5 Responses to the Awkwardly Titled “New Face of Buddhism”

Shaun Bartone

3 years ago

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[Originally published at Turning Wheel Media]

Friends of Buddhist Peace Fellowship are featured on the cover of the Lion’s Roar this month. Some of the “new faces” of Buddhism have something to say about how they are portrayed in the Buddhist media.

5 Responses to the Awkwardly Titled

“New Face of Buddhism”

Unpacking the first cover of Lion’s Roar magazine

As Lion’s Roar magazine hits news stands this week, it’s a new name and face for Shambhala Sun, one of the top Buddhist magazines in the US.

We love seeing some of our favorite dharma teachers and BPF friends grace the cover, which is markedly more racially diverse than your average Buddhist magazine photo. Yet we also wonder what it means to brand a “New Face” of our beloved 2600-year old tradition.

Five friends of Buddhist Peace Fellowship share their opinions about the New and Not-So-New Faces of Buddhism. Read more >>>

For far too long, Asian and Asian American Buddhist communities in the United States have been relegated to a strange position of being at once both exotically authentic and dangerously superstitious. Our cultures, communities, and “inaccessible” languages have been dismissed as relics of a distant past, too traditional and unscientific, and in dire need of modification. – Funie Hsu, BPF Board Member

I still harbor hope that Lion’s Roar will be filled with the true diversity of Buddhist America. I certainly see this magazine cover as progress, even though I sincerely doubt the editors’ ability to maintain the same levels of diversity within their pages. This cover told me that the editors care. The message I hear is that they’re trying.

I’m still trying to figure out if they’re doing enough to make a lasting difference. – Arun, Angry Asian Buddhist

It’s hard not to feel like a bit of brown tea spilled on the carpet sometimes, even when all the white folks are cheery and gracious in dealing with you. You might still feel like they’re trying, consciously or not, to blot out your brown: purify you with universal teachings, leaving only the clear water of transcendent Buddhanature to be absorbed into the universe. Yeep. – Katie Loncke, BPF Co-Director

While I’m grateful to be included as a Face this time around, I am acutely aware that the Body of American Buddhism is hurting,and that to look at this New Face, you wouldn’t necessarily know it. I worry about this Face being used to paper over the barriers to leadership and publishing that those of us on the margins of American Buddhism continue to experience. I worry that it obscures the endless questions we field about our qualifications to teach, and the coded demands to tone down the very racial and gender identities that made us look great and, well, New, on the cover of Lion’s Roar. – Kate Johnson, featured Lion’s Roar teacher, Interdependence Project

When I imagine the cover of Lion’s Roarspread with my beautiful dharma comrades of color, I am nourished with affirmations of our presence: a refreshing change from the usual white-robed, White men dominating images of Buddhism across the West. Despite this, there is something unquestionably painful about labelling such representation as the ‘new face’ of Buddhism. What makes Asian Americans “new” given the roots of Buddhism in South Asia? Across what paradigm of change are the placement of folks of color being positioned? – Dedunu Sylvia, BPF member