The class difference stood out, so we had to devise strategies so that it wouldn’t feel so difficult for these guys.Ĭharles Prebish: So you’re saying that social engagement can be a means to help create an environment that facilitates people of all different backgrounds feeling comfortable at your center. Inevitably, several of those people do want to visit the center, and that has been a learning experience for us.
I do that to help people, most of whom happen to be working-class people from minority groups. For example, I teach in a drug rehab center. Diversity is one of the consequences of serving people. Paul Haller: What inspired our outreach initiative initially was an active expression of compassion, the motivation to be of service to society at large. At our last annual gathering in Chicago, we had about five hundred Spanish-speaking people, which was very progressive for us, because we have not been so strong among Spanish-speaking people.īuddhadharma: Why does diversity matter? Why do communities need to reach out beyond those who somewhat naturally come to their doors? We’ve also very substantially increased our Hispanic membership. If I were to look at the people present on a Sunday morning or at some large-scale Soka Gakkai event, the majority would be African-American. I’ve spent the last fourteen years practicing in Chicago. Guy McCloskey: Coleman’s description does not reflect my experience in Soka Gakkai. They were white men for the most part, many of them Jewish, and they tended to draw people to the centers who were like themselves. Many of the centers began because people who went to Asia came back and wanted to start sitting groups or retreat environments. For one thing, centers have been overwhelmingly white. As a meditator who began in 1970, I would say that the communities I encountered left out a lot of people and continue to do so. Marlene Jones: What Coleman says fits with my experience. Relating with the larger sangha is another important form of diversity. That’s a very helpful perspective to keep in mind. In fact, we’re a minority of Buddhism in America. Those of us who are convert Buddhists think that we are Buddhism in America. I also think the point that Chuck makes is important to emphasize at the beginning of this discussion. At Zen Center, one of the things we’re trying to tackle is to what degree we deter people from this part of the demographic from feeling at home, and consequently returning on a frequent basis to our centers. Caucasians represent about half the population, and then we have a large Asian-American population, about a fifteen-percent African-American population, and a significant Hispanic population. In San Francisco, the overall population is quite diverse. Paul Haller: We need to ask to what degree does how we present ourselves within our own Buddhist sanghas deter people who don’t fall into the demographic you just described. It’s also fair to say that, in the overall Buddhist community in the United States, it’s likely that as many at eighty percent are not convert Buddhists. In the context of that description, he’s probably quite accurate. How accurate is that description?Ĭharles Prebish: Coleman is talking about what he calls “New Buddhism,” and for him that means almost exclusively convert Buddhist communities. Buddhadharma: In James Coleman’s book, The New Buddhism, he indicates that the groups he researched appealed only to “a relatively small slice of the public” that was “overwhelmingly white,” from the middle to higher reaches of the middle class, and highly educated.
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