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Ditch the Asian Straw Man

| arun

I was writing a long response to David Nichtern’s Huffinton Post piece—but then I realized that lunchtime is almost over. So I leave you with these images.

Is Asian Buddhism versus Western Buddhism a fair comparison? Honestly, it’s like comparing characteristics of America to the Perth metropolitan area. There is a real issue of scale here.

Not to mention that the timescales aren’t exactly comparable, either. When self-styled Western Buddhists are writing about “Asian Buddhism,” it’s never entirely clear to me if they’re writing about something they saw the other day or read about in a historical text written by some clueless white guy European colonialist.

Buddhism in Asia is greater, more diverse and far, far older than Buddhism in the West. It will continue that way for the entire span of your natural life. When writers like David Nichtern attempt to describe Buddhism in Asia, they end up as nothing more than blind men feeling about an elephant. Their arguments create a fictional Asian Buddhism to use as a straw man in order to define their vision of a separate Western Buddhism. This rhetoric is colonialist at its root, and I encourage them to do better. I have no doubt that they could.

Update: In response to some thoughtful commentary below, I had to put it in print: sometimes I get it wrong.

Bazaar Weekend

| arun

Obon season may be over, but temple festivities continue! This weekend the Buddhist Church of Sacramento and the Midwest Buddhist Temple(Chicago) are hosting bazaars. Both celebrations date back over half-a-century to a time when the Japanese American community struggled to rebuild itself out of the trauma of the concentration camps. As the Ginza Chicago website explains…

Ginza Holiday found its beginning in 1956. […] The event serves two purposes; one as a fund raiser to meet the temple expenses and the other as a way of sharing Japanese traditions with the people of the neighborhood. […] The first event proceeded with some apprehension as it intended to draw upon the non-Japanese community. Most members harbored unfavorable experiences in the decade preceding. Uprooted from the West Coast to isolated camps, they made their final trek to Chicago on news of jobs and friendlier surroundings. The dread of non-acceptance ran deep.

The optimists among them proved right as fears were totally unwarranted. The good neighbors of Chicago attended in droves. Teriyaki chicken became an instant success. An old family recipe surely helped. To the consternation of a few, it may have eclipsed some of the cultural events.

These bazaars endure as a testament to the vitality of the Japanese American spirit and the temples’ longstanding openness to reach out to the local community. If you’re in Chicago or Sacramento and enjoy whiling your time kvetching about “insular Asian Buddhists”—please visit your local bazaar, grab some lunch or dinner and then leave me a comment to relate these temples’ insufferable refusal to be involved in the greater community!

Photo courtesy of Ginza Chicago.

White Buddhist for Asians

| arun

Over on Dharma Folk, kudos posts about largely Vietnamese immigrants in Orange County who have “hired a white American man to teach Buddhism to their kids.” This man is a Buddhist monk, Ven. Kusala Bhikshu.

There are a number of white Buddhist teachers who have ordained and now minister to multicultural communities, especially here in the United States. There’s Ven. Heng Sure and Thanissaro Bhikkhu to name just two. What sets Kusala Bhikhsu apart, in my opinion, is that he has not made the same effort to thoroughly immerse himself in another culture. While Ven. Heng Sure speaks flawless Mandarin and Thanissaro Bhikkhu speaks fluent Thai with a mastery of slang that would make my own mother blush, Kusala Bhikshu is a happily monolingual American Midwesterner—who also happens to reach out to Asian American Buddhist communities.

In my opinion, this is a most beautiful manifestation of Western Buddhism, where Western Buddhists of different stripes and colors come together in spite of—even because of—their differences. Here are people who are leveraging their community’s diversity to strengthen it! Kusala Bhikshu’s not the only white guy working in this vein. For example, I often talk of Richard’s assistance to a local Lao temple. My hope is that, one day, self-styled Western Buddhist institutions can outgrow their cultural insularity and follow in the steps of these multiculturally-minded individuals.

You can listen to the full story at PRI’s The World. (Photo credit to PRI’s The World.)

Angry Asian Quote of the Day

| arun

From Kawahashi Noriko.

Unfortunately, however, the attempts by women in Japan today to remake Buddhism from a feminist perspective are little known, if at all, in Europe and America. A growing number of women in recent years, largely in America, have looked to Buddhism for a spirituality to replace Judaism and Christianity. Some of them have given up on Asian Buddhism, finding it spoiled by gender discrimination, and made the colonialist maneuver of proclaiming Western society to be the driving force for a new Buddhism.

Amen, sister! You can read the full text “Feminist Buddhism as Praxis: women in traditional Buddhism” published in the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies.

Gardena Obon 2010

| arun

The last Obon celebration in Southern California took place at the Gardena Buddhist Church. This year felt more crowded than last year. Below is a joint taiko performance with the UC Irvine Jodaiko (in white and blue) and the Gardena Buddhist Church Junior YBA (in black) playing together.

We could barely squeeze into the dance circle. As usual, I forgot all my moves, but I was far from alone—no matter, the other dancers were more than happy to help us out. The best way to practice is to go Obon hopping as much as you can during the summer!

The next Obon festival is at the San Luis Obispo Buddhist Temple next weekend. Not quite Southern California, but it’s a matter of perspective. The last one in the Southwest is in Las Vegas on August 14.

That’s enough posting about Obon for this year!

Vassa Begins

| arun

This week began with Asalha Puja, the holiday commemorating Lord Buddha’s recitation of the Dhammacakkapavattana Sutta. Below I’ve collected links of some other bloggers who have written related thoughts.

For this Vassa, I’m committing myself to sitting at least an hour a day. I usually fail to make time for sitting every day, so we’ll have to see how well this goes. Hopefully I can maintain this habit for all of Vassa—and onward too…

Obon in the East

| arun

I started posting too late on Obon to mention the festivals out in the Eastern United States. And by “Eastern,” I’m talking about anything East of the Mississippi. Below are the dates of Obon festivals that have passed. I believe there was also an Obon festival at the Buddhist Temple of Chicago, but I couldn’t find the past date online.

The past few posts on Obon have been a bit carried away over the dance and festivities. The other (and for many, the primary) side of Obon is that it’s a memorial occasion. If you happen to look up “Obon” on a local temple calendar, it’s probably a good idea to find out first whether you’ll be attending a party-like festival or a more somber memorial occasion.

Anger Negotiations

| arun

This study really has little to do with Buddhism or the Buddhist community prima facie. Regardless, as it’s about anger and people of (East) Asian ancestry, I feel obliged…

The first study with 63 participants of European ancestry and 67 of East Asian ancestry involved a hypothetical negotiation situation. The students read a transcript of a negotiation between a salesman and client and imagined they were the salesman. Half the students read a version in which the client was described at one point as speaking in an angry tone. The key measure was whether the students said they would agree to add a warranty into the deal or not. The effect of anger was opposite for the two cultural groups: the Western students were more likely to add the warranty (i.e. make a concession) if the client got angry whereas the East Asian students were less likely to add the warranty in this situation.

To increase the realism, a second study involved another 67 European-ancestry students and 88 East Asian-ancestry students taking part in computer-mediated negotiations in pairs, in which they played the role of mobile phone seller. The whole affair was actually fixed by the researchers and computer-controlled but the students were tricked into thinking they were playing with another student. Another twist to the set-up was that the students were occasionally given a ‘sneak insight’ into their negotiation partner’s typed intentions, for example ‘I think I’ll offer X’.Replicating the first study, the key finding here was that when these insights contained an expression of anger (e.g. ‘This is really getting on my nerves, I’m going to offer X’) the Western-ancestry students were more likely to make a concession to their negotiation partner whereas the East-Asian ancestry students were less likely to do so.

The final study provided a rather crude test of one possible explanation for the results – that the effect of anger has to do with what’s considered culturally appropriate. Dozens of European and East-Asian-ancestry students took part in a replication of the computer-mediated negotiation task, but this time half the students were told in advance that most people express anger in negotiations and that it was acceptable to do so in this study, whereas the other half were told that expressions of anger were rare and it was not acceptable to get angry in the current task. With these instructions in place, the effects of cultural background disappeared. Instead, regardless of students’ cultural background, anger was beneficial following the ‘anger is ok’ instructions whereas it backfired following the ‘anger is unacceptable’ instructions.

Adam H, Shirako A, & Maddux WW (2010). Cultural variance in the interpersonal effects of anger in negotiations. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS, 21 (6), 882-9 PMID: 20483822