BOOK REVIEW: Han, Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists
Making invisible visible
Elaine Yuen, PhD, Educator and Chaplain
Making the invisible visible – a skill often engaged in chaplaincy practice – is one that seeks to find words and narratives that surface hidden anxieties and sufferings.[i] In Chenxing Han’s book, Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists, this humanizing impulse of story and dialogue serves to unearth understandings of the Asian American Buddhist community.
Gautama Buddha taught in India, and since his time the Buddhist religion has taken on distinct cultural characteristics of each country where it was developed. Thus, Tibetan Buddhism is different from Japanese Buddhism, although each shares mantras and core beliefs. When Buddhism began to come to the West it was most publicly seen as a “new religion” appealing to a middle class (and mostly white), educated population. Less noted were the Buddhist temples and practices brought by Asians as they came to America to work as laborers and farmers.
In today’s popular culture, American (and perhaps Western) Buddhism has become identified with meditation and its psychological benefits.
Thus, some writers have characterized American Buddhists as either “convert” (mainly Westerners converted from another religious tradition) or “backpack” Buddhists (mainly Asian immigrants who brought Buddhism with them as a part of their culture).[ii] In today’s popular culture, American (and perhaps Western) Buddhism has become identified with meditation and its psychological benefits. Less has been recognized regarding the Buddhist practices that have been established in America by Asian immigrants. This reduction of American Buddhism to primary categories fails to capture nuance as well as history; Chenxing Han’s book steps into this divide.
Be the Refuge explores the diverse voices of Asian American Buddhists through interviews initially conducted for Han’s master’s thesis. Written for a wide audience, Han brings a chaplain’s skills of deep listening and storytelling, moving from dialogue and narrative to meaning-making and analysis. Her interviews are grouped in four parts: Trailblazers, Bridge Builders, Integrators, and Refuge Makers. Han initially highlights Asian stories of Japanese Buddhist temples in America in the early 1900s, and her interviews span up to the present where young Asian Buddhists grapple with identity and belonging in primarily white, middle class, baby boomer Buddhist communities.
Part 1, Trailblazers, documents the early Asian American Buddhist communities of the 19th and 20th centuries found among railroad and farm workers of the Western United States and Hawaii. As early as the late 1800s, Japanese immigrants brought Shin Buddhism with them. Although these Buddhist sanghas predated those more publicized in American Buddhist books and media by many years, they have not been fully acknowledged.
In Part 2, Bridge Builders, Han’s interviewees describe intergenerational struggles and ambiguity as first and second generation Asian American Buddhists sought roots to reclaim their heritage in a reconfigured American landscape. Han notes:
the path of learning and discovery shifts Buddhism from an “ascribed identity” inherited from family to an “achieved identity” constructed in response to change… through this process young adult Asian Americans forge Buddhist identities influenced by – yet also distinct from – those of their parents. [iii]
Integrators, Part 3 of the book, illustrates how Asian American convert Buddhists have come to terms with diverging personal and social characteristics. Han explores aspects of anxiety and belonging of this journey in Part 3. Holly, one of Han’s interviewees comments:
Buddhists like myself face challenges in integrating and expressing multiple cultural identities – as young, American, Buddhist, and Asian. Yet I think we are all moving toward a more pluralistic world in which multiplicity of identity will be the norm. [iv]
As Buddhists, Asian Americans have an opportunity (and perhaps a felt obligation) to honor ancestral roots which often include Buddhism, but also to reimagine Buddhism as modern and intersectional.
Buddhist stereotypes of “peaceful Asian monks” as well as practices of cultural appropriation are addressed with questioning, sadness, and anger.
Part 4, Refuge Makers, questions and also posits numerous images of Asian American Buddhists. Han explores topics of Asian invisibility, power imbalance and privilege, and what genuine expression in the midst of a fraught social dynamic might be. In a reclaiming of Buddhism’s Asian origins through Asian American lenses, Han’s conversations surface multiple issues regarding race, ritual, and marginalization within American Buddhist communities. Buddhist stereotypes of “peaceful Asian monks” as well as practices of cultural appropriation are addressed with questioning, sadness, and anger.
Throughout her book, Han disabuses the bilateral notion of “backpack Buddhists” – immigrants who may have brought their Buddhist beliefs and practices with them when they came to American – who are often differentiated from “convert Buddhists” – those who have adopted Buddhism in their lifetime.
Her interviewees’ topics do not always converge, but rather they provide food for thought and reflection. There is a narrative tension throughout the book, as Han’s interviewees speak of intersections of identity, belonging, face, place, and Buddhism, seeking to locate the Asian American experience within the Western Buddhist world.
Han’s conversations surface multiple issues regarding race, ritual, and marginalization within American Buddhist communities.
My training as a chaplain in an urban, east coast city hospital was interfaith, but I was also the Buddhist chaplain on call. My Buddhist patients and families were often Asian, as the hospital was adjacent to Philadelphia’s Chinatown. Finding the gestures and words that provided a pastoral presence to the diversity of Asian American Buddhists I encountered required a deep listening to the subtleties of collective culture, language, and identity. Although supported in my caring by a Chinese ethnicity (and appearance), it was always necessary to navigate cultural and familial dynamics. Han’s interviews move away from exotic and/or marginalized Asian American stereotypes and contribute to richly textured intersectional conversations found within Asian American experiences, and Asian American Buddhism in particular.
[i] Beachy J. Spiritual Care as Creative Interruption: Exploring a Generative Metaphor for Intercultural Healthcare Chaplaincy. Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons. https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/60/, accessed 2/25/2021.
Making the Invisible Visible: Healing Racism in Our Buddhist Communities. Spirit Rock Meditation Center, 2000. https://www.spiritrock.org/document.doc?id=9, accessed 2/25/2021.
[ii] Prebish CS. Two Buddhisms Reconsidered. Buddhist Studies Review 10(2). 1993. http://journal.equinoxpub.com/BSR/article/view/15201, accessed 2/25/2021.
[iii] Han, C. Be The Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists. North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, 2021, page 80.
[iv] Han, ibid, p 111.