Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - What Everyone Who Meditates Should Know | Chenxing Han and Duncan Ryūken Williams

Episode Date: May 3, 2021

If you meditate (or do yoga, for that matter), you may have been taught by a Westerner, but you owe a gigantic debt of gratitude to the giants and geniuses in Asia who developed these practices. This fact can be overlooked or downplayed -- intentionally or otherwise -- by Western practitioners, including, sometimes, me. However, in the midst of a spike of anti-Asian violence, now seems like a very good time to learn more about where these practices came from, and why many Asian-American Buddhists sometimes feel erased. Not only is this the right thing to do, but it can also add depth and perspective and freshness to your practice. In this episode, we have two fascinating guests who will talk about what it’s been like for them to be Asian American Buddhists in the midst of this spate of hate crimes, and walk us through the long and ugly history of anti-Buddhist violence in America. We also talk about: how all meditators (not just people in vulnerable communities) can learn resiliency through meditation; the connection between karma and reparations; and whether it’s possible, or advisable, to generate goodwill towards people who hate you. We also have a frank conversation about how some of my own messaging about Buddhism in America has missed the mark.  My guests are: Chenxing Han, who is the author of Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists. She holds a BA from Stanford and an MA in Buddhist Studies from the Graduate Theological Union. And, Duncan Ryūken Williams, who is the author of American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War. He has a B.A. in Religious Studies from Reed and a Ph.D. in Religion from Harvard. He is currently a professor at the University of Southern California. He’s also a Zen priest. Both Duncan and Chenxing are helping to organize a national ceremony -- which will take place the day after we post this interview -- on the 49-day anniversary of the Atlanta spa shootings that took the lives of several Asians and Asian-Americans. (For more on that ceremony, click here: https://www.maywegather.org/) One thing to say before we dive in: we are dedicating this whole week to the spike in hate crimes against members of the AAPI community. On Wednesday, we’ll talk to Mushim Ikeda, a Buddhist teacher, about how all of us can use meditation to deal with anger, uncertainty, and self-loathing.  And two more items of business: first, are you interested in teaching mindfulness to teens? Looking to carve your own path and share this practice in a way that feels real, authentic, and relevant in today’s world? Our friends at iBme are accepting applications for their Mindfulness Teacher Training program - catered towards working with teens and young adults. The last round of applications are due May 15th and scholarships are available. For more information and to apply, check out: https://ibme.com/mindfulness-teacher-training/ And second, we want to deeply thank and recognize mental health professionals for your support. For a year's FREE access to the app and hundreds of meditations and resources visit: https://www.tenpercent.com/mentalhealth Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/chenxing-han-duncan-ryuken-williams-343 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to 10% Happier early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. From ABC, this is the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. If you meditate, or if you do yoga for that matter, you may have been taught by a Westerner, but you owe a gigantic debt of gratitude to the giants and geniuses over in Asia who developed these practices in the first place. This fact can be overlooked or downplayed intentionally or otherwise by some Western practitioners, including sometimes by me. by some Western practitioners, including sometimes by me.

However, in the midst of a spike of anti-Asian violence, now seems like a really good time to learn more about where these practices came from and why many Asian American Buddhists sometimes feel erased. Not only is this the right thing to do, but it can also add depth and perspective and freshness to your practice. So in this episode, we've got two fascinating guests who will talk about what it's been like for them to be Asian American Buddhists in the midst of this spate of hate crimes and walk us through the long and ugly history of anti-Buddhist violence in America.

We also talk about how all meditators, not just people in vulnerable communities, can learn resiliency through the practice of meditation, the connection between karma and reparations, and whether it's possible or even advisable to generate goodwill towards people who hate you. Oh, and we also have a frank conversation about how some of my own messaging about Buddhism in America may have missed the mark. My guests are Chen Xing Han, who's the author of Be the Refuge, Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists. She holds a BA from Stanford University and an MA in Buddhist Studies from the Graduate Theological Union. And my other guest is Duncan Duken Williams,

who is the author of American Sutra, a Story of faith and freedom in the Second World War. He has a BA in religious studies from Reed and a PhD in religion from Harvard. He's currently a professor at the University of Southern California. He's also a Zen priest. Both Chen Xing and Duncan are helping to organize a national ceremony, which will take place the day after we post this interview, on the 49-day anniversary of the Atlanta spa shootings that took the lives of several Asians and Asian Americans. And we're going to put some more information on that event in the show notes. One thing to say before we dive in, we are dedicating this entire week to the spike in hate crimes against members of the AAPI community.

On Wednesday, we're going to talk to Mushim Ikeda, a Buddhist teacher, about how all of us can use meditation to deal with anger, uncertainty, and self-loathing. Okay, here we go now with Chen Xing and Duncan. Okay, Chen Xing Han and Duncan Dioken Williams, thank you both for coming on. Thank you. Great to meet with you. Thank you. It's an honor. Thank you both for coming on. Thank you. Great to meet with you. Thank you.

It's an honor. Chen Xing, let me start with you. To state the blazingly obvious, this has been a dumpster fire of the last year or so. And I think it might be helpful for our listeners to get a sense from both of you, but starting with you, Chen Xing, about how this time has been for you as we've seen this uptick in hate crimes. Yeah, well, I came back from Bangkok, actually, in March 2020. So my partner and I were based in Southeast Asia for much of the last presidency. We came back from Bangkok in March 2020 for what we thought would be a month-long visit. Obviously, we have not left the Bay Area since. And what I remember was when I flew in, one of my friends in Bangkok texted saying,

you know, I really hope you stay safe, both from the virus and the racism. And it was, that was my welcome back to America. And so it's been a lot, a lot to take in. The news in particular, the kind of feeling of just an endless stream of reports on verbal violence, physical assaults on Asian American Buddhists, and a sense of that escalating as well when we read accounts of things that really hit home for the Buddhist community

in particular, when, you know, Kunwichicha Ratanapakti was assaulted and killed while just going on a morning walk in San Francisco, and when our Buddhist temples in Southern California have been vandalized. And I recognize I have so much privilege that I've been able to stay safe at home, to work from home, but still the kind of psychological effects of hearing this kind of news day in and day out is really heavy. And since I've launched my book in late January and speaking with a lot of different communities, including a lot of Asian Americans, I noticed that that kind of fear, the grief, the anger, just all of these difficult emotions that are really being stirred up. And of course, people who are also very directly affected, friends who've been affected by this kind of violence. So there's a lot to

say there, but for myself, I can feel that in my body and I can, you know, feel that in the ways that I can't always listen to the news day in and day out because it can be quite traumatic for people. Duncan, how about for you? Sure. I think in terms of the last year, the kind of pandemic year, one of the things that I went through on a personal basis was that I became a U.S. citizen last June. After 33 years of being in the United States on different legal, you know, statuses and visas and so forth, I kind of gave up my Japanese nationality and took the plunge into becoming a U.S. citizen. And it happened on

Juneteenth last year in the federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles. And it was therefore a day when Black Lives and protests were happening right around City Hall. And it made me think about this time, what it means to be an American. I went in my Buddhist robes to do the ceremony. And for me, it was a kind of important way of like affirming religious freedom and the constitution as we took that oath. I did it in my robes as a way of kind of saying, I'm going to defend this constitution. And these protesters outside are also trying to do the same thing in terms of equality under the law, religious freedom, all American people, I think for a long time, Buddhist people for a long time have been facing these acts of exclusion and animus and violence. And so, I think it just calls on us whether we're new citizens or have been citizens for a long time, what it means when a certain faith group is kind of told you don't belong,

you know, like you're un-American. Or if you're a certain ethnicity is told that you're either not welcome or second class, you know, kind of almost like sometimes in Asian American communities, we talk about like perpetual foreigner, like people always, you can be here for five, six generations. And Buddhist temples have been around since the 19th century and still being told, you know, go back home, you cause of coronavirus. is the type of thing that's been a little bit distressing and really raises this question of who belongs in America and who are we as citizens? And what do we need to do to find our place here in this country? To be told, go back home when you are home, has to be, I can only guess, the sense of dislocation and alienation that would engender. Very much so. And it's been something that isn't just now.

So I think in terms of last year, yes, there was an uptick. And some people kind of blamed it on the politics of our time. But I think those of us who have longer memories of what the Asian American and Asian American Buddhist experience is, is that these are cyclical things that do have ways of rises of periods where the animus and the exclusion and the violence gets intensified in certain moments. But I think that message of you don't belong, when it's done multi-generationally, don't belong when it's done multi-generationally. I think Asian American communities and Buddhists have had to kind of inherit that karma, you know what I mean? Like there's a kind of like hurt that then gets intergenerationally transmitted over time. And these are the type of things that if we are to truly heal as a nation, we have to start addressing a lot of this stuff, not just in this kind of like political moment, but in

this longer question of what is America and where do people like Asian American Buddhists fit into it? And I would maybe add that I think the pain that Duncan is talking about, I think, really got surfaced in a profound national, really international way after the Atlanta area shootings. So I think there's both this moment now, this kind of reckoning of Asian Americans feeling just the grief over that shooting and those eight lives lost, the six of whom were women of Asian heritage, and one of whom we know was a Korean Buddhist. And so just that is a reminder, I think, for so many of us. We remember the moments in our lives

where we've felt excluded, where we felt in pain and fear of erasure or worse. Right. And so, Dan, one of the things that Chen Hsing and I are both working on creating is a Buddhist memorial service on the 49th day of that incident in the Atlanta shootings. In many Buddhist traditions, it's the 49th day is the time when we believe that the deceased people's kind of transition to a different realm. And as Jussie was saying, somehow the Atlanta shooting, despite thousands of other cases of incidents that range from verbal harassment to violent beatings to even death, have occurred somehow that I think in the same way that George Floyd mobilized the African-American community as well as the nation. I think Atlanta has mobilized the Asian

American community as well as the nation to kind of take stock of where we are. And so it's on that basis that we're trying to create this 49th Day Memorial Service as a kind of national day of remembering this history of people who've come before us, our ancestors, Asian American, Buddhists, and others, and kind of remember not only those who died in Atlanta, but there's just so many others that we feel we need to honor and remember. You've both written books, and I want to talk about both of those books. But I think it might make sense, Duncan, just to dig in a little bit on your work first, because it provides a historical context.

You have used a phrase several times in your utterances thus far in this, at this point, brief interview. The phrase, a long time, has come up a bunch of times in conversation from your side. And I think it's worth putting some meat on the bone there for folks to help us understand, what does this look like, the discrimination against Asian Americans and, in particular, Buddhist Americans? Sure. You know, and there's a way in which I've been noticing how it's that conflation of where race and religion meet that often is used as these kind of measures of exclusion. And so by long time, I mean like when the first Chinese immigrants came to the United States, just like any other, you know, seeking opportunity, you know, places like Montana

in the 19th century, I think one in 10 people were Chinese as they were mining and eventually building the railroad. There's different industries where the Chinese were there. And everywhere that that first group of, you know, large group of Asian immigrants came to the United States, they built Buddha Taoist temples in many different regions. And those are our first kind of American Buddhist, you know, establishment of American Buddhism. And those temples came under attack, vandalism. There were massacres of Chinese in Waiyoh. There's like so many things going on. And eventually, of course, the 1881 Chinese Exclusion Act, the first federal law that said,

you know, up until that point, America welcomed anybody. You didn't need to get visas or, you know, they didn't have a Department of Homeland Security or Immigration and Customs. They just let everybody in. This is the first law that said one group of people are not welcome in America, the Chinese Exclusion Act. And so, I recall from way back then this language of, it was a kind of slur word of the time, the heathen qini. It's like a racially unassemblable group, but religiously kind of uncivilized and unacceptable to American belonging, the heathens. And that kind of language where religion and race were conflated as a way to kind of exclude people, to me, is also what drove the Japanese-American

experience. The Japanese-American community on the eve of Pearl Harbor was the largest Buddhist community in the United States at that time. And 70% of the second generation, U.S.-born citizens, but even higher percentage of the immigrant generation, roughly 120,000 living on the West Coast, 125,000 on the Hawaiian Islands, the 125,000 on the West Coast, they were put into these concentration camps with no due process, despite two-thirds of them being U.S. citizens. And again, religion and race got conflated, and Buddhism was seen as this kind of enemy religion. Buddhist priests were placed on special FBI registries and rounded up even before the smoke had cleared at Pearl Harbor. They were on a kind of like a threat to national security list. Temples had been under surveillance

in the years prior to the outbreak of war. And so, as you say, it wasn't just war hysteria or a sudden kind of emergency situation. There was a long history of this kind of animus and this kind of idea that these people are dangerous, don't belong, might subvert something. And what is that something? I've always said it's this other idea of America, which is an idea of America's singularity. Like there's only one religion and one race that belongs in America,

kind of like a white and Christian singularity or supremacist vision of what is America. And so I think, you know, just going back to these histories from the 19th century, early part of the 20th century, gives us some sense of like what people had to put up with in our community for decades and decades prior to this moment. And so I think what I take from it is also like, these are people now in the United States for six, you know, even seven generations. And they have tried to stake a claim in the idea of like, we belong,

and we are just as American as anybody else. And to me, that's a powerful thing when the media, your own government, the society in general sometimes tells you that you don't belong. That was all very well said, and I think incredibly incredibly useful and and yeah there's a way in which if you're not following this story because you don't have to because for example if maybe you look like me and therefore have the privilege not to have to follow the story so closely it can seem like this is all coming out of the blue oh so the coronavirus hit and a bunch of morons are blaming it on anybody who happens to be asian But no, this goes back generations and generations. And so it's just incredibly useful to hear that perspective.

I want to get into you. So you have the historical perspective, Duncan horror of the last 14 months through the lens of your training of your own mind. That's a great question. practice, it's very easy for our mind to wander, for our body to not be so upright, lean left, lean right, fall asleep, kind of slump over. And what is our practice? It's to become upright again when we notice that. And in our founders, because I'm a Zen Buddhist priest, we look to Bodhidharma, the purported founder of our tradition of Achano Zen Buddhism. And there's in Japan a phrase that is attributed to him, Nana korobi yaoki, seven times you fall down, eight times you get back up. And so that's been our central kind of practice of meditation, right?

When you find your body is fallen off, slumped over, you kind of just make it straight again. When your mind is wandered, you kind of get back upright with your mind again. And this can be kind of thought of as a much broader practice, that in our life, can be kind of thought of as a much broader practice that in our life things will happen on an individual basis a collective basis a community basis a national basis where we're knocked off track you know and we fall down but what is our practice it's to get back up again and up become upright again and so to me like that's the power of our meditative traditions is that we have the ability and flexibility and resilience built into our practice that when we have hate come our way, we can respond with something other than hate, with loving kindness. When we have

these things that kind of really knock us off track, we have the resilience to get back up. And sometimes we can't do it alone. This is, I think, one of the other main things about being in Zen Buddhist kind of community is that the Buddha taught that Sangha matters, right? That community matters. And that ultimately we experience things as, you know, particularized persons, perhaps, but that we do it in community. And in fact, our ability to sometimes get back up when we've fallen down is dependent on the power of our sangha coming together. And sometimes we're the people that lend the helping hand, and sometimes we have the recipients of

somebody who lends us a helping hand. But either way, we help each other get back up. And that's, to me, the kind of perspective that I think our Zen Buddhist, but also, quite frankly, broader Buddhist tradition has to offer us in terms of perspective as well as practices. Yeah, peer pressure has negative connotations, but in fact, a lot of evidence in contemplative history and then now modern science to show that people you spend your time with have a profound impact on your psychology and behavior.

And that can be really helpful. I do want to swing back to something you said, though, which is, so yes, the sort of basic meditation practice of trying to focus on one thing, you get carried away, start again, fall asleep, wake up, start again, think about lunch, wake up from that, start again. That can, over time, train you in resiliency and the capacity to bounce back. Although you described bouncing back in the face of hate, violence, and hate speech, and responding with loving kindness, which for the uninitiated is a Buddhist term of art, which essentially means like goodwill or friendliness. Is that too much to ask for most people to be able to respond to somebody

burning down your place of worship or shouting, go home to you on the street, or lighting you on fire or shooting you in your place of work? Is it too much to ask to respond with good will? That is a great question. You know, the Buddha taught, there's a famous sutta about when somebody shot in the chest with an arrow. You know, there's that famous story of that person, like, inquiring about who shot it, the nature of the person who shot it, all these things, and not taking the arrow out. And the Buddha's point was just take the arrow out. And so, to me, Buddhism is a very practical religion. And so, we first deal with taking the arrow out. Our religion is about alleviating suffering. You know what I mean? Like that bottom line, we have many different lineages, but alleviating suffering is our thing that we have in common. We try not to do things that are going to add to it. So first, alleviate it, you know. But in the end, we do not want to get shot by more arrows. And we do need to kind of look at causes and conditions. We do need to figure out ways to get out. And the Buddha taught that when you are faced with hate, you need to respond with love,

because that is actually the truer, deeper, real healing that happens when you do it that way. But is it harder? Definitely. You know, there's that Buddhist joke, or at least Zen Buddhist joke. We have these mug cups that read, don't just do something, sit there. It's the opposite of, you know, don't just sit there, do something. And so sometimes the best thing to do is just to sit quietly and become still. And other times we respond in proactive ways. Other times we bring our Buddhist practice and feelings and our morality and our virtues to bear on our actions.

Because ultimately, I feel like we know that true healing and true repair of wounds and suffering can only come from that place. And so maybe that's not the first step you take, maybe it's the 10th step you take, but we need to take it at some point. Chenzing, I want to talk about your writing soon, but before we do that, I know you too are a Buddhist practitioner, and I'm just curious, how has your practice or has your practice at all been useful to you in this difficult period? Yeah, I'm a lay Buddhist who's, you know, influenced by many different traditions. And I

think that the spiritual friendships I've experienced and cultivated, been really blessed with over the years from Buddhists of many different backgrounds is what I've been really leaning into during this time. And certainly chanting at home and sometimes some quiet meditation. But I think like many people, I really miss being able to be in physical spaces surrounded by other people. And it's been a joy, actually, and a solace to just be with a lot of Buddhists of different backgrounds, not just Asian American, but all different Buddhist backgrounds. There's a relief in knowing sometimes

that when we're hurting together, we can come together and we can join our voices together or join our minds in a sort of shared intention to both see the kinds of hurt that we're going through and then find ways to settle, right? Settle after we've been stirred up. And then from that place of kind of, you know, we talk about samvayaga and pasada in Buddhism, samvayaga,

the kinds of stirring, that shock sometimes that happens to us. But then there's this possibility we know in Buddhism for pasada, a kind of calm, a kind of settledness. And I think of that not as a complacent place where we get to hang out forever, and besides, it's all impermanent, so that will pass too. But from that place, when we're joined in the power of community, where do we go from there? And that, perhaps even more than any individual practice that I do, that reminder that in these isolating times, I'm not alone. There are people who care, and that we're actually protected by many forces and by the goodwill, actually, of many people. That's given me a lot of hope. There are a lot of strands to what you just said, but one that sticks out to me in particular is

that being settled and quiet does not equal passivity, resignation, etc. Absolutely not. I think sometimes that's just what we need to do. You know, if we talk about alleviating suffering, remembering ourselves as well is very important. And sometimes when we get so riled up or when we're so burning in the fires of anger or grief, just taking a moment and noticing, wow, this really hurts and this hurts me and I'd like to, you know, not be in this state anymore. How do I shift from this state? For me, I'm not always strong enough to shift myself out of that state and that's when I need to reach out for help and reach out to my Buddhist community. Speaking of the Buddhist community, you've written a book about the Asian American Buddhist community. What would you say is the sort of top line finding or main thesis of the book?

That's a tough question. I would say that Asian American Buddhists are an identity or a category still very much in the making, but that it's an incredibly diverse group of people, not a monolith. And there's a lot we can learn if we listen to their voices. You'll correct me, I hope, if I'm wrong here, but that there's a stereotype that the serious Buddhists in the West are the white of traditional, ceremonial, religious Buddhists, but aren't doing the practice the way some of the convert Buddhists are doing it. And your book, I think, in many ways seeks to disprove that stereotype. Do I have that right, or am I in the neighborhood of accuracy there? Yeah, I'd say one of the impetuses for this book is this kind of two Buddhism's dichotomy that we can see in both the popular literature and the academic literature. This idea that there are

just two kinds of Buddhism in America, one of white converts, one of Asian immigrants, and the white convert one is usually associated with seated meditation or rationalism, being more scientific. The Asian immigrant one is associated with chanting or devotion. And sometimes these descriptions start sliding into, oh, they're just kind of superstitious immigrants. They're kind of practicing a watered-down Buddhism. And it was painful to read these kinds of descriptions where a supposedly neutral sociological description was turning into disparagement of entire racial groups of people. So part of my book is addressing some of the limits of this dichotomy. First of all, all the other racial groups that are excluded, but also this reminder that a lot of our binaries can be

limiting. They might be of some use, but often they can have harmful effects when people think there are just really two options. I mean, where do I as an Asian American convert Buddhist fit into this schema? I'm not quite sure. And so I don't know if I'm disproving this theory so much as trying to shed light onto, well, if we're going to lump all Asian immigrants or Asian Buddhists or Asian American Buddhists, I mean, those three things are already very distinct, but we have a tendency to lump them together. And unfortunately, so seldom do we hear these voices in the mainstream media. I just wanted to know, what does it look like when we center Asian American Buddhist voices? It's a different lens on American Buddhism, one that I think hasn't

been lifted very much. For people who, like me, the introduction to Buddhism was through these converts, these white people, what have you learned through your own personal experience of just living your life and then through writing this book that would be useful for us to hear that might sort of complicate our views and give us a more nuanced and perhaps more accurate view of how things have gone down? Well, first I'd say, you know, I'm very much with you. A lot of my introduction to Buddhism in America was also through predominantly white convert spaces. And I think that for me, it was actually just really eye-opening to realize, oh, okay, Buddhists in America, we may be a minority, maybe only about 1% of the population,

but two-thirds of us are of Asian heritage. I mean, just that took a moment. And then this reminder that the history of Asian American Buddhism, as Duncan was talking about, goes very deep. So I've been in spaces where it kind of felt like there's this origin story of American Buddhism that began in the 1960s and 70s with white converts. There's ways in which we inherit the two Buddhism's narrative or two Buddhism's myth, if you will. And so to remember that, no, actually in the 19th century, we had Buddhists in this country. So the Jodo Shinshu community, who are predominantly Japanese American, but also a very much diversifying community. When I go to those spaces, I can

experience a completely different kind of Buddhism. So I think for me, those two things, and then also just the reminder of how incredibly vast Buddhism is, not just globally, but even if we just look in America, right? I'm thinking of Los Angeles as one of the most diverse Buddhist cities in the world, if not the most diverse Buddhist city in the world, where Duncan is based for this May 4th gathering, having it in Los Angeles and just the dozens of different people that we've been reaching out to and inviting to participate in the ceremony.

For me, it's humbling. And I like to think of us always being kind of part of a big Buddhist family, big maybe global Buddhist family, but even an American Buddhist family. And like any family, we may share common roots, but we may not always get along. There may be parts of the family that are estranged from each other. And yet, I think there's a certain commitment of recognizing like, oh, we do have these common roots. How can we get to know each other a bit more? So for me, I think just remembering that if one enters through predominantly white convert spaces, I think what's a much broader Buddhist landscape, a much

bigger Buddhist family, and that there can be a lot of joy in forming connections of spiritual friendships, you know, outside of the sanghas we're familiar with. We can really benefit from learning from Buddhists and from people who are different than us and practice differently than we do. I fear that I have been on the wrong side of history. And this is a little complicated. Because on the one hand, I do think that the white people who in the late 60s and 70s went over to Asia and learned these practices and came back and really helped spread the word here in the West, did an incredibly important and valuable thing. And it fits into the history of Buddhism as it spread throughout the world. It adapted to the local cultures as it moved from India to Tibet to China and Japan to Sri Lanka to Vietnam.

So it has adapted. to Vietnam, to all. So it has adapted. And I think what the folks like Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield did was just incredibly important. By the same token, people like me who have big mouths and a big megaphone, you know, to consistently tell the story, as I have done, that these are the pioneers who brought Buddhism to the West, it's just not true. It's not, well, let's just say it's not the whole truth. There were Buddhists in this country way before those guys were even born. And so I'd like to hear what you think of what I just said, and also what you think about how I could do better. Yeah, I appreciate that acknowledgement. I think even

for myself, I noticed being in predominantly white convert spaces, and sometimes it was just little things, like talking about culture as kind of baggage. And so then it was suddenly like, there's just a moment of, oh, is my family and my culture, my language, my foods, is this all baggage that I'm supposed to slough off to be a good Buddhist? If I'm totally honest, I think at a certain point, I started thinking that to be a good Buddhist. If I'm totally honest, I think at a certain point, I started thinking that to be a good Buddhist would be to be a white meditator. And it took writing this book and meeting a lot more other young adult Asian American Buddhists from different backgrounds and having us grapple together about this intersection of our race and our spirituality that helped me see a bigger picture. So I always appreciate when people in white convert communities,

because, you know, who are the most visible people in American Buddhism, right? Who are the people who publish most books on Buddhism in America? They don't look like me. And so cultivating a healthy level of humility, I think, is very much appreciated. And in a broader sense, if we do want to be a broader Buddhist family, if we do want to alleviate suffering together, that requires understanding. And we each have a kind of narrow perspective. Recognizing that and then trying to connect with others who can help us broaden that perspective, I think, is really important. If I can be really honest with

you, Dan, so I was listening to some of your podcasts and I listened just a little bit to your first one in 2016 with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. And there's a moment where you talk about, you say at the very beginning, like I'm firmly not in the camps of like smells and bells. I think that's how you put it. And I just had this moment where both it's kind of cute because it rhymes, but there was just this moment of, I was thinking, oh dear, I think I am in that camp. And maybe Duncan is too. And this whole ritual we're doing is, and it's a little thing, but sometimes those little words, when people say that's merely ethnic, oh, it's just smells and bells. But to many people, for many of us, that's the core of our practice. So I did have this moment of hurt. I did have this moment of wondering, will I be really welcome on this show? Can I really share, you know,

my full self, like this kind of full expression of Buddhism? And then I listened to your episode with Loretta Ross on calling in, which is just wonderful, a more recent episode. And it was somehow pairing those two together was quite beautiful. So this reminder that yes, sometimes we say things and we don't even recognize the impact that it has on other people, that our intention often is not to offend or hurt or ostracize, but sometimes it happens. And if we can actually begin to share and speak up about those moments, how it lands for other people, then this is a way forward for us. Yeah, I appreciate your honesty. You're definitely welcome on the show. Duncan, do you want to weigh in on any of that? I think Chasing put things so nicely. You know, obviously, I don't have so much experience in the type of communities

Chensing is talking about. I serve a predominantly, you know, Japanese-American, historically, you know, it's been around for a hundred years, celebrating our centenary next year. But so it's a different kind of, you know, sangha. But I do think, Shinseng mentioned something very valuable earlier about like someone like Los Angeles, where all these different groups, you know, it's never happened in Buddhist history that so many different groups are rubbing up against each other. And that is something beautiful about and distinctive to, I think, American Buddhism. and distinctive to, I think, American Buddhism.

And so, you know, in my tradition, we have the founder of San Francisco Zen Center. He used to serve, you know, in a historically Japanese-American immigrant temple. And then he also founded this group that was supposed to be wider called San Francisco Zen Center. Same thing with Zen Center of Los Angeles. Originally, Maezumi Roshi, the founder of that, used to serve my temple, the one in Little Tokyo, primarily immigrant temple. So,

you know, American Buddhism is also built by these type of people too. Immigrants like me who came from Japan and to spread the Dharma, and many things have happened since. And one of the things that Suzuki Hoitsuroshi, the son of Suzuki Shunryu, the founder of San Francisco Zen Center and a former abbot of Sokoji Temple, the immigrant temple in Japan town, San Francisco. He said, you know, Asanga is like, the metaphor he gave was like, when you are trying to clean a potato, you can clean one at a time, take the buds off and the dirt off, you know,

or you can put a bunch of potatoes in a bucket and then you kind of like make them rub up against each other and they will become clean that way. And he said, that's Sangha. So, Sangha is the practice of rubbing up against each other. And in America, we have the opportunity to rub up against many different lineages and many of the wisdom traditions, perspectives, many of the practices of compassion that all of our lineages bring to America. And when we kind of rub up against each other, I feel like something special happens. And that's, I think, one of the things that, as Shinsing was saying, we don't have to be siloed out, that we can rub up against each other and learn from each other. Let me see if I can get some advice from you guys back to this question of how I can do a better job. Well, first of all, the term smells and bells, I think I picked that up be reluctant about meditation because they think it's going to pull them into a religion, either one that's contrary to their pre-existing religion, or they're an atheist or an agnostic and don't want to be part of a religion. And I've been working sometimes, skillfully sometimes not, to position the practice as

something that can be secular and simple and scientifically validated. Of course, I also, you know, try to thread the needle because I consider myself a Buddhist. So it's a little bit tricky and I haven't always done a good job. But my goal is to position the practice of meditation so that more people do the thing, because more people then would be happy, more people would be saner, and less likely to be jerks. And hopefully that scales to some sort of meaningful impact. And yet, I don't want to disparage people or to erase entire cultures who wouldn't have this practice were it not for... I was actually telling my son today, who's six, that the Buddha had a son. And he said, oh, yeah, was that guy American? And I was like, no, he lived 2,600 years ago.

There was no America. And he was in a country called India or Nepal. And so, I don't want to erase all that history at the same time. So, anyway, that's a lot of me talking, but I'd be curious to see if you guys have thoughts on a better way for me to position it and a better way for folks who practice meditation to think about these practices within a historical context. I guess one of the things I would say to that is that meditation, at least from a Buddhist angle, I think happens in context. So, you mentioned history, but there's other contexts, such as ethics, such as ritual. In a way, meditation is a kind of ritual, if we put it in a certain kind of frame,

you keep on coming back to the breath. It's repetitious. There's a certain form, and it's a kind of ritual. And we have larger rituals within which, for example, ethics play a role so that it could be about concentration, it could be about insight, but it also could be about loving kindness, like metta meditation. And so, to me, if it becomes completely without context, that's when, let's say, a military group could say, for our snipers and sharpshooters, we need to have them stabilize their breath practice so that, you know, they can kill people more efficiently. Or I think there are ways in which it gets divorced from the kind of ethical context in which the tradition has placed it. And so I would just want to kind of always remind us that meditation, it's not just about you. You know, like we say in my tradition,

like to study the Buddha way is to study the self. The next line is to study the self is to forget the self. And the last line is to forget the self is to be actualized by the 10,000 things. And it has to do with this idea that, yes, it's about self-study, understanding yourself deeper. That's the insight. That's, you know, and you do that through concentration. You do that through insight, it's about self-study, understanding yourself deeper. That's the insight.

And you do that through concentration. You do that through insight, etc. But then the ultimate purpose of that, as you were saying, is to make you happy. And how do you do that? You can't become happy if you don't recognize we're interlinked. And that's what being actualized by 10,000 things means. We are living in community. That's the ethics. And so, I would kind of put it in that kind of framework, that we live in Sangha in community. That's why that word, it's not just the Buddha, it's not just the Dharma, but we have community and how we relate to each other appropriately, ethics, for a reason, the Buddha put that there as a third wing of what we do for a reason. And so, that's when I feel like if it just becomes like this kind of inner journey

slash how to become more efficient and effective in X, Y, or Z, maybe that's a good medicine to start with, but the Buddha had other more deeper medicines too. And we might as well become exposed to that too. This would be my take on it. Yeah, I think that's great advice. I mean, Dan, you have such a broad audience. So I think there are both people who will be welcomed in by a kind of more secularized form of mindfulness, but I think there are also people who are interested in going deeper and learning more and learning more of these different perspectives. So for me, I think it's so important to talk about meditation, talk about Buddhism in these kind of more culturally engaged ways, in these more intersectional ways, because I think actually that's meeting people where they're

at in this day and time. People are thinking so much about issues of race, but also how that intersects with class, with gender, with sexuality, lineage, language, and so on and so forth, right? I think maybe a decade ago or two decades ago, it seemed to me there was much more reluctance to even bring these issues up in Buddhist circles, especially maybe these issues up in Buddhist circles, especially, you know, maybe predominantly white convert spaces, because sometimes the language is, oh, that's not really Buddhist, or we're all one, as, you know, as La Samrianto likes to say, like, who's one are we talking about here? So I think that trying to, you know, find common ground, but something that's grounded in our actual particularities so that for Asian Americans, for example, who are entering these spaces, and some of us did

not grow up as Buddhists, we don't feel like we have to discard our heritage in order to be part of this, or we can feel some acknowledgement at the very least of the roots of Buddhism and also the roots of modern mindfulness very much shaped by players in Asia. So there is this way in which we're very complexly interlinked and making spaces to have these more nuanced conversations, I think can actually be very, very healing for people and can strengthen their practice. There was a book that I read some of, and I think you just made an allusion to it, There was a book that I read some of, and I think you just made an allusion to it, about the sort of roots of modern mindfulness and about the Burmese teachers who taught many of the previously mentioned Americans who came back and started teaching other Americans. And so, yes, learning this history is, it just adds, I'll just speak for myself, it's really enriched my understanding of the practice. I started at the kind of very sharp edge of the self-interest spear where like, you know, I just want to be less of a

jerk to myself and others, and I want to be less stressed. And so, and I wanted the scientifically validated kind of meditation. I didn't want to have anything to do be less stressed. And so I, and I wanted the scientifically validated kind of meditation. I didn't want to have anything to do with the religion. And then I got, I saw the benefits of that. I started to meet some of the teachers and read more about them and saw, and saw that they had trained in Asia and who were their teachers. And the more I learned about the roots of it, and then all the way back to the Buddha and, and the Hinduism that preceded him, it just made the whole thing come alive. So that's just a long way of saying I appreciate everything you guys just said. Thank you.

Much more of my conversation with Chen Xing Han and Duncan Duken Williams right after this. Maybe you've stayed in an Airbnb before and thought to yourself, this actually seems pretty doable. Maybe my place could be an Airbnb. It could be as simple as starting with a spare room or your whole place when you're away. You could be sitting on an Airbnb and not even know it. I personally love Airbnbs. My friend Glenn and I just rented an Airbnb in Fort Lauderdale. We're going to bring our families down to see Inter-Miami play some soccer. Glenn and I both have boys. Our boys really want to see Messi play.

So anyway, I'm really looking forward to all staying in the same place instead of being in hotels where we maybe run into each other once in a while. I love the intimacy of all being in the same house. It's really cool. Maybe you're planning a ski getaway this winter or you've decided to go someplace warm. While you're away, you could Airbnb your home and make some extra money toward the trip. It's a smart and simple way

to use what you already have. Whether you could use extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun, your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca. When you visit Audible, Find out how much at Airbnb.ca slash host. When you visit Audible, there are endless ways to ignite your imagination.

With over 750,000 titles, including bestsellers, there's a listen for every type of listener. Discover all the best in audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, featuring authentic Canadian voices and celebrity talent. Check out Audible Canadian Originals, including The Downloaded, a sci-fi adventure featuring Brendan Fraser and Luke Kirby. A first listen is waiting for you when you start your free trial at audible.ca. Duncan, on the subject of the, Chen Zhen just talked about it, the increasingly robust discussion within Buddhist communities about the issue of the notion of karma in Buddhism and the very controversial and currently hotly debated notion of reparations. Right. You know, I came across this phrase, karma of nations, when I was doing research for my book, American Sutra. There was a Buddhist priest who was arrested right after Pearl Harbor,

taken to one of these internment camps. And he was riding the train, kind of disillusioned. He had been an immigrant Buddhist priest from Japan and picked up by the FBI. And he had had this dream of, you know, a beautiful American kind of future where religious freedom was a part of it. And so, he was disillusioned going to this internment camp where he met this African-American train porter and started talking

to him and getting some kind of sense of like, oh, we're not the only, like, there's a longer history in America of peoples who've been affected by this kind of targeting based on race or religion. And when he returned back to California, coming out of one of these camps in Texas after the war, and he had to choose, you know, it was a segregated train, and he had to choose which, is he going to go in the white section or the black? He chose to go in the black section because of that conversation he had. the white section or the black section. He chose to go in the black section because of that conversation he had. And that's when he reflected on like, oh, different communities, including not only black communities but white communities, have had to inherit what their ancestors did,

right? That karma is not just an individual privatized thing of like action here, reaction there, action here, consequence there, but that this stuff comes in seeds, right? That either get nurtured or not nurtured or exacerbated or dealt with or not dealt with. And so we inherit in any moment, I think, all of this prior history. And it affects all of us, not just Black Americans. Although I've been doing this work about Black reparations and trying to support this current bill in Congress called HR40 and mobilizing the Buddhist community, the Japanese American community, things like that, to show some solidarity.

Because Japanese Americans, when they went to camp back in 1988, Ronald Reagan signed a reparations bill for Japanese Americans called the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. And so it was the only successful federal legislation that acknowledged that kind of racial-based hurt and then a letter of apology and a kind of reparation that came with that. And so, I think things from a Buddhist perspective, if we don't deal with certain kind of hurts in our generation, it just gets passed on. It's in our minds, it's in our bodies, and it's in our white bodies, our Asian American bodies, our black bodies, and it just gets passed on. It's in our minds, it's in our bodies, and it's in our white bodies, our Asian American bodies, our Black bodies, and it just gets passed on. And what is our responsibility in our generation to try to handle some of these things? And to me, reparations is just a matter of acknowledgement, truth-telling, and human honor and dignity. And that's something that I feel like as a Buddhist priest, I don't like to take political partisan sides on anything. But to me,

that's just a big issue about who we are as Americans. And are we willing to stand up to all of this stuff that's happened in the past and kind of face it directly and try to heal it in its most deepest way to repair deeply. I think, you know, it does come out of the Christian tradition, this word reparation. It's a Catholic masses of reparation for Christ. It's trying to deal with this idea of, you know, there's an original sin, and then Christ repairs that, right? And there's this kind of linkage in American thinking. Martin Luther King used to that gets, you know, collectively transmitted through our generations, that makes sense as a Buddhist. And that makes

sense as something that we might want to acknowledge and repair as a nation. And sometimes it's not just a piece of legislation or policy, you know. It's really about just like friendships and communities and being able to repair things in a very deep way. Because sometimes, you know, you can have civil rights acts and, you know, laws can change. But if people's hearts don't change, that lingers and continues on. So I think that's the wonder of what Buddhism can provide for our country, is that we can do that repair work in a very deep way. So, that invitation is always there to do it. And so, my suggestion is, why not? Let's do our part in our generation.

So, Duncan, staying with you for just a second, if I can, you just are really interested in the notion that original sin doesn't really go down well with Buddhists because the concept, at least in the later schools of Buddhism, is quite the opposite. It's not that we're born sinners. We have what's the term is Buddha nature, that we are essentially good. And maybe there's muck encrusted all over the jewel, but there's still the jewel at the heart of the thing. And it's actually not a thing at all. In the end, it's, you know, it's much more of a process. But just getting back to the jewel part, the Buddha nature part of it, and you talked about changing hearts. In the Buddha, as I understand, to the extent that I have any understanding of Buddhism, the idea is that we can improve. We can get better as it pertains to things like bias and prejudice, what does Buddhism say about whether we can shave down the type of biases and prejudices that would lead to hate speech and hate crimes?

Sometimes I say, if you had to kind of have a quick formula for what is Buddhism, I'd say wisdom times compassion equals freedom. We have insight about the way things really are. That's our wisdom. And we have our feeling that we are interlinked. That's the compassion. And when we do those two things together, we can get the freedom. And so, when we talk about these racial biases or legacies of kind of systems of racism and so on and so forth, one of the Buddha's wonderful messages in the phone, like it's possible. Transformation is possible. That's the kind of good news of Buddhism, right? Transformation is possible.

possible. These patterns and pains and so forth are able, and we have a pathway to kind of move through and move forward that's imbued with wisdom and compassion. So, I believe that we have in our tradition some ways to both acknowledge each other's Buddha nature and kind of come to like, how do we treat each other? Like we're fellow Buddhas, you know? That's our practice. How do we do that? And then also at the same time, acknowledging our brokenness. In Japanese, we call it shoro byoushi,

to be born, to get old, to get ill, and to die. This is something, it doesn't matter how rich you are, poor you are, people go through pain because of all these things. It's just a part of facet of existence. But that we have in the Buddhist tradition something that works at those two registered, right? At the register of pain that can be transformed, but also this register of like, we're not alone. And we are already, in a way, there's nothing to transform.

We're already complete, you know? And we can fall back into our Buddha nature. There's nothing we need to accomplish. So it's that kind of different registers. Sometimes we have to work at the level of, you know, transformation and changing patterns and noticing them even first. But in other times, it's kind of like we can just let go and relax into our Buddha nature.

And when we do that, our interlinked, compassionate nature is just, it's nothing we have to do too much about. At least that's what we somehow have some faith in. Along those lines, Chen Xing, I've heard you describe your work as bodhisattva practice. Can you describe what a bodhisattva is and then say more about how you view your work as being bodhisattva work? Bodhisattva, to begin with, is often thought of as a being who maybe delays their own enlightenment for the enlightenment of others. But I think even in simpler terms, it's just someone who I think wants to work towards the well-being of others and themselves, sees themselves as integrally connected to all beings. connected to all beings. And I think for me, the figure of the Bodhisattva was a big inspiration for me when doing chaplaincy training, training in spiritual care. So I hope the book can be a kind of just form of chaplaincy, maybe a form of spiritual care, because it was actually very

healing for me to write this book. And it was a way in which I think I myself could feel seen and heard just by being mirrored by others, learning from others. And my hope is that the book in its own modest way can start sparking conversations. Sometimes these are uncomfortable conversations, but I also think those uncomfortable conversations are sort of necessary to do that work of transforming the kinds of especially racialized pain that we experience. What did you learn in your work about the importance of this feeling of belonging? I think for a lot of Asian American Buddhists, I could say, even just Asian Americans more generally, there can be a struggle just to find a sense of belonging. When we talk about race in America along the Black and white binary, for example, I think other racial groups feel excluded. I mean, for all the reasons

we mentioned, even at the very beginning of our conversation today, and also in specifically in Buddhist spaces, I think a lot of Asian Americans have found a lot of benefits certainly in mindfulness spaces, but also sometimes moments of pain, right? So a sense of not quite fully belonging. And then also perhaps in majority Asian spaces, Buddhist temples, they may not always understand the languages or understand all of the chants and rituals. And so sometimes there's not this full sense of belonging there either. And for me, through the process of writing this book, I actually saw that if we're connected sometimes by the sense of like not really fully belonging, there's a way in which actually we learn to feel comfortable in a lot of different spaces or comfortable enough in a lot of different spaces that actually perhaps are not belonging can actually be a kind of

unexpected gift. I think for me, it is in the sense that we can then be sort of bridge builders to different communities. And also, I think there's just a natural empathy, I think, for a lot of different communities, especially those who've been marginalized. And so for me, Asian American Buddhist is this identity actually that connects me to a lot of identities that are not Asian American and that are not Buddhist. So just exploring the parameters of that intersection has been very rich, fertile ground for me. I learned something new from every conversation as this book continues on its sort of meandering tour in unexpected places, whether sanghas or bookstores or colleges or high schools. And so that's been a real joy to maybe, in a way, find belonging in not belonging.

We're heading toward the end of our time together i just like to see if either of you has some sort of closing thoughts or areas that you want to explore that i failed to ask about let me start with you duncan sure i i actually want to see if i can try to explore the question you posed to changing about what is what is belonging uh is belonging. I grew up as somebody who was—my mom is Japanese, my dad is from the UK, and being of kind of mixed race and mixed national origin, the idea of like, do I belong in Japan or the UK? You find yourself not quite belonging anywhere oftentimes. And then for me, Buddhism was this kind of beautiful middle path where actually that in-between space is where you find your liberation. So, I feel that in the Buddhist tradition, we have a beautiful way of

belonging in either one kind of community, but also we call jizyu zamai, the freedom of the mind to be able to belong anywhere. And that kind of freedom and finding refuge in wherever you are so that your practice is not necessarily confined to this temple grounds or it can be in a workplace, or anywhere can be your monastery. And anywhere can be the place where you can find that place of refuge and belonging. And so, this is, I think, the wonderful teaching of the Buddhist tradition about where we can

truly feel at home. And this is why I think Chen Seng Han's book, Be the Refuge, is such a wonderful title. It's not just about you need to find it somewhere else. You can yourself embody what it means to be that refuge. So I would encourage people to go and check out Chen Seng's book. And of course, I would very much encourage people to read Duncan's book as well, American Sutra.

And yeah, I think for me, Be the Refuge, for those who've read the book, know that that very title is indebted to a very dear friend who passed away in 2017 of cancer. But for me, it was this broadening invitation. What does it mean to be the refuge for ourselves, for our loved ones, for all beings? That looks different in different moments. Sometimes that looks like doing our seated meditation practices, but sometimes that looks like, you know, cooking a meal for someone,

enjoying it with them, or having a cup of tea together and maybe having a sort of difficult conversation, but deciding that I care enough about this friendship, about this relationship to have that conversation. So it's sort of an imitation. It's a challenge. It's a reminder that we as human beings have so much creativity to figure out what it looks like to build refuge together. Well, I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you both for having it with me. Wonderful, Dan.

I think we covered quite a lot of ground today. So thank you. Good. Thank you. Chen Xing as well. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dan. It's been a pleasure. Big thanks to Chen Xing and Duncan. Really appreciate them coming on at this tough moment in our history. Before I let you go, I do want to share two items of business. First, do you want to teach mindfulness to teenagers? If you're looking to carve your own path and share this practice in a way that feels real to you and relevant in today's topsy-turvy world, our friends at IBME are accepting applications for their mindfulness teacher training program. It's catered towards working with teens and young adults. The last round of applications are due on May 15th.

Scholarships are available. If you want some information to apply, check out ibme.com slash teacher training. We'll put a link, of course, in the show notes. A second item is, as you may know, May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Over the past year, mental health professionals have not only had to cope with the effects of the pandemic in their own lives, but also to help their clients navigate this very difficult world. We want to thank all the people doing this work and recognize the mental health professionals and offer up some support from our end. So if you fall into the category of a mental health professional and you want a year's free access to our app, where we've got hundreds of meditations and other resources, go to

10percent.com slash mental health. And again, thank you. Speaking of thanks, I want to thank the folks who worked so hard to make this show. Samuel Johns, DJ Kashmir, Kim Baikama, Maria Wirtel, and Jen Plant. We get our audio engineering done by Ultraviolet Audio. As always, a big shout out to my ABC News comrades, Ryan Kessler and Josh Kohan. And we will see you on Wednesday for Mushim Ikeda, who is incredibly wise and also very, very funny. And she's going to talk about anger and uncertainty and self-loathing. That's coming up on Wednesday. He's going to talk about anger and uncertainty and self-loathing.

That's coming up on Wednesday. If you like 10% Happier, and I hope you do, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. I'm hiring, but where can I find potential candidates? Hundreds of thousands of Canadians with disabilities are ready and eager to work. Help create an inclusive workplace that benefits everyone. Find the tools and resources to help you hire persons with disabilities at Canada.ca slash right here. A message from the Government of Canada.

When I say the word history, what do you think about? Horses and buggies and dust and a bunch of white dudes riding their horses and buggies in the dust. Facts. Definitely not enough melanin on all those history books. But we are about to flip the script on all of that. From Wondery, this is Black History For Real. Together we'll weave

Black History's most overlooked figures back into the rightful place in American culture and all over the world. Follow Black History For Real on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.