For decades, Myanmar, also known as Burma, was a refuge and resource for those seeking the Buddha’s teachings, including many of the most prominent and influential Western teachers of the mindfulness movement. Even beyond teachers of mindfulness, though, the effects of Burmese mindfulness teachings have been felt throughout the entire Western Buddhist world, in every tradition, and beyond the Buddhist world as well. Given this debt of gratitude and these threads of interconnection, how should we respond to events in Myanmar now? Although the country has long suffered from severe poverty, ethnic divisions that are a lingering result of colonialism, and the fascist rule of generals, events in recent years have been nothing short of a descent into horror. 

Watching now, one can only say, “cry the beloved country.” In February 2021, the military seized power in Myanmar, returning it to dictatorial rule by the junta, who have held power off and on since 1962. The modest progress toward democracy that had been made with the election, and subsequent parliamentary leadership, of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in 2015 collapsed, sparking nationwide protests. Journalists and activists were jailed and often sentenced to hard labor. Civil unrest was crushed with violent countermeasures, including the assault, imprisonment, and murder of protesters by the junta. The numbers are staggering: 2,519 people have been killed and 16,275 people arrested, and until recently, 12,962 were still detained by the military, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. In recent weeks, 6,000 prisoners were granted amnesty and released, including some political prisoners like writer Maung Thar Cho, who is known for his satirical pieces criticizing the Myanmar military before the coup, and Shwe Nyawa Sayadaw, an antiregime Buddhist monk. This is surely cold comfort to those opposing the regime given the immediate rearrest of Saw Phoe Kwar, a Karen peace activist and singer, after his release last week. 

Fighting between the Myanmar junta and resistance groups, including the People’s Defense Force (PDF), rages on, with the PDF claiming the deaths of 45 junta members recently. On the other side, the junta have been guilty of many attacks on civilians as well as fighters. The popular Burmese singer Aurali Lahpai was performing onstage in northern Myanmar in October when three military jets flew overhead and bombed the outdoor concert. One bomb struck near the main stage, killing Lahpai and several others in the middle of a song. At least eighty were killed in the attack, according to emergency workers. In two separate attacks in recent months, children’s schools were brutally targeted by the junta, resulting in the deaths of several children, in one case as a result of gunfire from helicopter-mounted guns. 

The members of the National League for Democracy (NLD), the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, have largely been disempowered or jailed, including the onetime symbol of democratic rule herself, who was sentenced to a total of twenty-six years in prison on corruption charges, even for the supposed crime of having faked her own democratic election. 

The Bamar Buddhist majority in Myanmar, finding themselves again in the barrels of the government supposedly sworn to protect them, has been faced with the reality that the military junta is neither interested in Bamar identity nor Buddhism, but only in power. The junta, in recent years, has wielded specious claims to be defending Buddhism as a justification for disempowering Myanmar’s non-Buddhist tribal minorities. In some cases, members of the Buddhist sangha have been complicit, or even openly supportive, in these claims. 

Khin Mai Aung, a Burmese writer and lawyer in New York City, is one of many Burmese around the world who would like to see an end to ethnic division and fascist rule in the country. Aung says the feeling among Burmese is now growing that the mask has slipped, revealing that they are not motivated by even a perverse interpretation of Buddhism, but are simply cynical through and through. “The murder of Buddhist protesters, and even children, has made it clear in the eyes of many that their true enemy is anyone not themselves. Both Bamar Buddhists and non-Bamar, non-Buddhist minorities are engaged in resisting the government. I wouldn’t be overly optimistic about this given the history of ethnic divisions in Burma, but it does hold out a glimmer of hope.” 

What has become of the Rohingya, victims of a military offensive that sent hundreds of thousands of them across the border into Bangladesh and that many have called outright genocide? The situation in Rakhine has deteriorated, with rising tension between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army, another armed group fighting for self-determination for ethnic minorities in the state, which has left the Rohingya caught between the two. Last November, there were reports of mass arrests of Rohingya who had tried to leave Rakhine, with the military handing out more severe sentences against those convicted. Meanwhile, the successful campaign by the junta to enlist the Bamar Buddhist majority against the Rohingya Muslims has alienated many in the West.

What Can We Do? 

“On one, obvious level,” says Maung Zarni, a Burmese dissident in exile who is now a UK-based human rights activist and a founding architect of the Free Rohingya Coalition, “one can support humanitarian efforts to bring aid to the Rohingya and others impacted by the violence of the regime.” To that end, we can note, Buddhist Global Relief is collecting donations, as well as recommending people give to the Buddhist Humanitarian Project, which was recently formed with the express purpose of giving aid to the Rohingya. “This is important and necessary,” continues Zarni. “On another level, one can support pro-democratic, pro-peace elements in Burma and abroad.” 

Joah McGee, a longtime popular podcaster on religion, culture, and politics in Burma/Myanmar, says “Myanmar is a place of contradictions, yet people sometimes see it in black-and-white terms. The monks are good or the monks are bad; the people are devout Buddhists living in enviable simplicity or they are ignorant racist peasants who don’t understand real Buddhism. The reality is more complicated.” 

In addition to working to advance accurate information about Myanmar into the global conversation, McGee is the founder of Better Burma, which provides humanitarian aid and “supports the Burmese people in their struggle for freedom.” 

McGee says that the junta exercises strict control over the flow of all goods in Myanmar and actively prevents humanitarian aid of any kind. “We have had to find ways to connect to clandestine local networks which deliver food, medicine, and other aid. Burmese people trying to deliver rice or medicine have to put spotters on the roads and try to evade the junta.” 

Hozan Alan Senauke, who oversees the network of engaged Buddhists called the Clear View Project, points to the importance of peacebuilding, the support of civil society, and training for democracy. Senauke says that the time for Western organizers acting as leaders in Myanmar has passed, but there are now local, indigenous movements that are doing excellent work, like the Spirit in Education Movement of Sulak Sivaraksa. 

Yet, Zarni notes, focusing on the situation inside Myanmar is not enough. “The crisis in Burma is not merely a local crisis,” he says. “China is involved, Russia is involved, and other governments like the UK, America, and Israel are involved because they are complicit, or because they have business interests in Burma, or are selling them arms, or because they don’t want to risk conflict with China, who supports the regime. We shouldn’t forget that Rakhine state, where the Rohingya have been driven out of, is on valuable coastal property which local and international actors are interested in for monetary reasons.” 

As Zarni points out, the Burmese crisis is finally a global crisis. As long as governments around the world fail to cooperate in the spread of true democracy, and as long as wealth inequality and dirty resource extraction rule the day, it will be very difficult to bring healing to Burma and other countries in the throes of poverty and fascism.

Myanmar’s crisis is not an isolated one; it is interdependent with the global political ecology. As with so many of the crises we face, solving them will require nothing short of the bodhisattva activity of healing the world. Our activities for Burma, then, shouldn’t be limited to sending money to refugees—as vital as that is—but should also include taking whatever opportunities we can to strengthen democracy, build wealth equality, and encourage responsible energy practices both at home and around the world. This may seem a daunting task, but as the Zen bodhisattva vow—“beings are numberless, I vow to save them all”—teaches us, the impossibility of a task is no reason not to do it.

The post Two Years after the Coup appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

To tell the truth, I have no idea which element of my hyphenated identity as a Buddhist practitioner and a scholar of comparative religions is more prominent in my conviction that religious diversity, which also includes indifference to organized religions, is simply a normal, natural aspect of life. Yet I was brought up to think that it was a huge problem. At some point, fairly early in my life, it just became ludicrous to me to think that of all the people on earth, only a relatively small group of very conservative German Lutherans had their heads on straight and had all the correct answers to every difficult problem or existential issue. Truly, how much sense could that make! I did not have many resources with which to come to that conclusion—very little lived experience encountering much diversity, no like-thinking friends or mentors, and few books or other intellectual stimulation. But it just didn’t make sense to think that the group into which I was born was so superior to every other group on earth, or that other people didn’t feel affection for their own lifeways, whatever they might be. Given the ease with which I thought past the indoctrination I was given, I am somewhat impatient with people who buy into religious chauvinism—or chauvinisms of any kind.

John Hick is fond of talking about adopting a pluralist outlook regarding religious diversity as a Copernican revolution regarding religion that is necessary in our time. While I basically accept his idea, I would add that overcoming our discomfort with that diversity is critical in that Copernican revolution required for religious believers at this time. There are two parts to my claim. The first is that religious diversity is a fact, and it is also a fact that religious diversity is here to stay. There simply are no grounds to dispute those facts. The second part of my claim is that we need to find the resources and means to become comfortable with and untroubled by the fact of that diversity.

Related: One Way to Nirvana 

The sun does not revolve around the earth, and one’s own religion cannot be declared the One True Faith. These are equivalent statements, of equal obviousness and clarity, no matter what previous religious dogmas may have declared. It is as useless to hang on to the dogma that one’s own religion is the best because that is what one was previously taught as it would be to hang on to the dogma that the sun literally rises and sets because it appears to and because the Bible seems to say so. Religions always get into the most trouble when their dogmas lead them to deny facts on the basis of authority; but dogmas die slowly. I was amazed in the fall of 2011 to discover that some Jain pundits still declare that the earth is flat because that’s what Jain scriptures state. When empirical evidence is presented to them, they respond that some day science will catch up with their scriptures.

Exclusive truth claims and religious diversity are mutually exclusive; they cannot survive together in any harmonious, peaceful, and respectful way. Surviving religious diversity involves coming to a deep and profound realization that religious diversity is not a mistake or a problem. It does not have to be overcome, and there is no need to suggest that other traditions may have partial truth or to try to find some deeper, overarching or underlying truth that encompasses the many religious traditions. To accept this truth often requires profound inner adjustments, but they are not very hard to make in the face of obvious evidence.

What is such incontrovertible evidence regarding the naturalness of religious diversity? From the comparative study of religion, we learn that, no matter where or when we look in the history of humanity, people have devised a great variety of religious practices and beliefs. This diversity is both internal and external. That is to say, not only are there many religions around the world; each religion also contains a great deal of internal diversity. Even those religions that proclaim they are the One True Faith are internally very diverse. How could they imagine that someday there will be one universal global religion to which all people will adhere when they cannot even secure internal agreement about their own religion’s essentials? Why should we expect that in the future, such diversity would disappear and the religious outlook of one group of people would prevail over all others? That has the same cogency as expecting that most people would give up their native tongue to adopt another language for the sake of an ability to communicate universally. And, as I have argued in the past, having a universal language would actually be very helpful and make communication easier, whereas having a universal, common religion would not significantly improve anything. In fact, it would rob us of a lot of interesting religious and spiritual alternatives, a lot of material that is good to think with, in the felicitous phrasing of anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. It would be helpful if we could all talk about all those alternatives in a language we could all understand. It does not seem that we are likely to have that common language anytime soon. But diminishing the number of religious alternatives, per the vision of religious exclusivists, does nothing to enrich our human community.

Related: Dialogue Across Difference

However, the vast variety of data available from the cross-cultural comparative study of religion does not provide theologically the incontrovertible proof regarding the normality and naturalness of religious diversity that I am seeking. Those data are simply a fascinating kaleidoscope. They present us with facts but say little about how to value those facts. There would seem to be an obvious, simple theological justification for religious diversity available to theists and monotheists. I used to suggest to my Christian and theistic students that the deity they believed in had obviously created a world in which religious diversity rather than uniformity prevailed. One would think that for those to whom belief in a creator deity is important, the manifest world that the deity had created would be acceptable. But my students objected to that logic, saying they knew that God wanted them to stamp out religious diversity. Factual information is often unconvincing to those with settled theological opinions. Unfortunately for them, one of the most famous monotheistic justifications of religious diversity was from the wrong revealed scripture, so it didn’t matter to them. The Quran states:

To every one of you we have appointed a [sacred] law and a course to follow. For, had God so wished, He would have made you all one community. Rather He wished to try you by means of what He had given you; who among you is of the best action. Compete therefore with one another as if in a race in the performance of good deeds. To God shall be your return, and He will inform you concerning the things in which you had differed. (Q. 5:48)

Take out the theistic language, and this advice is not too different from what I propose.

On the other hand, what I propose is quite different from what the Quran says in one significant way; for we need to locate the rationale and need for religious diversity, not in what unseen and unknowable metaphysical entities such as deities might decree, but in how human consciousness operates. If we are to speak of Copernican revolutions in how we view religious diversity, I would suggest that we shift our focus from how we think of God and instead put much more emphasis in thinking about how and why we construct and accept the theologies we do. In other words, shift the gaze from theology to spirituality. Shift from looking to something external, even an external as abstract as Ultimate Reality, as the source of our religious ideas. Instead look to our own quest for meaning and coherence. As I am fond of telling my follow Buddhists who want to believe in strange, nonhuman origins for some of their texts, sacred books do not fall from some other world into our sphere, neatly bound between two covers. They are the products of cultural evolution and are accepted only because they seem coherent and helpful to humans. For those who are or want to remain theists, such a move does not jeopardize their belief system. Belief in an external deity is such an attractive alternative that most people prefer it to nontheism. In fact, in some forms of Buddhism, it can be hard to detect how Buddhists have remained true to the nontheistic origins, though more sophisticated exegesis of such forms of Buddhism can always rescue a nontheistic core. However, thinking there could be an unmediated text, creed, or religious practice—something independent of human agency—is not only a strange idea but also an idea that is devastating to flourishing with religious diversity.

Moving from theology to spirituality and human consciousness would be a realistic and very helpful move. It is also a typical nontheistic and Buddhist move. According to Buddhism, human minds create our worlds, both their problems and their possibilities. This is probably the biggest difference in the claims made by theistic and nontheistic religious, though a nontheist Buddhist would argue that theistic religions are actually created by their adherents, not by the deities they worship. (Interesting is that both Buddhists and students of comparative religions agree on the point that religions are products of human history and culture, not of direct divine intervention into history.) We have created our problems, and only we can solve them. That becomes something of a bottom line for Buddhists. We need to train our minds to be less attached, less mistaken, less shortsighted, and, most of all, less self-centered. After all, discomfort with religious others is a form of self-centeredness.

How do we take that perspective into solving the “problem” of religious diversity? First, I would argue that religious diversity exists because it is psychologically and spiritually impossible for all human beings to follow one theological outlook or spiritual path. We are not built that way. That’s just not how we are. Religious diversity, which is inevitable, natural, and normal, flows from our different spiritual and psychological inclinations. Therefore, inevitably, we will encounter religious others. Second, I would argue that the acid test of a religion’s worth lies with what kind of tools it provides its adherents for coping gracefully and kindly with their worlds and the other beings who inhabit them. Discomfort with religious diversity and the wish to abolish it is a psychological and spiritual deficiency arising in an untrained human mind, a mind that does not know how to relax and be at ease with what is, with things as they are, as Buddhists like to say. Solving the “problem” of religious diversity has much more to do with human beings’ attitudes toward one another than with somehow adjudicating their rather different theological and metaphysical views. Thus, I am suggesting that we should start, not with religious creeds and questions about religions or metaphysical truth, but with questions about how people are—different from one another—and about how well religions function to help them live with how they are.

♦

From Religious Diversity, What’s the Problem? Buddhist Advice for Flourishing with Religious Diversity, by Rita M. Gross. Reprinted with permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers. 

[This article was first published in 2015.]

The post The “Problem” of Religious Diversity appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The Buddhist monastery of Nalanda was founded in northeast India in the early 5th century. Over time it became the premier institution of higher learning in Asia and, much like leading universities today, had a world-renowned faculty working on the cutting edge of the theoretical sciences and a student body drawn from across the Buddhist world. This prestige also brought with it ample gifts from the rich and powerful. At its height Nalanda had an extensive faculty teaching a diverse student body of about 3,000 on a beautiful campus composed of numerous cloisters with lofty spires that “resembled the snowy peaks of Mount Sumeru.” Then, suddenly, the serenity of this Buddhist institution was shattered. In the fall of 1202, Muslim soldiers on horses rode in and hacked down teachers and students where they stood. The once majestic buildings were left in ruins: the savagery was so great it signaled the end of Buddhism in India.

This powerful story has been told countless times. Today it is ubiquitous, appearing in everything from scholarly mono- graphs to travel brochures. Indeed, by its sheer pervasiveness, this one episode has in many ways come to encapsulate and symbolize the entire 1,300-year history of Buddhist-Muslim interaction. As a result, anytime the topic of Buddhism and Islam is mentioned it almost invariably revolves around the Muslim destruction of the dharma.

This is problematic for many reasons, not the least being that the story of Nalanda is not true. For example, not only did local Buddhist rulers make deals with the new Muslim overlords and thus stay in power, but Nalanda itself carried on as a functioning institution of Buddhist education for another century. We also know that Chinese monks continued to travel to India and obtain Buddhist texts in the late 14th century. In fact, contrary to the standard idea promoted by the story that Nalanda’s destruction signaled the death of Buddhism, the historical evidence makes clear that the dharma survived in India until at least the 17th century. In other words, Buddhists and Muslims lived together on the Asian subcontinent for almost a thousand years.

Why are these facts not better known? There are numerous possible explanations, ranging from Buddhist prophecies of the decline of the dharma to the problems of contemporary scholarship. However, I find it most fruitful to begin with the power of story. As noted above, the destruction of Nalanda offers us a clear-cut narrative, with good guys and bad. It avoids entirely the complex shades of gray that most often color the messy fabric of history. And this is certainly what the Buddhist historians who cobbled together this story wanted to do as they tried to make sense of the dharma’s demise in India. Rather than explore the complex economic, environmental, political, and religious history of India, or even Buddhism’s institutional problems, it was clearly much easier to simply blame the Muslims.

In this regard the Buddhists established a precedent that was subsequently to drive South Asian history. The British, for example, used the same claims established by Buddhists concerning Muslim barbarity and misrule to justify the introduction of their supposedly more humane and rational form of colonial rule. Indeed, the story of Nalanda was a powerful component of imperial propaganda. In turn, even as Indian nationalists questioned the moral righteousness and glory of the British Raj, they nevertheless maintained the historical model of blaming the Muslims. The humiliating imposition of colonial rule was thus not the result of Indian weakness per se, but rather the fault of the morally inferior, effeminate, and voluptuous Mughals. It is a view that is readily perpetuated in the rhetoric of today’s Hindu nationalists who want to recreate some imagined Hindu utopia by eradicating all traces of Islam in India, by violence if necessary.

This pervasive anti-Muslim view is, of course, not unique to medieval Buddhist and contemporary Hindu historiography. It has also been a part of the Jewish and Christian traditions ever since Muhammad received what Muslims regard as God’s final revelation through the angel Gabriel in the early 7th century. Many scholars have argued in addition that the modern Western construction of itself as the paragon of righteousness was often done at the expense of Islam. Yet even though such “orientalism” has been roundly critiqued by decades of scholarship, these earlier views persist. In fact, the attempts by contemporary scholars and museum curators to overturn such stereotypes by means of books and lavish museum exhibits highlighting Muslim tolerance and periods of Islamic exchange with Christian Europe have been unable to diminish the West’s orientalist fear. Today’s highly charged environment has further obstructed such a reevaluation, no matter how necessary it may be. If we take into consideration all these disparate strands, it is perhaps not at all surprising that the story of Nalanda and the attendant narrative of Islam destroying Buddhism are so readily accepted by Buddhists in much of Asia and the West. To many they just make sense. Moreover, they fit popular preconceptions about two religious traditions: whereas Buddhism is a good, rational philosophy with post-Enlightenment values, Islam is an inherently violent and irrational religion.

In the popular imagination, there are probably no two traditions more different than Buddhism and Islam. One is synonymous with peace, tranquility, and introspection; the other, with violence, chaos, and blind faith. One conjures up images of Himalayan hermitages and Japanese rock gardens; the other, primitive and dirty villages with men brandishing AK 47s as casually as briefcases. While Buddhism is seen as compatible with a modern mind-set, its teachings even in tune with the most pioneering science, Islam is largely looked upon as backward, its teachings and punishments redolent of the Middle Ages. And yet, just like the whole enterprise of orientalism and the construction of Islam as innately evil, this image of Buddhism as the perfect spirituality for the modern age is equally a Western fantasy, a construction of the 19th century. In fact, it was during those heady days of empire and modernity that Buddhism came to be conceived as a philosophy that could solve all the world’s problems.

Modern Buddhism had many authors, from British colonial officers to Asian nationalists and from German philosophers to Russian Theosophists. All, however, agreed that this tradition shorn of rituals, doctrines, and communal structures was clearly the spiritual philosophy for the age of secular humanism. Such a philosophy was not what Buddhists in Asia actually practiced, of course, but to the modernizers Buddhism’s traditions had lost touch with the true teachings of the Buddha and had instead descended into a morass of ritualism and superstition. It was hardly coincidental that their view dovetailed neatly with Protestant apologetics—namely, that the teachings of Jesus had been deformed by paganism and papism and then redeemed by Martin Luther—as well as with 19th-century debates about Aryans and Semites. It provided a powerful narrative arc and presented Buddhism, seen as the meditative path for individual liberation, as the very antithesis of Islam.

Given the influence of these background elements, it makes sense that so few question the story of Nalanda’s destruction. It is a perfect story, with the requisite and familiar actors playing their appropriate roles. Moreover, in recent years this story has emerged as not simply some event long lost in the fog of history, or an abstract frame with which to map and order the chaotic progression of history, but rather as a concrete reality. In March 2001, it played out on television screens around the world when the Taliban used tanks and antiaircraft weapons to demolish the colossal Buddha statues of Bamiyan.

This wanton act of destruction not only reenacted the story of Nalanda but also reaffirmed Western, and often Buddhist, stereotypes. What better image could one have to represent Buddhist-Muslim history than that group of fanatical Muslim militants senselessly mauling the peaceful and passive representations of the Buddha in the name of Islam? That is invariably how it was presented in the international media. Little thought, however, was given to the possible historical contingencies shaping the event. Perhaps most important, there was little recognition that the statues had until then somehow survived 1,300 years of Muslim rule—another of those inconvenient facts that somehow muddied the story. It was perhaps better not to think about it, since if one did, it opened the door for the whole messy reality of history to come rushing in, which in turn could very well challenge, possibly even shatter, the conventional narrative that has been told over the past millennium.

Over the years, shining a light on the history of Buddhist-Muslim interaction has been a scholarly focus of mine. I have been especially interested in how this history played out along what is often called the Silk Road, or more precisely Inner Asia, the wide swath of territory stretching from Afghanistan to Mongolia.

In the course of studying this often overlooked chapter of human history, I have been intrigued by how both Buddhism and Islam were reshaped by their encounter. A most telling example of this can be found in some of the developments in Mongol Iran, when Muslims started to represent Muhammad in imitation of Buddhist visual culture, and Muslim clerics and Buddhist monks engaged each other in theological discussion that brought to both religious communities new ways of thinking, such as the adoption by Sufis of the Buddhist idea of rebirth. Indeed, it is precisely by exploring the meeting of the two traditions in unconventional spaces—such as Mongol Iran—that many assumptions are challenged. Furthermore, in this way some of the conventional divisions that shape our understanding of the world—such as notions about East and West and the Middle East and East Asia—are revealed as conceptualizations that have often distorted historical realities and our sense of the world, especially our limited views about actual possibilities of cross-cultural understanding.

Far from being diametrically opposite, Buddhism and Islam have much in common, and Buddhist and Muslim thinkers alike have long tried to solve the tensions that arose between their communities. Yet it is clear that the problems of prejudice and suspicion and intolerance still often characterize relations between Islam and Buddhism. Recent theoretical frameworks—such as ecumenicalism, multiculturalism, pluralism, and cosmopolitanism—offer hope, but the fundamental issue of how one should deal with “the other” remains as pressing as ever. How such difference is to be articulated and dealt with is not only an ongoing process but also a fundamental aspect of the human experience. By understanding and challenging the common narrative, which pits the peaceful Buddhists against the militant Muslims—precisely the view used today in Myanmar to justify the genocide by Buddhists of the Rohingya—we can see our way clear to leaving them behind.

In the encounter of Buddhism and Islam there has been and continues to be conflict. But there has also been much else. An appreciation of not only the history of conflict but also that of cross-cultural exchange and understanding overturns the common narrative. And this tells us something about history itself, about its power to reveal truths that have been covered over by prejudice and forgotten because of suspicion of difference.

♦

Adapted from Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road, with permission of the University of Pennsylvania Press.

The post When the Monks Met the Muslims appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The first time I met someone who was impacted by the crisis in Myanmar was in 2012. I work full-time as New York University’s chaplain, and I’m also the director of NYU’s Islamic Center. A young woman had come to one of our prayer services during Ramadan, our month of fasting. Every night for 30 nights, people read a portion of the Quran and keep reading until they’ve completed the whole thing. On one of those nights, I ran into this woman, who was sobbing. It wasn’t like tears you cry when you’re having a spiritual experience—you could tell that she was carrying something with her that was very painful.

I asked her what was going on, and she told me that in her village in Myanmar 14 people had memorized the Quran, and 12 of them had been burned alive; the two who remained didn’t read out loud anymore. It had been a long time, she told me, since she had heard the Quran recited in this way, and that was what was causing her tears. At the time I didn’t have a good understanding of what was going on, so I did some cursory research, and the only real media I could find on the crisis was an article and video by [New York Times columnist] Nicholas Kristoff. Back then it seemed like it wasn’t being spoken about or covered much in the mainstream press. It has picked up since, but considering the numbers involved, this is probably the most devastating conflict that’s taking place in the world right now, and for many years it was also the most overlooked.

Bangladesh opened its doors to the Rohingya in August 2017. When I visited the refugee camps in October, about half a million people had already crossed over, and a thousand more were coming in every day. This is a very large number of people converging on a very small area all at once. Dozens of latrines are being used by people in the tens of thousands, and there is no sewage system. Rainwater mixes with latrine water in which animals bathe. Because there is no steady flow of clean water, the refugees were drinking that water, which had been contaminated with all sorts of things. They had no other choice.

When I spoke to the people in these camps, there wasn’t one who couldn’t tell me that they hadn’t seen loved ones murdered before their eyes—neighbors, friends, family members who had been barricaded into homes and then burned alive. I met people who told me that after their husbands and sons were killed, the Buddhist mobs would come and kill the rest of the villagers by lining them up in rows and slitting their throats, one by one. And then, whether or not the people had already died, they would throw acid on their bodies.

In one of the camps I visited, we were standing on a hill on which you could see into Myanmar. Over the border, a huge cloud of smoke was rising. This was the only time while I was there that there was any commotion in the camps. Throngs of people came to stand near us at the top of the hill in order to see what was taking place; it was clearly bringing back a lot of pain to them, reminding them that they had escaped into safety, while others still in Myanmar were going through what they had gone through.

After their husbands and sons were killed, the Buddhist mobs would come and kill the rest of the villagers by lining them up in rows and slitting their throats, one by one.

When it comes to ethnic cleansing, to genocide, you have to realize that this kind of disdain for another human being’s life doesn’t arise innately. It’s pushed on you from a lot of different channels, all bearing the message that certain people are somehow not worth the same as you. Humanitarian groups working with the displaced within Myanmar are being told that they can’t use the word “Rohingya” if they want to keep distributing goods within the country. Even in Bangladesh, several UK-based groups were told they couldn’t use the word “refugee.” The Myanmar government is controlling the narrative.

When Bangladesh’s border opened up, it had a huge impact on those who saw that they could find a place of safety and move forward. But in reality, what happens from here? A community of a million people is going to require a lot of resources, a lot of infrastructure—schools, hospitals, and so on. Who is going to be responsible for that? And how will the global community respond to the tragedies that are still taking place on the ground?

I don’t think that the situation is beyond repair. It’s just that if you really think about what is killing these people, it’s not the lack of clean water or food or anything of that nature on its own. What’s really killing them is the epidemic of indifference that has afflicted people from all parts of the world.

As told to Emma Varvaloucas

You can donate to Islamic Relief USA’s campaign for the Rohingya at launchgood.com/Aid4Myanmar.

The post Inside the Rohingya Refugee Camps appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Since 2012, Buddhist violence against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar’s Rakhine state has escalated, amounting to what many now are calling genocide. Visiting the squalid refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh, American imam Khalid Latif, University Chaplain at New York University, remarked, “This is probably the most devastating conflict that’s taking place in the world right now, and also the most overlooked” (“Inside the Rohingya Refugee Camps”). The camps house a population approaching one million, over half of whom have fled persecution by the Burmese army since August 2016.

Burmese Buddhist nationalism is driving the violence, and the once high hopes the world held for the democratically elected Aung San Suu Kyi, who has remained largely silent (some would argue, complicit), have evaporated (see Joe Freeman’s “Who Is the Real Aung San Suu Kyi?”). The conflict is driven not only by nationalism but also by the false yet powerful narrative that Muslim violence is responsible for the historical decline of Buddhism in Asia, particularly in its Indian homeland. Orientalist notions of the peace-loving Buddhist and the violent Muslim persist. History tells a different story, however: for over a millennium, Buddhists and Muslims lived peaceably as neighbors in Asia, their relationship perhaps best characterized by their centuries-long cross-cultural exchange along the Silk Road and in Buddhist India itself.

In this issue, Southern Methodist University professor Johan Elverskog offers a long overdue corrective to misconceptions about the historical relationship between Islam and Buddhism (“When the Monks Met the Muslims”). The celebrated 5th century monastic university Nalanda, he notes, carried on for about 100 years after the Mughal invasion, and Buddhism continued in India until at least the 17th century.  While media coverage of the Bamiyan Buddhas destroyed at the beginning of this century focused on Muslim violence, it entirely overlooked the fact that the statues had remained intact under Muslim rule for 1,300 years. It is true, as Elverskog points out, that conflict has been a part of Buddhism’s encounter with Islam, but that has been only part of the story. The history of Buddhist-Muslim relations is largely one of a mutually beneficial exchange that helped to shape and enrich both traditions.

Although it can vary widely in scale, the tendency to stay with the familiar and to be antagonistic toward what is unfamiliar is a constant of delusion, whether we are talking about ethnic rivalry or religious sectarianism. Yet as John Stuart Mill wrote in the mid-19th century, “It is hardly possible to overrate the value . . . of placing human beings in contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar. . . . Such communication has always been, and is peculiarly in the present age, one of the primary sources of progress.”

In this sense, our present age is not so different from Mill’s, and his advice is no less urgent today. As Elverskog concludes, history has the “power to reveal truths that have been covered over by prejudice and forgotten because of suspicion of difference.” Once uncovered, however, difference, instead of creating a cause for suspicion, can foster the sort of exchange that allows cultures to flourish.

The three articles on the crisis in Myanmar that appear in this issue cut through the sort of false narrative we are all so susceptible to. They are a step, however modest, in the right direction.

♦

Correction: Nalanda thrived for about 100 years after the Mughal invasion, not 700 years as this piece previously stated. We apologize for the error. 

The post Cutting Through False Narratives appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The last time I had worn a hijab, a headscarf, on the street was 11 years ago, when I was a practicing public interest attorney in Philadelphia. I’ve worn it for prayers since then, but this time I wore it to go to the grocery store near the small town on the Delaware River where I am raising my two young children. It was several days after our country elected Donald Trump, and I wanted to reassure myself that my world was still full of goodness and light. I wanted to watch others see past what I was wearing on my head. And because my local Trader Joe’s is in true-blue New Jersey, I got what I came for. It’s been important to remember that people are still mostly good and kind.

As with practices in every faith tradition, wearing hijab is meant to clear the excess away, to allow for some surrender of the stuff of this world, and to re-center the essential being-ness that abides in each of us. I have to admit, practice has been difficult for me of late. It’s been hard to find my way to the prayer mat. Everything feels a little off-kilter, and my priorities are not an exception. So while I am far more balanced when I am observing the ritual of prayer for a few minutes five times each day, it’s not been easy to rid myself of the mind chatter or to pull my focus away from the news cycle that always seems more pressing.

But practice is more important than ever. It’s in practice that we, from each of our faith traditions, learn to recognize ourselves in the other and to nourish our own capacities for discernment. And in this era of fake news and a president-elect who contradicts himself with alarming regularity, discernment is critical.

I am an American Muslim, born to Pakistani immigrants. During my childhood, my parents practiced Islam the way that fish swim in water. It was as unstudied as the air they breathed. But I grew up in conflict with the mix of religion and culture that they offered. In time, though, I found the element I had been missing in Sufi Muslim spirituality. I would only later learn that Sufism figured deeply in the original Islamic tradition of my family for generations, as it has for many millions of Muslims around the world. While Sufism is popularly understood to be a mystic branch of Islam, in truth it is not a branch but the very heart of Islam. It is that kernel of light at the heart of faith; the breath of wisdom and understanding without which practice feels empty. It looks like the spinning of the whirling dervish or the sound of zikr (chanting the names of the Divine), but for a devotee, it is ultimately the polishing of the inner self, the spirit.

And so, it is through practice that I am finding a way to both see and survive the ongoing drama of this presidential election. Sometimes, that practice is with the zikr circle to which my family belongs; sometimes it is in the constant test of patience that is parenting my two young children; sometimes it is in the act of prostrating in prayer. And I can see that this spiritual maintenance will be essential in the coming months and years. Before even taking office, Donald Trump has shaped public discourse in America so that it is now acceptable to publicly assert the malevolence of Muslims and the illegitimacy of Islam as a faith.

I once comforted myself that anti-Muslim bigotry was on the margins of our society, along with anti-Semitism and overt racism and misogyny. Both President Barack Obama and President George W. Bush were careful to draw a distinction between the tiny minority of violent extremists who claim Islam as their own and Islam’s 1.6 billion peaceful adherents around the world. I, along with the vast majority of American Muslims, found shelter in the space they created to acknowledge us and our faith.

But that space has narrowed painfully, and American Muslims now ironically find themselves having to defend their humanity and their goodness in a country that was founded on the ideal of religious freedom.

It was just about a year ago that I wrote an open letter on Facebook that began “Dear Non Muslim Allies . . .”, which spoke of the threat presented by Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric and tied it to prescient warnings given to me, in the brief time that I knew him, by the late Herbert Brun, a Jewish composer and professor who fled Nazi Germany at the age of 15. In writing, I wanted to help minimize the effects of a vitriolic election season. I was appalled by the media’s willingness to cover, and the Republican establishment’s willingness to enable, Trump’s anti-Muslim policy proposals. I did not anticipate that my letter, which was initially written to a small, private group of friends, would go viral. And I had no idea that Trump would eventually become the president-elect.

On the night I wrote that letter, I had done some research. I wanted to understand more about the unique position of Muslims in America. I wondered why Professor Brun seemed to single me out from other students—none of them Muslim—with the repeated warning, “Be sure that your passport is in order.” I learned that American Muslims make up a little less than 1 percent of the U.S. adult population, and that this was the approximate proportion of Jews in Germany in 1933. I also learned that American Muslims are mostly concentrated in a handful of large urban areas and in only 10 states, making us, like both the Jewish population of 1930s Germany and the ethnically Japanese population on America’s West Coast in the 1940s, very identifiable and very vulnerable.

During the past year, many journalists and activists have commented upon the alarmingly xenophobic elements of Trump’s campaign platform. Several of these, like deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants and building a wall on the border with Mexico, could not likely be delivered, and could certainly not be delivered efficiently. On the other hand, the registration of non-citizen Muslims may be low-hanging fruit, especially since the regulations implementing the Bush Administration’s National Security Entry-Exit Registration Program program have never been rescinded (though the program itself was suspended in 2011).

Trump’s Cabinet selections suggest that anti-Muslim sentiment will now drive policy at the highest levels of our government. Trump has selected retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn to be his new national security advisor, Kansas Congressman Mike Pompeo to be his C.I.A. director, and Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions to be his attorney general. Each of these men is overtly hostile to Muslims. Flynn has asserted that Islam is an ideology rather than a religion, a distinction that seems aimed at stripping Muslims of the constitutional right to practice their faith freely. He has also called Islam a cancer. Senator Jeff Sessions received awards from two known anti-Muslim extremist organizations, the Center for Security Policy, whose founder has suggested the re-establishment of a House Un-American Activities Committee to vet Muslims, and the David Horowitz Freedom Center, known for advancing the view that mainstream Muslim civic organizations have nefarious intentions. Pompeo, meanwhile, has falsely asserted that Muslim leaders have failed to condemn terrorist acts and that Muslims thereby have collective responsibility for such acts.

The Trump administration’s apparent strategy of creating or grossly exaggerating a threat to consolidate and maintain power has precedent in the most painful chapters of the 20th century. Milton Mayer wrote in his 1955 book, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45:

The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. . . . Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and “crises” and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the “national enemies,” without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us.

But, truthfully, we need only go back as far as the Iraq War to see that national defense is an effective rallying cry in modern America. Still reeling from the attacks of 9/11, many Americans who might otherwise have pointed out Iraq’s lack of culpability for 9/11 or the brutality of bombing vast areas of Afghanistan in the attempt to kill one man were silent. The pressure to fall into line in a show of patriotism was overwhelming. Our best collective defense in the face of such pressure in the future is our moral clarity, our capacity for discernment.

There was a moment in our recent history when I felt that interfaith outreach and education could turn the rising tide of Islamophobia. I did a great deal of that kind of work. There was a time when it seemed worth introducing myself to the least receptive strangers in an effort to demonstrate that Muslims are human, with hearts and hopes and a moral compass more familiar than different to the rest of humanity. I’m afraid that the time for persuasion has passed. It is instead the time to ask my friends of all faiths to simply recognize the humanity of Muslims as they would members of their own faith community.

Likewise, it is my opportunity to turn slightly deeper into the inner life, and to weed out the divisive thinking that resides in my own heart. For this, I return to zikr, both a remembrance of and an inculcation of divine attributes in ourselves: The Merciful, The Just, The Equitable, The Aware, The Watchful, The Witness, The Unifier, The Peace. Many groups have been scapegoated alongside Muslims, and many more will suffer quietly as their healthcare or their disability benefits are rescinded. Unless we all begin by recognizing, with certainty, the humanity of the other, we will fail to be present in the moment that matters.

To that end, there are a great many things that any of us can do in times such as these:

• If you have neighbors who are Muslim or members of other targeted groups, keep an eye out for them. If you’re walking your kids home from the bus stop, invite their kids to walk with you.
• Talk to your kids. They are inevitably picking up on the racism and the sexism pervasive in our political rhetoric and in society since the election. Make sure they know how you feel and talk to them about what they can do when they see bullying or hear hate speech at school.
• Call out hate speech whenever and wherever you hear it—in your living room, at work, with friends, in public, and especially among folks who may not know people who don’t look or love or pray like they do.
• Write op-eds and articles saying that we aren’t a society that scapegoats people on the basis of religion, sexuality, or immigration status and voice your support for tolerance and inclusion in whatever way you can.
• Call your state and local representatives and let them know that you are concerned about your own community or your friends and neighbors. Tell them that discrimination and persecution are unacceptable to you. Tell them you want them to make a public statement that they represent all of their constituents, regardless of race, religion, disability, or sexual orientation.

These are unusual times, to be sure. Now is the moment to recognize that Trump represents a change in our politics not just in degree but in kind. It is a moment that demands what author Masha Gessen calls “moral reasoning,” in which we commit to see and to do what is right, without compromise. This is the moment to return to whichever practice reinforces our moral clarity, so that we do not wake up one day to find it eroded beyond recognition.

The post A Time for Discernment appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

With the year’s end approaching, it’s time to take stock of everything that happened over the past 12 months and dream about what kind of year you’d like 2016 to be.

And letting go. If those two words resonate with you—if you’re holding onto something you’d like to not carry with you through the new year, consider Kevin Griffin’s online course, “Letting Go and Going Forward.”  

And, if you have a holiday break planned, think about taking an hour to watch “The Mindful Revolution,” the Tricycle Film Club’s current feature, which dives into the role of meditation in the corporate world. 

New on Tricycle this week:

Five things Brent R. Oliver, a writer and bartender living in Kentucky, misses about his Hardcore meditation practice. 

Despite the 195-country agreement, was the Paris climate conference too little, too late? Contributing editor Sam Mowe weighs in.  

And here’s what we’re reading at Tricycle:

When I Die: An end-of-life doctor faces his own end (Harper’s Magazine) 

Six ways interfaith partners can stand with Muslims (Saud Inam in the Huffington Post)

How two men served out their prison sentences with help from meditation (Capital Public Radio)

In New York, a Buddhist shrugs off her almost-$10 million penthouse apartment (DNAinfo) 

The post Buddha Buzz: Weekend Reading appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The interviewee has asked us not to use his name or photo in fear of persecution. He is not depicted in the image above. –The Eds. 

Where are you from? I was born in and raised in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ. I still live here.

How old are you? 30.

What spiritual tradition were you raised in? I grew up as a Christian and received a bachelor’s degree in theology and Bible studies from Bethlehem Bible University. I taught Sunday school at the church here for one year and then taught Bible studies there for four years.

What was your path to the dharma? How did you first get interested in it? I came to the dharma through research and studies in religions. Buddha and Jesus Christ have some similar teachings about love, peace, and purity, but when we look at the Old Testament we can see how God asked his people to kill others to obtain land. And we can also see violence in the Quran. So this led me to search for other truths and through that I began to study Buddhism. Then I saw the movie The Life of Buddha and I began to search and study more about the Buddha, Buddhist history, and Buddhist philosophy.

What kind of access to the dharma is there in Bethlehem? All of my studies are from the Internet; the first Buddhist text I ever read online was about karma. I don’t have any books.

Unfortunately, what’s available about Buddhism in Bethlehem is unreliable, because there is a lack of teachers and monks here. Some teachers come to Tel Aviv or the Galilee but I am not allowed to go because I am Palestinian. How can we hear the teachings without a teacher? It’s not easy for people to find the dharma.

Do you want to stay there? Do you have a vision of where your study might lead? I want to be ordained as a monk and stay in Palestine as a Buddhist teacher to spread the teachings of the Buddha. We Buddhists have the responsibility to spread these teachings and allow people a way to get to know the truth, and not just from what they hear from other Muslims and Christians who often tarnish the image of Buddhism.

What’s it like there for spiritual seekers? To be a Buddhist in Bethlehem is something very unusual. Because a lot of people here do not have any knowledge of Buddhism, they all look at me in a different way.

Which spiritual guides or teachers inspire you? Do any come to Bethlehem? I don’t think any Buddhist teachers have come here, so there are none to inspire me.

What do your family and friends think about your pursuits? At first I faced problems and some persecution but when I explained and showed what I knew of the teachings they accepted my thoughts. But I lost some friends and my job as well.

What dharma books do you like to read? It is very hard for me to find books. I read mostly e-books online, in English. In particular, I’ve read Geshe Kelsang’s How to Solve Our Human Problems and Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche’s What Makes You Not a Buddhist. I think we must offer Arabic translations of these books, for people who have newly come to Buddhism. I want to help translate but I can’t do it alone—I need to work with a professional translator.

What are your aspirations? Dreams? My dream is to share the teachings of Buddhism: love, tolerance, generosity, and nonattachment to riches and luxury. And ultimately I would like to build a Center for Buddhist Studies and a youth center in Palestine to promote the love of Buddhism to others.

I hope that this interview can show the importance of working in the Arab countries. In war there is rape and stealing, which some people consider their right, as the so-called “spoils of war.” This causes human suffering, as we can see today in Gaza, Syria, and Iraq. But the teachings of the Buddha discourage this type of behavior, so we must work here more. We have encountered problems because the community sees Buddhism as a wrong religion.

Do you think there can be peace in the Middle East? Peace comes from inside. If people change from inside, there can be peace.

 —Noa Jones

The post No Teachers Come Here appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Buddhist radicalism is on the rise in countries like Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Since 2012, both countries have witnessed severe violence against their Muslim minorities. Attacks take place in an atmosphere of strong anti-Muslim rhetoric put forward by certain monk-led nationalist groups, and the (largely unknown) orchestrators and perpetrators of these attacks operate with impunity.

What we are witnessing now is a new form of Buddhist revivalism similar to those seen in both countries during their colonial and early independence periods. But in the sense that Buddhist radical groups in Myanmar and Sri Lanka see their own challenges not only from a local point of view, but also understand it within regional—even global—frameworks, this new Buddhist radicalism is transnational.

Sharing with its prior manifestations a concern for state protection of Buddhism, this political Buddhism resists what it understands to be “the Islamic threat,” particularly the global spread, noticeably into Asia, of conservative expressions of Islam and forms of Muslim violent extremism. In the current situation, we have seen stronger attachments to Buddhist identity vis-à-vis other religions, as well as a new regional concern about religious minorities and majorities in Asia.

There is a broad Buddhist political consciousness at play, and a greater sense of local connection to a wider Buddhist sangha, at least in the Theravada world. The same sense of broader connectivity and transnationalism that characterizes this new Buddhist revivalism (and its attendant anti-Muslim rhetoric) has also fueled many religious peace initiatives across the region, undertaken by both Muslims and Buddhists.

In March, nearly 30 practitioners and academics working across Theravada contexts met at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand, to discuss various strategies for religious peacebuilding. The increasing frequency of hate speech by religious leaders, violent confrontation between religious communities, and new forms of religious intolerance in social and legal norms have been met with great concern, not only by Western states, the UN, and international nongovernmental organizations like Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, but more importantly, by local and regional civil society organizations and religious leaders. Although international engagement has its place, such discussions on issues like inter-communal violence, the place of religion in the public sphere, and legitimate or illegitimate restrictions on freedom of religion or belief must be addressed within the religious communities themselves.

Through a shared interest for the common good, religious peace initiatives might offer alternative spaces for cooperation between communities. Many of the initiatives discussed at the Bangkok meeting, for example, addressed the best ways for improving health care, education, and access to resources for all.

In the case of both Myanmar and Sri Lanka, what is at stake according to radical Buddhists is the very survival of Buddhism in the face of the “Islamic threat.” The question, then, is how to protect Buddhism in a way that does not violate the rights of non-Buddhists or foster communal conflict. This requires an intra-Buddhist debate on Buddhist principles, religious pluralism, and human rights.

So far, the most important top-level initiative in the region has been the Yogyakarta meeting in Indonesia. In March 2015, religious officials from across the region met to discuss Buddhist-Muslim relations and to foster mutual peace and understanding. Their declaration states, “Buddhism and Islam have been misused by some for their own political purposes to fuel prejudice and stereotyping and to incite discrimination and violence.” They pledged continued work to promote inter- and intra-religious education, conflict prevention, and positive engagement with the media.

Statements like this, crafted by local religious leaders and endorsed by authoritative Buddhist and Muslim organizations, carry far more weight than any human rights group’s condemnation of the role of religious leaders in creating intolerance and mistrust.

Often romanticized and promoted by religious peacebuilders themselves, religious peacebuilding remains a vague notion. There are many pitfalls to be recognized: the limited influence of religious leaders upon their communities, their lack of independence from the state, and the danger of top-level talk with little impact on local social and political realities. However, amid rising levels of religious tension, religious players will need to act, lest exclusivist ideologies, intolerance, and violence are to win.

A version of this essay was originally published on PRIO’s blog.

The post Theravada Buddhism’s Muslim Problem appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

As Wendy Cadge and Robert Wuthnow have argued, the influence of Buddhism in the United States “increased considerably” during the last decades of the 20th century and its reception has been mostly positive. In 2003, one person in eight reported that Buddhist teachings or practices “have had an important influence on his or her religion or spirituality.” That means that “a sizeable number of Americans—as many as 25–30 million”—reported contact with Buddhism, and one quarter of the American public claimed “to be very or somewhat familiar with the teachings of Buddhism.” And familiarity bred contentment: “relatively small proportions of the American public thought negative words, such as violent (12 percent) and fanatical (23 percent) applied to the Buddhist religion and, continuing 19th-century patterns, “a majority thought this about positive words such as tolerant (56 percent) and peace loving (63 percent).”

One way of framing this positive view of Buddhism is to compare it with Americans’ reception of Islam. Surveys suggest that Americans are less likely to claim personal Islamic influence and more likely to view Muslims as intolerant and violent. Why? Does material culture play a role in this contrasting reception? Here I can only raise the comparative question and offer a tentative suggestion. American news media have represented the religious rituals and public engagement differently. In turn, I propose, those representations, which fail to capture the complexity of the two traditions, have meant that since 1945 Buddhism has been interpreted as individualistic and pacifist and in harmony with shared cultural values, whereas Islam has been imagined as communal and violent and in tension with all that Americans say they cherish most.

Images have swirled amidst the transcultural flows that have produced America’s understanding of “Buddhism” and “Islam,” and some of those images in national print and television news have portrayed ritual. Since the late-1950s, the prevailing image of Buddhist practice has been the solitary meditator, eyes half closed, sitting in the lotus position. This image does not accurately reflect the religious life of most Buddhists around the world or across the centuries. Meditation has been practiced in some Buddhist traditions, though mostly by monks, but it is rarely isolated from a cluster of other practices, from offerings to chanting. Nonetheless, this image of the solitary meditator, which appeared in literary form in Jack Kerouac’s 1958 novel Dharma Bums and in visual form in print and television news since the Sixties, seems to resonate with long-standing American affirmations of individualism, the inclination to celebrate the value and authority of the individual, not the church or the state. The most familiar representation of Muslim practice, on the other hand, is communal: a group of Muslims, usually men, in ritual prayer at the mosque. The individual seems lost in the crowd, and the crowd is mostly a menacing image in American culture, a problem to be overcome, the source of economic alienation, political submission, or religious authoritarianism. As with the Buddhist representations, this image strains against the complex realities of Islamic practice, which include solitary actions as well as communal rites. But the media return again and again to the image of communal prayer—the group bowing, kneeling, prostrating, and standing—and by doing so they position Islam in opposition to American individualism.

Representations of the two religions’ place in public life have varied too and that also might help to explain the differing valuations of Buddhism and Islam. American representations of Islam have a long history, and the negative impressions have multiple sources, including images that emphasize Muhammad’s polygamous and martial tendencies. Most important, the link between Islam and violence was reaffirmed for American audiences in the photographs from the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979, especially the widely circulated image of blindfolded Americans being paraded by their captors. In this image, and in the videos and photographs of the burning Twin Towers from the 9/11/2001 attack, Islam has become associated with coercion and violence.

It is not that Buddhists have been portrayed only in private spaces and apart from public violence, however, as an analysis of national magazines and television reporting suggests. Consider television news. According to the holdings of the most extensive archive of evening new broadcasts, there were 142 stories about “Buddhists” between 1968 and 2005. Slightly more than half of those stories (79) dealt with conflict, violence, or disaster. As with many other topics, and certainly with Islam, Buddhists seemed newsworthy to journalists when something was going wrong. That association began in a clear way with a Malcolm Browne photograph that circulated widely in 1963. The image of the Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Duc setting himself on fire on a Saigon street shaped public opinion about the Vietnam War. It was “the Buddhist uprising”—and especially the published and televised images of the self-immolations by the protesting monks—that triggered negative American perceptions. Former CIA official William E. Colby recalled the impact: “when that picture of the burning bonze [monk] appeared in Life magazine, the party was almost over in terms of the imagery that was affecting the American opinion … ‘How can you possibly support a government that has people doing this against it?’” More important for the issue at hand, the photograph also linked Buddhism with violence but it was violence produced by the solitary meditator and it was public action turned toward the self, not others. It was interpreted in the media as a religiously motivated act of protest and public protest is a longstanding form of democratic expression in the USA. Of course, some Muslims understood the Iranian hostage taking and the Twin Towers crash in a similar way, although that interpretation did not win the day in the US media.

Buddhism has been able to loosen its association with public violence in ways that Islam has not. There are multiple reasons for this, including the influence of D.T. Suzuki, Thich Nhat Hanh, and the Dalai Lama. However, it seems that images—Buddhist images of the solitary meditator and the righteous protester and contrasting Muslim images of the crowd in prayer and the crowd doing harm—have played an important role.

Further Reading

“The Original Ray,” by Helen Tworkov with Thomas A. Tweed

The post Why are Buddhists so Nice? appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.