Of the various social media tributes to Thich Nhat Hanh since his latest passing, one image specifically stood out to me. Taken on the Candy Potato Group in 1976 by the not too long ago departed writer and peace activist Jim Forest, the image of the Buddhist monk as a younger man caught me off guard. It wasn’t simply because he was wearing lay garments or as a result of his head was uncharacteristically stuffed with hair.
Thich Nhat Hanh regarded like somebody who may have been the daddy or brother of considered one of my many Vietnamese American classmates rising up in Orange County, California—dwelling to one of the largest Vietnamese communities exterior of Vietnam. Extra considerably, he may have been the younger Vietnamese American Buddhist man who was brutally murdered by a white supremacist on my highschool’s tennis courts throughout my sophomore 12 months.
Whereas as a society we would rejoice Thich Nhat Hanh, many stay deeply suspicious of Asians residing inside our personal nation who share his Buddhist religion.
Whereas as a society we would rejoice Thich Nhat Hanh and features of his educating, similar to mindfulness, many stay deeply suspicious of Asians residing inside our personal nation who share his Buddhist religion.
As an Asian American Buddhist who researches American Buddhism, race, and mindfulness in schooling, I do know that the outpouring of appreciation for Thich Nhat Hanh has been qualitatively completely different from the disregard usually proven to Buddhists of Asian descent throughout america.
Satirically, the popularization of mindfulness, a Buddhist observe usually attributed to Thich Nhat Hanh—who is well known because the “father of mindfulness”—reveals the continued actuality of a mixed anti-Asian sentiment in america.
Although mindfulness is a rising phenomenon in america, particularly in public faculties the place its uptake has increased through the upheaval of the pandemic, its success has depended largely on the downplaying of its affiliation with Buddhism. To promote “The Aware Revolution,” as Time journal labeled it, to mainstream U.S. audiences, it has been packaged by U.S. proponents as a secular method.
As Ohio Congressmen and mindfulness advocate Tim Ryan has written, working towards mindfulness “doesn’t require giving up spiritual religion, or adopting a ‘international’ religion.” Ryan’s rhetoric right here demonstrates the lingering notion that, for a lot of non-Asians, Buddhism—and Asian religions generally—are mysterious, “different,” and most of all, un-American.
Such anti-Asian sentiments harken again to the experiences of the early Chinese language immigrants who first introduced Buddhist practices to America and had been labeled a racial and spiritual “peril” to the nation.
Deemed heathens, they had been marginalized from society as “aliens ineligible for citizenship.” Worry of Chinese language spiritual distinction peppered Congressional debates across the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which expanded citizenship and voting rights following the Civil Battle.
Elected officers in Western states, similar to California Consultant William Higby, had been involved that advancing citizenship for Black People would open the gates for a Chinese language racial and spiritual incursion. The Chinese language are nothing however “a pagan race,” Higby warned. “You can’t make good residents of them.”
Echoing the previous, Consultant Ryan’s assertion that mindfulness is just not spiritual underscores a social local weather that also sees Asian People and Buddhism as a international risk. Furthermore, the concern of a Buddhist mindfulness is usually tied to a panic about covert conversion right into a supposedly superstitious, idol-worshiping Asian faith.
In some ways, it parallels the misgivings about yoga instruction by evangelical Christians. Final 12 months, for instance, Alabama lifted a thirty-year ban on yoga in public faculties however forbade using the frequent South Asian greeting namaste and included an modification banning “meditation, or any side of jap philosophy and spiritual coaching.” Fearing Hinduism, conservative Christian teams in Alabama had needed to maintain the ban.
The banning of namaste and discussions of “jap philosophy” demonstrates how the authorized framework of spiritual protections can function a canopy for racist sentiments. Within the aftermath of First Modification-based challenges to yoga instruction in faculties, many mindfulness packages equally encourage instructors to chorus from utilizing non-English phrases and referencing Asian religions.
The racialized suspicion of Buddhism can be echoed in Jon Kabat-Zinn’s explanation of his growth of Mindfulness Based mostly Stress Discount, or MBSR, one of the crucial well-known mainstream mindfulness packages: “[F]rom the start of MBSR, I bent over backwards to search out methods to discuss it that averted as a lot as potential the danger of it being seen as Buddhist, ‘New Age,’ ‘Jap Mysticism’ or simply plain flakey. To my thoughts this was a continuing and severe threat that will have undermined our makes an attempt to current it as commonsensical, evidence-based, and odd, and finally a official component of mainstream medical care.”
They name consideration to the Buddhist foundations of mindfulness as a kind of invitation for others of all faiths or no religion to take part.
Kabat-Zinn’s rationalization demonstrates how the continued racial and spiritual stigmatization of Buddhism as a “threat” is on the coronary heart of reworking mindfulness for mainstream enchantment and consumption. Although Kabat-Zinn has practiced with Buddhist lecturers himself and his ebook, Full Disaster Residing, features a preface by Thich Nhat Hanh, his strategic erasure of Buddhism reinforces racial and spiritual stereotypes to be able to appease a white-dominant social construction.
To make certain, Thich Nhat Hanh and his Plum Village custom have also advocated for mindfulness in faculties and have expressed the concept that mindfulness is non-religious. The distinction, nonetheless, is that their dialogue of mindfulness is just not encumbered by a historic racialized concern of Asians and Buddhism. Moderately, they name consideration to the Buddhist foundations of mindfulness as a kind of invitation for others of all faiths or no religion to take part with mutual regard. In different phrases, Buddhism is just not handled as a legal responsibility.
Whereas a majority of mainstream mindfulness practitioners are possible well-intentioned and don’t imply to trigger hurt, the racial suspicion of Asians, and Buddhism, embedded in lots of mainstream mindfulness packages has very actual impacts. These attitudes reinforce longstanding sentiments of Asian American Buddhists as perpetual foreigners, main many people to internalize a racial-religious disgrace and to cover our religion.
This was my expertise rising up and, as a former elementary college instructor, I fear about how younger Asian American Buddhists are internalizing the popularization of a model of mindfulness that treats Buddhism as an issue.
As I stare on the picture of a younger smiling Thich Naht Hanh, I’m reminded of the six Vietnamese Buddhist temples that had been vandalized in Orange County in November 2021—a part of a slew of temple desecrations through the pandemic. One of many statues within the temples was spray painted with the phrase “Jesus”—a reminder that the current second of mindfulness can be a historic one.
A reminder, too, that the continued historical past of Asian American Buddhist exclusion can be the continued historical past of our group’s persistent existence on this nation.
