Storytelling and Silences

Last year, a visiting teacher was leading a workshop at our zen center. The teacher was a white woman, and the participants were almost all white, middle class folks. During a break towards the end of the second day of the workshop, several of us sat around a table, drinking tea and listening to the visiting teacher tell stories. She dominated over most everything that weekend, very set about how things should go, in what steps, and in almost exactly what way. I was impressed with how prepared she was in leading the studies we were doing, but also surprised at how rigid and almost flat emotionally she sometimes came off during the workshop.

Like the rest of the weekend, she was clearly at the center of the break period, telling long-winded stories about travels, and cultural events, and lord knows what else. I faded in and out during the entire break, exhausted from the previous session's material and exercises, which had brought up some "shit" for me, for lack of more precise term. At some point, the visiting teacher started in about something about "poor black kids" in Oakland, and how there were so many screwing their lives up in gangs, drugs, and whatnot. I was sort of half listening, kind of irritated by this time by what I perceived to be an unconscious elitism running throughout her weekend narratives. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what it was, other than a few too many references to classical music, opera, "educated people," and travel exploits tossed about way casually.

Drifting back out, I suddenly was jolted by a loud sound of frustration, followed by the words: "We have many good stories too! Why do I always have to listen to this shit from white people!" This from a normally very kind and generous-spirited African-American member of our sangha, who sat across from me, now visibly upset. Stunned, confused and drowsy, I quickly noticed the silence. A few jaws dropped open. A head or two turned away. This went on for several seconds, before the visiting teacher tried to steer the conversation to African-American musicians, a terribly embarrassing attempt to appear conscious about race. For a few minutes, she went on about Ray Charles and perhaps John Coltrane (I can't recall), and then turned to our sangha member and said, "Is that good?"

I felt my stomach turn, and wanted out, instantly out of there. I also wanted to say something, anything to support our sangha member, who was clearly experiencing yet another place where she had to deal with unconsciousness about racial narratives. However, I just sat there. As did everyone else, while her and the visiting teacher volleyed back and forth for a minute or so. By this time, the visiting teacher was visibly embarrassed, but also able to quickly return to her role of conversation domination.

I got up and walked over to get some tea, and some air - thoroughly convinced that if someone like me, who had spent over a decade studying race and racism, supporting POC groups, fighting bad legislation, speaking out in workplaces as well as in groups of friends and family - if someone like me couldn't find a way to comment about what had just happened in my dharma center, then we were in trouble, grave trouble as a spiritual community. Even though I had been reading about racial dynamics in American Buddhist centers for several years, and said a few things about race, racism, and social justice in dharma classes and after talks, this incident made it profoundly clear that being serious about Buddhism in 21st century America has to go hand in hand with a deep, broad, and continuous examination of race and racism.