DIVISION
WITHIN
one of the prime focuses is on letting go of any attachment to the
individual self. The aim is to be
one with the wider spiritual world
in the pursuit of harmony, and
ideally, that includes going beyond
skin color differences.
Yet, the Seattle “people of color
sangha (community)” is one of
nearly a dozen that have been established across the U.S. in the
last few years, many with support
from some of the nation’s most
prominent Buddhist teachers. The
sanghas’ memberships vary from
city to city, with black, Latino and
Asian and Native American Buddhists often at the forefront.
Traditionally, Buddhism didn’t
make distinctions along racial
lines — 2,600 years ago, the Buddha traveled across ancient India
to share his teachings with everyone from the nobility to the lowest
classes. But throughout its history, dozens of sects, sub-sects and
cultural variations have formed
among Buddhists, and they’ve become separated by language and
ethnicity, including the dominance
of mainly white sanghas in the U.S.
People of color sanghas have met
varying levels of resistance and success. Are they separatists? Or are
they expanding the practice? Dur-
HUFFINGTON
03.17.13
ing the height of the civil rights era,
the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said
that 11 a.m. at church is the most
segregated hour in the U.S. But in
21st century America, should race
continue to divide the religious?
“People say we’re going against
Buddhism,” says Tuere Sala, the
black Buddhist teacher who is one
of the leaders of the movement in
Seattle and taught the recent beginner’s course.
“They are kind of right. Only
kind of.”
LOOKING TO DIVERSIFY
The effort to make Buddhism
more diverse and less divided is
one of the biggest problems facing
the religion in America today.
There are at least two million
Buddhists in the U.S., and each
usually falls into one of two camps.
On one side are Asian-American
Buddhists, who have been in the
U.S. since the mid-19th century
and whose numbers blossomed
after 1965, when immigration quotas were lifted. About two-thirds
of U.S. Buddhists are Asian, while
one in seven Asians in the U.S. is
Buddhist. Most Asian-American
Buddhists practice at home, and
small numbers also observe their
faith at Buddhist temples, the
kind known for their ornate architecture and large Buddha statues. Studies have found that most