"buddhist privilege" in the west

so, u/ewk made a post about buddhist privilege yesterday.

"How does this apply to Buddhists and their constant drone of "what we believe matters more than what Zen Masters say about Zen"?

In other words, [Buddhists] are more often humanized and granted the benefit of the doubt. [Buddhists] are more likely to receive compassion, to be granted individual potential, to survive mistakes."

this is lying by omission. occasionally, especially with younger people my age, i do recieve this privilege by way of being granted benefit of the doubt and recieving compassion. i say this because liberal teenagers who are aggressively anti christian have been kind to me about my religion despite not knowing much about it.

however, i have also recieved the privilege of white middle schoolers kicking my legs out from under me, stomping on me, and being told that the mala beads that my grandfather gave me are 'anal beads' that i put up my ass. coming from a family that immigrated over during the beginning of the vietnam war, i have many stories about such buddhist privileges. believe it or not, being a member of a small religion in a foreign place is not so easy.

so, its a double edged sword. if you want to call my refutation bullshit because it's anecdotal, ewk gave no facts, statistics or figures in his post, and instead gave his anecdotal experiences of yoga pants buddhists he has ran into on the sub, which i am fairly certain is most of his exposure buddhists.

"We see this endlessly in r/zen:

1. "I go to a church, and that matters more than what some old books say"
2. "My family is Buddhist from Asia, so we're more authentic than some mythological Chinese Master".
3. "Who should we believe? Some high school book report about a 1,000 year old text you can't read without a translator or somebody who actually got ordained in a modern Buddhist church?"

​​​​​​​So, what can I do once I recognize my Buddhist privilege?

• Don’t take it personally or use discomfort as an excuse to disengage.
• Learn when to listen, when to amplify and when to speak up.
• Educate yourself.
• Educate fellow Buddhists
• Risk your unearned benefits to benefit others."

this is hypocritical, tone deaf douchebaggery on a level that only woke white college folk appear capable of. you're telling me to learn when to listen? yesterday in our conversation you said that you had attempted to bring real life buddhists into the forum to have them talk about their faith. i'm a real life buddhist! i will talk about my faith and how reading the zen masters has changed my beliefs! but you are too busy telling me what real life buddhists believe to ask me. do you see how this is silly, and how it shows that you not only are not following your second bullet point but also not following the third? let's get at the real clear, defining quotes that show your hypocrisy in full.

the post on buddhist privilege ends with this..

"And please, before anybody says "hey, White Privilege is so much more of a social problem than Buddhist privilege", just don't. Two wrongs don't make a right, and anti-vaxxers killing hundreds of thousands of people doesn't make gun violence less of a problem."

i agree. problems are problems, and we should start the solution wherever we are at and not go through the trauma olympics every time an issue is raised.

yesterday, he says this to me,

"But, like the people who complain that Buddhist bigotry is less important than White racism, I'm going to say that in the hierarchy of problems in Zen study, clearly anti-Chinese bigotry by Japanese Buddhists is a bigger influence on the study of Zen than white people bigotry against black, asian, or Mediterranean bigotries. Also more of an influence than bigotry against Catholics, Jews, or Muslims. Sorry those people who want their bigotry to be the best one, there is so much bigotry that we can all be affected by it in different ways."

for the first time, ewk, you have cut my tongue off. lets start with this. "I'm going to say that in the hierarchy of problems in Zen study," i wasn't talking about zen study, i was talking about your choice of words when talking about buddhists and buddhism, and the choice of words of anyone who says 'buddhism' when they mean 'dogenism'.

then we have this. "clearly anti-Chinese bigotry by Japanese Buddhists is a bigger influence on the study of Zen than white people bigotry against black, asian, or Mediterranean bigotries. Also more of an influence than bigotry against Catholics, Jews, or Muslims." i agree that the japanese bias against the chinese school has had more influence on our modern understanding of zen than your bias against me, but, what happened to "Two wrongs don't make a right, and anti-vaxxers killing hundreds of thousands of people doesn't make gun violence less of a problem"?

"Sorry those people who want their bigotry to be the best one, there is so much bigotry that we can all be affected by it in different ways." i don't care where 'my' bigotry stacks up. for it to stop, all you would have to do is know when to listen and educate yourself, but you refuse, really, it wouldn't even take all that. just stop fucking saying buddhism, and say dogenism, which is a term (as far as i know) you coined and use on a regular basis already!

​

thoughts? concerns?

Submitted September 10, 2021 at 05:57AM by yellowmoses https://ift.tt/3jY5LhV