Aug. 10, 2019. Paññobhāsa Mahathera
Born John David Reynolds in Seward, AK, he was ordained in the Burmese Taungpulu Forest tradition of Theravada Buddhism in 1991 and spent over 20 years in Burma, most of that time in forest caves. He returned to the US in May 2011, and is experimenting with the possibility of living as an independent monk in the West. He has specialized in meditation, monastic discipline, and the subtleties of Buddhist philosophy, and is willing to teach those who are interested.
Blog: The Outsider http://politicallyincorrectdharma.blogspot.com/
Old Buddhist Blog: http://thebahiyablog.blogspot.com
http://nippapanca.org Page: http://minds.com/Pannobhasa_Bhikkhu
Email: [email protected]
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For Alternative Buddhism see Reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/AltBuddhism/
This is an "Outsider" post by Ven. Pannobhasa:
Liberal Western Buddhism as a White Elitist Movement
Posted: 12 Aug 2019 02:32 PM PDT
IMS’s diversity and inclusion work is Board-led, guided by the Diversity Committee. An initial step was to increase the number of people of color serving on our Board. Today, one third of Board members self-identify as people of color, and three as LGBTIQ.
We continue to invest significant financial resources in diversity and inclusion workshops for Board and staff, to increase individual and collective understanding of racism, white privilege, microaggressions, internalized racial oppression, homophobia and transphobia, gender identity and bias, as well as other prejudices, and how these manifest in ourselves, our organization and our communities.
To raise awareness among our predominantly white visiting faculty, IMS’s Guiding Teachers provide a variety of resources and information on racism and gender issues. —from the “About Us/Diversity and Inclusion” page on the official website of the Insight Meditation Society (pretty much chosen at random, since the whole thing reads like this)
First let me make one thing perfectly clear: This isn’t about alt-right white nationalists converting to Buddhism as a true spiritual path for the elite Aryan Übermenschen. True, there are some of those, but with all due respects, at present they’re not the ones I intend to write about. Rather, the western Buddhist white elitists I’m concerned with here are feminized left-wing progressive “Starbucks Buddhists,” including those of the so-called Vipassana or Insight Meditation movement. There are lots more of those than Master Race Buddhists; in fact they may, for all I know, constitute the majority of westerners who profess Buddhism.
Symptoms of this elitism include, but are not limited to: multimillion-dollar luxury meditation resorts charging five-star rates for their retreats (not all white elite meditation centers are like this surely, although the ones that are, are the most prestigious ones, and the paragons to be emulated); meditation tourism and “pilgrimages” costing thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars (not including air fare); spiritual fashion trends of the Beautiful People, the Buddhist or eastern-spiritual jet set, such as famous gurus and meditation teachers that one should fly halfway around the world to meet; and of course, politically correct globalist cultural Marxist “progressivism” permeating the spirituality, or at least the attempts at spirituality, with politically correct altars honoring gender equality, and with no candles or incense allowed because they may produce harmful air pollution.
There is considerable overlap between this group and western feminists, who also tend to display a disproportionately heavy representation of upper middle class, college-educated white women, with a strong contingent of lesbians. Not that I necessarily have anything against lesbians.
The trouble for a politically correct white elitist movement is that whiteness itself is practically politically incorrect; it’s something for which to be ashamed, or at least apologetic. Certainly it is perceived as something to be “mindful” of, with some elite Buddhists even practicing a kind of Mindfulness of White Privilege meditation. European ancestry is the new original sin to be atoned for by white members of the new cult of Social Justice—and don’t kid yourself: Social Justice is the primary religion for these folks, with Buddhism being of secondary importance, a kind of hobby or lifestyle “app,” a way of spiritualizing the neo-Marxism.
Hence the borderline desperate efforts to recruit brown people into their ranks, with discounts (amounting to monetary discrimination against whites), recruitment drives, appeals…and the few brown-skinned folks who join up and make some progress in meditation (especially if they’re not Asian) are likely to be placed in conspicuous, high-profile positions in order to make the cult look like it isn’t really a white elitist movement after all.
