Season 3 Premiere! The Disquiet & Forwarding Asian American & Asian Diasporic Buddhist Experiences with Rev. Liên Shutt & Rev. Dana Takagi

NEW Co-Host: Reverend Dana TakagiDana
(she/her) is a retired professor of Sociology and also a zen
priest. She spent 33 years teaching sociology and Asian Am
history at UC Santa Cruz, she is a past president of the
Association for Asian American Studies.  Zen practice since
1998.

Check out more of Dana's work:
2022: Sutra and Bible: an Interview with Duncan Ryūken
Williams
2020: Most Intimate, Ordinary Way, Recollections of Katherine
Thanas  (co-eds. with Eugene Bush; 2nd printing 2022)
Mentioned in the episode, her 1993 book on affirmative
action: "The Retreat from Race: Asian American Admissions and
Racial Politics"

https://danatakagizenlife.squarespace.com/


This season, we will have a new focus: Uplifting and Forwarding
Asian American/Asian Diasporic Buddhist Experiences in the
West.

With our guests and audience, we will explore the specificities
of Asian American/Asian Diasporic experiences.  We take as
given that there are generational differences (hence the
historical moment matters!) and we hope to also delve into Asian
family norms and values, our inchoate understanding of ancestor
worship, issues of identity, representation, stereotypes about
sexuality and sexual identity,  and Asian American
depression.   

A theme we'll be using to help guide our conversations is The
Disquiet - a term we are adapting from writer/poet Fernando
Pessoa (The Book of Disquiet) - which in our view signals a
complex recognition of self, mind, and body.  The evidence
for the foregoing includes scholarly research indexed in
aggregate statistics on depression, youth suicide, and other
issues in immigrant or first-generation families. While Asian
Americans are not alone in experiencing trauma, the racial
languages and discourses of othering are different for us than
for other groups.    


What do we hope is the outcome of this podcast?  Our first
aim is to give voice to the range and depth of Buddhism in Asian
and Asian American generations.  We hope that in doing so,
we help to shine a light on the limited or myopic envisioning of
race in primarily white sanghas. Asian and Asian American
diasporic truths about practice are a teaching for contemporary
dharma organizations and centers. We recognize the depth and
range of Asian and Asian Diasporic Buddhists is a wisdom mirror
for organized Buddhism in the West. 

Co-Host: REV. LIÊN SHUTT (she/they) is a recognized
leader in the movement that breaks through the wall of American
white-centered convert Buddhism to welcome people of all
backgrounds into a contemporary, engaged Buddhism. As an ordained
Zen priest, licensed social worker, and longtime educator/teacher
of Buddhism, Shutt represents new leadership at the nexus of
spirituality and social justice, offering a special warm welcome
to Asian Americans, all BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, immigrants, and those
seeking a “home” in the midst of North American society’s
reckoning around racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia.
Shutt is a founder of Access to Zen (2014). You can learn more
about her work at AccessToZen.org. Her new book,
Home is Here: Practicing Antiracism with the Engaged Eightfold
Path. See all her offerings at
EVENTS
info.access2zen@gmail.com