in the pudding: in spite of the singular focus on meditation in that organization and the wonderful work that does happen, Victoria found that White privilege still colors it, no less now than when she first became involved as a meditator (an issue that another of this episode’s guests addresses directly in his talk, albeit about different mindfulness and spiritual organizations).
After she sat more courses, Victoria was invited to serve long-term at centers, but did not feel comfortable doing so in the US. Instead, she booked a flight to India, to serve long-term at the organization’s main center, Dhamma Giri, in Igatpuri. She also wanted to meet S.N. Goenka and get a sense of his “volition”, so she could tell others in her community that she had met the main Teacher, as opposed to just the appointed White teachers at US centers. She recalls that his countenance immediately reminded her of her father, and she was impressed by what she heard. When she asked him about race, he proclaimed that any idea of superiority or inferiority must be eradicated, and added that no human law can change the heart… only Dhamma can do that. Goenka also strongly encouraged Victoria to make inroads in sharing the Dhamma within the African-American community, a charge which resonated with her, as much of her teaching career had been spent supporting mainly White students in American centers, or conducting courses abroad.
Interestingly, however, she sensed that not all Indian teachers at Dhamma Giri felt similarly to Goenka. She experienced prejudice there, although she wasn’t sure of the reason—whether they had learned it from White Western meditators or whether they might have subtly looked down on her thinking she was African. Contrasting this experience with her time at American centers, she felt that while back home Americans know when they’re being prejudiced, with the Indians, she sensed that the prejudice grew out of a general ignorance of African-Americans. Overall, though, her time at Dhamma Giri was extremely rewarding, and she ended up returning there off and on for years, and once staying on for a full year.
In 2008 Barack Obama was elected President; the following year, when the Indian planning committee was organizing the opening of Dhamma Pattana (also known as the Great Global Pagoda) in Mumbai, they wanted to ensure that a Black American Teacher attended the inauguration ceremony. As still no other African-American teacher had been selected after her appointment, she was asked on short notice to attend; she muses that because they feared she might react to this tokenism, they offered to cover her full airfare! And while she did feel the sting of this tokenism, and was saddened that out of over three thousand meditators fewer than a half dozen would be African-American, she accepted nonetheless. While there, she and a Kenyan meditator, (Mama Sila Kanyua), came up with the idea for what would come to be called an “African Heritage” course, which would not be limited to people of African descent specifically, but designed especially around their attendance. Goenka gave his blessing, and it was a successful course. To Victoria, it was a very rewarding experience to be able to serve her community in this way.
Victoria was really hoping that the same kind of courses could be held at some US centers, too, an initiative she had been pushing for years. She expressed to Senior Vipassanā Teachers how, even as a committed meditator herself, she had at times faced difficulty being a Black Dhamma server on a course of mainly White practitioners. Moreover, she felt that many Black Americans would feel more comfortable attending a course with others from their community. And finally, Goenka had always stressed to her the need to spread the Dhamma within her community—as he did with everyone. However, despite holding regular special courses for various ethnic groups (such as Chinese, Burmese, Thai, Indian, etc.), they repeatedly declined the possibility of hosting courses targeted towards African-Americans, claiming that such a course would actually accentuate racism—justifications that Victoria chalks up to the usual phrases heard in mainstream society to obfuscate systemic racism. Some went so far as to say that such a course would be “against Dhamma,” and Victoria began to feel an uncomfortable spotlight shining on her for pushing for this initiative as a Black person, which she adds is not an uncommon experience for African-Americans in White society. For Victoria, it was a big disappointment that this initiative did not receive organization support and ultimately, she was not allowed to conduct any.
That said, around that time there was an important initiative that did unintentionally serve primarily Black meditators—a prison course given at Donaldson Correctional Facility, a men’s prison in Alabama, to an overwhelmingly African-American prison population. The course was captured in a well-received documentary, the Dhamma Brothers. However, Victoria was troubled by this; she felt that many White viewers would have trouble seeing the message of the Dhamma, not seeing past the narrative of Whites helping “Black criminals,” while she believed that most Black people would not be attracted to the Dhamma by a movie that portrayed them primarily as criminals. She chafed at the optics of a White AT and White male manager bringing the teachings to an audience of predominantly African-American prisoners. The justification she received was that it was similar to Doing Time, Doing Vipassana, a film about S. N. Goenka teaching meditation to a thousand inmates in an infamous jail in India. But Victoria countered that the unique Black-White dynamics of American culture made Dhamma Brothers quite different than the other film. In the end, she does not blame anyone and does not think any harm was intended, yet this event was one more disappointment for her in not feeling her concerns or perspective were respected.
Victoria had been hoping to bring vipassana courses to the inner city, at sites that were accessible by public transportation; most vipassana centers in the United States are located in predominantly White rural environments, so as to avoid outside distractions. But Victoria sees this as a kind of attachment to avoid discomfort and disturbance, noting that the more you can actually be with agitation and disruption, the more opportunity there is for growth.
And even when Victoria was asked to share her voice and perspective, she found it problematic and confusing. Realizing Change, a 2003 book by Ian Hetherington, collected anecdotes and stories from a range of vipassana meditators, and she was asked to contribute during one of her stays at Dhamma Giri. Her short essay was about the toxic anger that Blacks face due to their treatment as second-class citizens, and she later recalled that her directness caused quite a stir! Although it was not her choice, the editor published the article under a pseudonym (“Vanessa Rawlings”), claiming concern that Victoria’s words would bring negativity, and again, even charges of racism. She notes that things have changed a lot in White American society since George Floyd’s murder by the police, but even seventeen short years ago, that editor’s thoughts about racism were quite common.
Today, Victoria is no longer involved with the organization. She has devoted herself to her meditation practice, and believes that in the end, it all comes down the practice anyway, and she has been using the shutdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic as an opportunity for an extended self-course. She finds that meditation’s ultimate goal is not to create calm, but rather to take the practitioner totally outside of the realm of mind and matter—something we can’t do when we’re always busy with this or that, and when one is in the midst of fighting for something. This has been her lifelong practice as a meditator. When not involved in her job, she continually tries to keep her attention on the breath, and bring it back when her mind strays to thoughts. It helps her maintain her stability, and as she says, her sanity.
To close, Victoria relates a recent incident when she was walking on the boardwalk at the beach near her home in New York. When trying to focus on the breath, her mind typically snaps back to thoughts, but on that occasion, for just an instant, the attention stayed on the breath, and she suddenly experienced a deep sense of the mirage of individuality.
For many Westerners, Buddhist meditation practice represents a search beyond one’s familiar culture, and for some, it can even be a kind of rebellion against the perspectives and customs one grew up with. Not so for Joshua Bee Alafia, whose parents both had an active meditation practice, albeit not in the same tradition. Still, teenagers being teenagers, Joshua rebelled against meditation for a time, but he did start up a practice in high school, and hasn’t looked back since. Because he moved around quite a bit when young, he often felt like he didn’t quite belong, and so was drawn to the solitude of meditation.
Joshua recalls that his first meditative experience was with a transcendental meditation mantra his mother gave him. After that, he explored Ayurvedic practices, Hawaiian Shamanism, Sufism, and the Kabala, and was particularly drawn to Dzogchen, which taught him how to empty his mind. In 2005, he started attending classes at New York Insight, under Gina Sharpe, guiding teacher of color, and co-founder of New York Insight Meditation Society, who organized regular sittings especially for people of color. Eventually, she encouraged him to apply for Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leaders (CDL) program. Following this, he teamed up with, Sebene Selassie, another Black teacher in his CDL cohort, to start people-of-color centered group sittings that were open to everyone. The sittings were held in Selassie’s home. He also started to focus his teaching practice on serving troubled youth.
Calling himself an “adventurous teen,” Joshua felt deep empathy for young adults who had experienced difficulty in their lives. He became involved with the Lineage Project, a program that serves incarcerated youth, and calls it one of the transformative experiences of his life. After moving to Chicago, he started Southside Insight, and began working with youth who had such difficult lives it was almost as though they had already passed through the “Hell Realms” on Earth. Drawing on what he describes as the strong mind-heart purification found within the Theravadin tradition, and using Brahma Vihara specifically as a way to encourage youth to confront wounds and practice forgiveness—for themselves as well as those who hurt them—he found this meditation approach particularly helpful for people of color who had passed through enormous trauma earlier in life.
Reflecting on his spiritual journey as a Black meditator, Joshua openly admits that it’s been a bit of a “rocky road” in what is primarily a White mindfulness community in the United States. Some White students have questioned his standing as a teacher, or have been disturbed by the power dynamic of a Black instructor sitting above them in the room, and even some White teachers have reacted negatively upon meeting him. Joshua is not surprised at this dysfunction in the meditation community which, after all, is merely an extension of American society at- large.
One difference is that in spiritual communities, he sees far too many examples of “spiritual bypass”; in other words, using one’s spiritual practice to avoid facing any racism, sexism, able-bodied privilege, homophobia, etc., that one may harbor inside. He’s heard White practitioners claim that because their spiritual practice is developing their inner core, they don’t need to face these worldly issues head-on. Joshua chafes when White teachers claim not see color in society, noting that it’s hard to communicate with someone who is starting from that place, as the conversation is short-circuited right from the start.
Instead, he feels the focus should be on addressing the wounds caused by prejudice, something that is rendered more in challenging in our narcissistic culture. One must have courage in facing anxiety when trying to heal, he says, and we as individuals can’t move forward until our own sickness has been examined with full commitment and engagement; this holds true both for those discriminated against by the system as well as those who have privilege within it.
Joshua believes that many Western meditators fall into the trap of emphasizing what he refers to as “concept hoarding,” with a heightened tendency towards social disengagement as a result. He believes that because of this, many have lost touch with the relational aspects of Buddhist practice. He wonders how things would change if they had to walk around begging alms and relying on the kindness and compassion of others—then the interconnectivity of us all would be quite clear. Compassion and empathy would become paramount. He emphasizes that living a Dhamma life should be filled with positive, compassionate action, not just solitary meditation.
In terms of the Black Lives Matter protests, Joshua feels very hopeful. He notes the irony that while modern youth have often been written off as hopelessly addicted to social media, lacking a social conscience, they have demonstrated profound and sustained engagement during these protests. On the other hand, he is concerned about the inner reality of both protestors and police. He observes that activists become stressed as they continue to stir the pot of reactivity, while on the other side, he wonders what has happened to the “inner child” of police officers who are actively preventing the progress of social justice, and seemingly unable to feel the suffering of others. Neither side thoroughly examines their inner reality, and so together, it becomes a “collision of the wounded.” One side responds with military-style training, while the other becomes more radicalized.
But as meditative practitioners, Joshua reminds us, we come equipped with radical self-healing tools, and he believes that in this current moment, more people are looking to evolve through meditation than ever before. This is what gives him hope for this current moment, which he refers to as a “Great Awakening.” By sharing the practice, and healing first inwardly and then as a collective, there can be a powerful shift in human consciousness. He contrasts the current time with his parents’ generation, when rampant drug use snuffed out many progressive movements midstream. There is a new kind of clarity now, he says, and increasing numbers of people know there is a natural high in facing and healing our own inner wounds.
Wayne Smith was raised in a Pentecostal family in a New Jersey suburb outside of New York City. Growing up in a Black neighborhood inside a mainly White town, he was always aware of a barrier between the races, in the form of a “distinct separation” from the dominant culture. He describes his early encounters with racism as more passive, as opposed to being aggressive or vicious, and attributes this to his participation in accelerated classes and his early interest in classical music. He believes he was treated differently, in his words, than “normal Black kids.” However, a trip to Georgia when he was nine exposed him to the ugliness of racial slurs, and over the years he endured the usual disproportionate traffic stops by police. Growing up, he never saw images of people in the media who looked like him, and he repeatedly encountered discourtesy and suspicion. He recalls one time when he walked into a higher-level math class at the start of one semester, and the teacher suspected he must have confused his schedule.
Wayne’s parents were loving people, but they harbored a strong resentment towards White people because they had lived through the turbulent times of the Jim Crow Era, as the children of sharecroppers, and the grandchildren of slaves. In order to avoid the toxicity of harboring intense ill will himself, Wayne was determined not to follow suit, in spite of his own experiences with racism.
Although by and large his family were religious followers of the Pentecostal Church, Wayne came to look towards Eastern as well as Native American philosophy in his teenage years. His primary influences were the Dalai Lama, Pablo Neruda, and Thich Nhat Hanh. But a debilitating drug addiction led him off course. When his recovery program encouraged him to have faith in a loving God, he instead took solace in Buddhist writings. This led to his first vipassana course, in the tradition of S.N. Goenka. It was there he found his spiritual home and inner refuge; the local center, Dhamma Dharā, where he has been sitting and serving ever since.
Meditation provided him insight into his “own role” in creating his story, and relief from what he calls the “constant torture” of racism, which included both the incidents he “allowed himself” to endure, as well as how they caused him to feel about himself. One of his early insights was that although he was trying not to let resentment build up, he actually did harbor some degree of ill will within. He now looks back at his youthful desire to avoid resentment entirely as well-intentioned naiveté. Through meditation, he learned that he had been reacting to this pain by pushing it deeper inside as opposed to confronting it explicitly. The actual experience of feeling that anger led to a realization of the interconnectivity of all people, and realizing that even strong emotions are common to all. Meditation helped to take the edge off of his anger, and allowed him to walk around holding his head up.
Wayne has been following the current Black Lives Matter movement closely, and is amazed by the learning he sees taking place among his White friends. In fact, he observes that it is surprising that many of them are even more upset than even than his Black friends and family--because they are just now coming to grips with the actual extent of racism in the US. While loving, good-hearted people, they simply had not believed that Black America was really experiencing the constant torrent of racism and abuse that has come to light, that it couldn’t really be a part of the contemporary American experience—and even more, that they could unintentionally be helping perpetuate systemic racism. As optimistic as a moment like now can seem, Wayne is fearful that there could be a desire to move too quickly. In other words, there might be a push for superficial changes that do not address the heart of the issue, enabling people to absolve themselves of their own responsibility in changing themselves in order to change society. Instead, he thinks it is far more important to take time for contemplation and introspection, to look inside and examine the origin of one’s own biases. Wayne acknowledges that it is painful to recognize that one has hurt people, even if merely by profiting from the status quo. He now realizes that when we decide to hate or hurt someone, it is only possible when we maintain a set of self-destructive narratives in our heart. So, it is critical to look clearly at one’s own privilege and identify one’s involvement in even passively perpetuating a racist system. If we stop short of this, then Wayne finds that the internalized pain transforms into either anger—like his Black friends and family—or pity—which he senses from some White people.
As an example of the latter, he notes the example of a White person—a complete stranger—who came over to him recently in a parking lot, offering a general apology for how White America has treated his community. Wayne assumed that the man’s intentions were good, and that perhaps it could have been a good start. But Wayne felt that that the man’s approach actually enabled him to avoid having a genuine conversation, facing the actual pain caused by the system and his own role in it. Instead, it enabled the stranger to simply engage in “virtue-signaling,” while distancing himself from the actual problem. But Wayne believes that such conversations may still just be too difficult for many. People want to just feel better instead of be better, and that becomes the enemy of introspection. Truth gets lost in platitudes.
And this is where meditation comes in, because Dhamma provides the courage and the tools to look inside, see how we all suffer, and make it all more bearable. But it is not always easy! Wayne’s first ever truly violent thoughts were on the meditation cushion, which he responded to with surprise and relief, and which led to an insight that we are all suffering in our own way. Compassion and empathy grow out of one’s practice, which lead one to serve others so they can come to their own insights; this has become a big part of Wayne’s practice.
These days, Wayne does not get as sad and as angry as once did when faced with racism, which he attributes to his meditation practice. As an example, he tells a story of busking in the New York City subways, playing a piece by Bach, when a man approached him with an evil look in the eye, and then just slapped him. Passersby who witnessed this incident were furious and shouts to apprehend his assailant rang out, but Wayne just kept on playing. It wasn’t out of fear or avoidance that he didn’t react, but because he had learned not to personalize the hatred coming towards him. The other man’s reality was toxic for Wayne, but Wayne chose not to be a character in his story.
And yet, it continues to be exhausting having to face continuing incidents of discriminatory treatment. This obviously includes aggressive manifestations of racism, but also when it’s not being perpetuated out of malice, but just by discomfort on the part of Whites who have not met many people of color, or who are acting out of privilege. While he has the tools now to deal better with racism, he prefers not to put himself in a position where he can be victimized. So he tries to surround himself with kind people.
Overall, he sees himself as more “pacifist” than activist, which he describes as dealing with people one-on-one, from his base of inner work, hoping that he can affect change that way. That said, he acknowledges that sometimes “ignorance is bliss,” and the past few months especially have been particularly difficult for him with everything that has happened and come to light. The years he spent ignoring this pain is now spent trying to act against it without being reactive, a change he credits wholeheartedly to meditation, and observing where the stimulus originates.
Wayne does not interpret the fact that there are disproportionately fewer African-Americans practicing meditation as any manifestation of social inequity. As an example, he notes that there weren’t a whole lot of Whites practicing Dhamma in the 1950s, either, and that as long as all groups are welcome at a meditation center or monastery, that is enough. In fact, he cringes at the idea that Dhamma needs to be specially handed to a certain ethnic group, feeling that this is unnatural and actually causes separation. Though he does acknowledge the economic and religious barriers that many African-Americans face in being able to attend a ten-day course (the minimum in the Goenka tradition), he feels it should evolve organically, and that while a course designed especially for Black yogis may come from good intentions, to Wayne it suggests bias and guilt. Citing a personal example for how the Dhamma can spread in his community, he notes how many of his family members have come to courses based on the positive changes they’ve seen in him. Eventually, he feels confident that the practice will spread through his community as it has already through the Hippie, Indian, and so many other communities.