Free of Identity

Please read this inquiry about 'race' by Greg Synder. It's not about feeling guilty. It's about freedom. That's a good thing.

“To study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be illuminated by the myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the bodies and minds of others, drop away.” ~ Eihei Dogen

To study the Buddha way is to study whiteness… that conditioning affects each and every one of us. Unfortunately, many… resist terms like “racism” and “white supremacy.”… we are obliged to see race as a frame for realizing our vows of liberation and no harm… in order to see unconscious thoughts and behaviors, we need more precise frames. Whiteness is an identity defined against other identities and experienced as a conditioned, separate self. If we substitute “whiteness” for “the self” above, it begins to point the way for how we might engage the problem of race in our dharma practice… the frame of whiteness illuminates unseen mental and interpersonal behaviors.

Reading about… whiteness and white supremacy have a beginning and are not the timeless characteristics of everyone with lighter complexions… Stories… by people of color that were not predigested for the special care of white folks—meaning they induce rage, shame, fear, crisis, and a sense of alienation from a world we unconsciously felt was ours—help us understand… take in these perspectives without argument… recognize that we are conditioned within a reality limited by the entitlement and privilege of whiteness… let our bodies steep in the courageous tellings of lifetimes of perseverance in the face of dehumanization without shoring up our position.

We can also study whiteness by making it an object of our meditation practice… how we have internalized the current logic of racialized America… “When did I first learn I was white?”… shake up our involuntary identification with whiteness by beginning to illuminate some of the details of how we are conditioned, often against others… sitting with phrases like “I am white” or “I am not white” or “white supremacy” often rattles deeply held beliefs and emotions about who we believe we are. Finally, devoting ourselves wholeheartedly to taking unwavering responsibility for our thoughts… notice our minds assuming anything about anyone based on race… our mind is conditioned racially to fully sink in… taking responsibility here looks like upright resolve, not self-condemnation.

This work is best supported by dharma teachers who have worked with race as a practice frame and by groups of peer practitioners who identify or are identified as white. Dialoguing with other white practitioners who are willing to lovingly hold each other accountable to staying the course is critical if we are to clarify our conditioning; it also allows white practitioners to feel supported in what at first may be a profoundly disconcerting endeavor. This process sharpens our perception, strengthens our integrity, deepens our humility, and breaks our hearts open so we can more skillfully and fearlessly love everyone, including ourselves.

One way we interpret race is… a shared heritage, culture, ethnicity, and embodiment… we need not disavow any heritage or disparage ourselves or others because we come from this or that race of people… embrace who we are and all others as historic and conditioned embodiments of Mother Earth’s brilliant array. The second expression of race was birthed of a need to justify colonialism. Scientific racism later legitimized what was initially a political and economic requirement, thus enabling the continued oppression and murder of those colonized; race became the rationale for imposing a hierarchy of domination… This conceptual frame polarized humanity into black and white, with white being superior to everyone else, and ushered in the current ideological era of white supremacy.

In many cases, this concept of race has wiped out the prior framing rooted in heritage and ethnicity. For example, the rich array of European peoples that not so long ago populated America has largely been reduced to a single wash of whiteness with diminishing relationship to the languages and customs that once knitted them into distinct communities. As Buddhist practitioners, it is imperative that we divest from the violence of current racial frames without destroying the beauty of difference, allowing each person to sit upright in their full and vibrant expression.

Those who insist on naming white supremacy are rarely claiming that any particular white person celebrates it the way a member of the Ku Klux Klan would; rather… most Americans, have internalized this ideology and need to uproot it… our minds are private, not personal… we have inherited and internalized a logic of white supremacy… We did not create it, but it is ours to replicate if we are not awake. Though not our fault, it is our responsibility. We may feel guilt, remorse, embarrassment, shame, or revulsion throughout this exploration; however… If we take up this path as fault or personal defect, we will all be stuck in a mud of self-hatred, serving no one.

To study whiteness is to forget whiteness… we begin to see the conditioned and dependent nature of our racial identity through study… as long as race exists as an aspect of being and society, we are obliged to examine it… witnessing the pain and stories of others who hold differently racialized positions. Forgetting the self is a process of clarifying our conditioning—the roots of our karma—rather than any delusion that we are no longer conditioned. This process is the never-ending commitment of the bodhisattva.

To forget whiteness is to be illuminated by the myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the bodies and minds of others, drop away… There can be a strong impulse to want enlightenment to be some all-consuming, one-shot missile with an infinite blast radius, not the slow and vulnerable embodiment of insight and discernment intimately expressed through ongoing cultivation and effort… remaining humbly in the trenches of our limited humanity.

… to forget the self means relaxing the grasp of whiteness… we come to see how we are involved in creating bodies and minds that are racialized, separate, and oppressed, and we realize how we are invested in that separation. We see the suffering, the grasping of identity and privilege that causes that suffering, the release that ends it, and the path to that release… we begin to disengage from the karma of oppression… freed from previously unconscious thoughts; others are spared our unconscious actions… No longer resisting intimacy with race begins to wake us up to this dependency, freeing our humanness. Our devotion to intimacy exposes violence and proves love as liberation to be the truest embodiment of race in our world.

… the very direction of the mind’s flow shifts. Instead of unconsciously superimposing inherited, racialized notions onto people, our minds open to a fuller breadth of humanity. No longer attempting to conquer life with our karma, what we are in each moment emerges as the myriad things, the myriad beings, the myriad things of any one being.

Allowing one’s being to arise as the whole of unimpeded difference is liberation… Though racialized conditioning will certainly still arise with liberation, the mind is less inclined to grasp that conditioning as the foundation of reality. Early on, liberation might appear as if “bodies and minds drop away,” but deeper intimacy with liberation reveals bodies and minds being freed into wholeness—a totality that includes the one, felt as love, and the many, felt as joy. It is from this wholeness that we are able to love ourselves completely while working diligently to end white supremacy. It is also from this wholeness that we understand that our privileged position demands the lack of someone else’s freedom. This ceases to be an inheritance we can tolerate, and we start living love’s urgency to end all that sustains this great harm.

… even if we no longer identify with or existentially depend upon whiteness, we cannot be released from this privileged and entitled societal position without an end to white supremacy for all. As long as we are identified as white, current societal biases and practices work in our favor and against the lives of people of color. In our deepening realization, it can become very difficult as we thoroughly feel the grief and sorrow of this… we cannot quickly fix the problem… our freedom from the spiritual blindness of white privilege is dependent on every last human’s liberation from ideological white supremacy.

The Buddha’s encouragement to investigate the neutral of experience… White entitlement renders an entire realm of existence neutral to the privileged perceiver. We have a responsibility to cultivate a keen ear and eye for the neutral… we must educate ourselves… without giving in to defensiveness, judgment, or resistance. Again, we must listen… as humble students of the dharma. By realizing the experience of others as our own, we come to see that the neutral experience of privilege is maintained only by excluding from our lives the pain of those oppressed. Only through inclusion are we made whole.

Taking on racial hierarchy will bring us face to face with rage and hatred of all kinds and involve risking social exile from white society. To do this, we must root ourselves deeply in our vows and practice. If our bodhisattva vow to liberate all beings does not also include liberation from ideologies whose raison d’être is the exploitation and domination of vast numbers of beings, what does it really mean?

The world transformation for which we chant, pray, bow, and meditate will only come to pass when we fully realize there is no living from love that does not include an urgency to end harm and ensure liberation for all. And there is no thorough liberation not dependent on fearlessly living from love. Thankfully, meditation allows us to take full responsibility for our minds, but it is the bodhisattva vow and our turning toward the liberation of all that allows us to take full responsibility for our hearts. When it comes to white supremacy and the harm it continues to cause all of us, we white Buddhists must give up the privilege of sitting this one out."

~ Greg Snyder is a dharma teacher at Brooklyn Zen Center, as well as its co-founder and current President. He is also the Senior Director of Buddhist Studies at Union Theological Seminary, where he directs and teaches in a Masters of Divinity program focused on Buddhism and Inter-religious Engagement.

Photo ~ At February 2014’s panel on gun violence (left to right): angel Kyodo williams, Greg Snyder, Clarisa James, Stefani Zinerman, Shaina Harrison, Mike Tucker, Chris Foye, Suicide RU, and Marlon Peterson.