Dharma Diversity and Deep Inclusivity at the East Bay Meditation Center: From Buddhist Modernism to Buddhist Postmodernism?

Gleig, Ann

doi:10.1080/14639947.2014.932487

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…While this paper solely focuses on gender dysphoric experiences, other scholars have paid attention to the ways that identity, marginalization, and queerness and transness function in studies of Buddhism. Gleig (2014) provides an ethnographic study of the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, CA. Gleig (2012) includes a further look into the operations and challenges to heteronormativity within this mostly convert Buddhist community and the ways intersections of identity around race, gender identity, sexuality, and disability function in that space.…”

Section: Re-conceptualizing "Dysphoria" and Its Relationship To Traumamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, Gleig (2014) addresses the ways that queer and gender-queer practitioners are able to realize fundamental aspects of their identity within meditation, connecting their relative existence as gender-queer to experiencing fundamental, absolute notions of emptiness and non-self. Gleig quotes a gender-queer practitioner in stating, "Being gender-queer is an experience of the non-essentialism of Buddhism-through my own changing experience of gender, I feel I understand the Buddhist notion that the self is fluid and conditional" (Gleig 2014, p. 318).…”

Section: Re-conceptualizing "Dysphoria" and Its Relationship To Traumamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Zen in Distress: Theorizing Gender Dysphoria and Traumatic Remembrance within Sōtō Zen Meditation

Buckner

2020

Religions

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Gender dysphoria is considered a pronounced experience of distress in the bodies and minds of some transgender people. Examining the text Zen Mind, Beginners Mind by Shunryū Suzuki, I analyze some of the difficulties that may arise for transgender practitioners experiencing acutely strong gender dysphoria within the Sōtō Zen meditation experience. I seek to understand how physical and psychological gender distress may make concentration, and thereby realization, challenging and potentially harmful within a context of Sōtō Zen meditation. I consider how meditation can exacerbate the panic and traumatic remembrance of the body and mind, leading both to embodied struggles, as well as undoubtedly philosophical ones too. This paper theorizes gender dysphoria to exist beyond a state of unitary “distress” to include trauma. I put forward an understanding of gender dysphoria that is grounded in traumatic, gendered remembrances—what I call “sustained traumas.” Within the meditation experience, I argue trans, gender dysphoric people may experience heightened disconnect, separation, and deepening into their solid and suffering “self” rather than open to the fundamental nature of emptiness, non-duality, and an empty and move-able core. Ultimately, I argue meditation may lead to a deepening of traumatic remembrance, posing potential corporeal and philosophical problematics for gender dysphoric practitioners within Sōtō Zen meditation.

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Section: Re-conceptualizing "Dysphoria" and Its Relationship To Traumamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Re-conceptualizing "Dysphoria" and Its Relationship To Traumamentioning

confidence: 99%

Zen in Distress: Theorizing Gender Dysphoria and Traumatic Remembrance within Sōtō Zen Meditation

Buckner

2020

Religions

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“…Unfortunately, presenting these as the only two options for American Buddhists is often discouraging to YAAABs in general and Asian American convert Buddhists in particular, as their religious and cultural identifications seldom fit neatly into either group. A few of the first-gen young adults I interviewed found a spiritual home at the East Bay Meditation Center, where attendees hail from a wide range of racial, ethnic, religious, class, and immigrant backgrounds (Gleig 2014).…”

Section: In Search Of Welcoming Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contesting “Conversion” and “Reversion” among Young Adult Asian American Buddhists

Han

2019

Religions

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This paper engages the perspectives of thirty young adult Asian American Buddhists (YAAABs) raised in non-Buddhist households. Grounded in semi-structured, one-on-one in-person and email interviews, my research reveals the family tensions and challenges of belonging faced by a group straddling multiple religious and cultural worlds. These young adults articulate their alienation from both predominantly white and predominantly Asian Buddhist communities in America. On the one hand, they express ambivalence over adopting the label of “convert” because of its Christian connotations as well as its associations with whiteness in the American Buddhist context. On the other hand, they lack the familiarity with Asian Buddhist cultures experienced by second- or multi-generation YAAABs who grew up in Buddhist families. In their nuanced responses to arguments that (1) American convert Buddhism is a non-Asian phenomenon, and (2) Asians in the West can only “revert” to Buddhism, these young adults assert the plurality and hybridity of their lived experiences as representative of all American Buddhists, rather than incidental characteristics of a fringe group within a white-dominated category.

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Dissident Bodies and Studies of Gender in Buddhism: Brazilian Perspectives

Coutinho,

Matias

2023

Int J Lat Am Relig

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Dharma Diversity and Deep Inclusivity at the East Bay Meditation Center: From Buddhist Modernism to Buddhist Postmodernism?

Cited by 6 publications

References 8 publications

Zen in Distress: Theorizing Gender Dysphoria and Traumatic Remembrance within Sōtō Zen Meditation

Zen in Distress: Theorizing Gender Dysphoria and Traumatic Remembrance within Sōtō Zen Meditation

Contesting “Conversion” and “Reversion” among Young Adult Asian American Buddhists

Dissident Bodies and Studies of Gender in Buddhism: Brazilian Perspectives

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