The Importance of Community

 

05.05.2023 THE IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNITY This weekend, I’ll be at my temple celebrating Vesak, which commemorates the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and nirvana. I’ll be surrounded by Asian American Buddhists with heritage from Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, China, Korea, Japan, and more. I’ve been incredibly lucky to be a part of such a multifaced Asian American Buddhist community, and I’ve realized I take it for granted.   During graduate school, I taught courses on Asian American history, literature, and communities. Early on each semester, I’d give a lecture on current Asian American communities in the U.S. — where they’re located, their size, and community trends. I’d spend a lot of time on Southern California, since I’m an Angeleno, born and raised!   I’d explain how the San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles County is one of the largest Asian enclaves in the U.S., housing over half a million Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean, Taiwanese, Japanese, and other Asian American residents. Eight out of the top ten cities in the U.S. with the largest population of Chinese Americans are located there. In fact, many cities in the San Gabriel Valley are majority Asian American.   Two days after this lecture, a student came to my office hours. I was immediately concerned since she seemed shaken. She had been unsettled by the lecture, saying, “I never knew!” Having grown up in a rural area in the Midwest, she couldn’t imagine living in a place that was majority Asian American. She realized what she had been missing her entire life: a sense of place, community, and visibility. As a result, she struggled to connect with her Buddhist heritage.   After she left, I reflected on how living in Los Angeles, regularly meeting and learning from other Asian American Buddhists, has been vital for my own sense of identity. I can go with my non-Asian American and non-Buddhist friends any Saturday to the weekend food court at Wat Thai in North Hollywood, where we eat Thai street food in the shadow of the temple’s gorgeous architecture. We can walk into the Taiwanese Hsi Lai temple in Hacienda Heights, and marvel at the beauty of a temple complex the size of a town. We can visit my Sri Lankan temple in Mid City, Dharma Vijaya Buddhist Vihara, which is composed of repurposed single-family homes, for meditation courses in an intimate setting.   May is Asian American and Asian Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. This month, I encourage you to explore the various AAPI Month events in your area. Visit an Asian American Buddhist community! Listen to a dhamma sermon and ask monastics questions. Talk to the lay congregation over a meal or a cup of tea. To start, read the three pieces featured below from the Lion’s Roar and Buddhadharma archives. Trust me, you’ll come away with an enhanced appreciation of Buddhism and the complexity of the Asian American Buddhist experience! –Mihiri Tillakaratne, Associate Editor, Lion’s Roar

We’re Not Who You Think We Are Chenxing Han examines the stereotypes that have marginalized Asian American Buddhists and reports on the rich diversity and depth of practice of a new generation of practitioners. “Asian American Buddhist”: a heterogeneous category that transgresses the boundaries of “two Buddhisms.” A category that forces us to question the dichotomies of immigrant/convert, modern/traditional, devotional/rational, meditative/ritualistic, ethnic/white. A category that makes room for Alyssa, who values bowing, community service, offering donations, and meditation as equally important Buddhist practices. A category that sees no contradiction with Thomas understanding “hell realms” as psychological states while believing that bodhisattvas respond to prayers. A category full of alternatives to the normative story of American Buddhism. As Kaila, who attends both a Jodo Shinshu church and her fiancé’s Khmer Buddhist temple, put it: “I would like to see Asian American Buddhists represented, as we are: diverse.”

Hello, It’s Halloween What do you want to be for Halloween? Who do you want to be in life? Ira Sukrungruang on the costumes we wear. Halloween was another day my parents didn’t understand. But now they had a son in America, who went to American schools, hung out with weird American boys, yearned for American fast food. Who wanted to be American, eviscerating the Thai Buddhist in him because the Thai Buddhist was what set him apart when all he wanted was to belong. The Thai Buddhist and his Thai Buddhist family did peculiar things, like setting offerings of coffee to the statue of Buddha every morning or saying Pali prayers—words sounding like gravel—which the boy never understood the meaning of. American Boy was a costume he wanted to wear permanently. American Boy wanted to be like the other American Boys in the sitcoms he watched, where problems were solved in thirty minutes. American Boy would not pray to Buddha the way his mother taught him to, asking to be reborn in the same family, asking for safety in this strange country; instead, he’d pay homage to Frankenstein.

Reclaiming Our So-Called “Cultural Baggage” Asian American Buddhist communities have for years been dismissed by “convert” Buddhists for carrying “cultural baggage.” Nalika Gajaweera says the response should not be to let it go but to claim it as a mark of cultural responsibility. “We’ve been paying the monthly electricity bill of the Sri Lankan temple for the past twenty years.” I was sharing a car ride with my sister a few weeks back when she very casually shared this detail with me. It has been nearly two decades since my sister and her husband moved from Georgia to upstate New York, yet for all those years, the two have continued to make a standing donation (dana) to the Sri Lankan temple they once regularly attended in Georgia. It was my first time hearing about this, and I was struck by the recognition that they are not alone. Thousands of other first- and second-generation Asian American Buddhists around the country take a similar approach, quietly and consistently fulfilling their responsibilities and commitments to their Buddhist temples. This quiet persistence by the Asian Buddhist community in the United States can be seen in all the unseen little acts of responsibility by laypeople toward their temples and churches. From paying the temple utility bills to literally keep the lights on day to day, to the behind-the-scenes work done mostly by laywomen to ensure the regular activities of the temple run smoothly, little acts of labor and generosity play a pivotal part in sustaining the community.

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