Introducing the Initiative for Black Buddhist Studies
We are a public scholarship project created at the intersection of academic inquiry and community-based engagement. We aim to:
- Offer community-based Buddhist Studies courses that center Black social movements, Black poets, and Black Buddhist writers;
- Create conversations amongst Buddhist practitioners and activists, as well as scholars of Buddhism, on how Buddhism can address racialized systemic harm in bureaucracies such as the U.S. penal system;
- Think through how Buddhist-inspired anti-caste movements influence anti-racism movements, as well as speak to discrimination based on poverty, gender, and sexuality in the U.S. context;
- Co-create a dialogue between Black Buddhists and Asian and Asian American Buddhists to address issues such as cultural appropriation, cultural adaptation, and internalized racism;
- Publish literature that can be used for furthering academic and community dialogue that incorporates the study of Buddhism and Black Studies.
Race, Caste, and the Challenge of Karma: Cultivating Black Buddhist Perspectives
Princeton University
While Buddhism has been adopted by people who suffer from racial oppression, it remains difficult to reconcile traditional Buddhist approaches to karma with projects to counter systemic injustice. This conference brings together contemporary scholars of caste, race, and Buddhism to think through classical Buddhist perspectives on karma alongside Ambedkarite Buddhist perspectives and the ideas of Buddhists working against anti-Black racism in the U.S. today. It proposes to establish a conversational space for reconsidering karma constructively, to test its pitfalls and its liberatory potentials for addressing race and caste. Invited speakers will address traditional Buddhism both in its ideals and its cultural history; B.R. Ambedkar’s rejection of karma as he resisted the Brahmanic caste system; contemporary Black Buddhist activist, practitioner and theorist perspectives on karma; and comparative approaches to race and caste in the light of karma.
B.R. Ambedkar; James Baldwin
Now in Stores and Available Online!
Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition:
The Practice of Stillness in the Movement for Liberation
Finalist for Excellence in the Study of Religion, Constructive-Reflective Studies, given by the American Academy of Religion
30% off if purchased on the NYU Press Website, use code VeselyFlad30
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