Circles of Belonging

Late in night this week, I was on a bus from school to home. I was sitting on a right-hand side near the back, leaning against the window. I was tired, and I had just enough energy look outside. For several minutes I stared into the darkness. Then, I saw my own reflection against the glass. There was my transparent silhouette—my hair, my glasses, my mouth, my winter coat—that contained all the things which I was seeing. A foot bridge, brownish leaves, townhouses, and much more quickly passed by me, yet were captured by my own image in the glass window. My image encompasses the outside, and within that moment, I saw myself in everything.

Last weekend our People of Color (POC) sangha gathered for our monthly time together. I always look forward to sangha because it is my true spiritual community. I have attended for a year now, in which I have deepened my practice amongst unconditional love and support. There is no other place like this for me.

This particular time together was challenging. We had a special guest, Tara Branch, founder of the sangha’s home organization (Tara is a long-time teacher and mentor who coined “circles of belonging” to describe affinity sanghas; she is also white). During this time an inquiry was put forth by two newer sangha members. The inquiry essentially was this: if we are striving for collective liberation, why do we need a POC sangha? Both members expressed concern that our sangha encouraged separation from others, and suggested that the teachings guide us toward joining majority sanghas with everyone else. Other sangha members had passionate responses whose experiences among the majority were painful, violent, and threatening to their spiritual and psychic well-being. The dharma talk went back and forth between these views. I left sangha that evening exhausted, confused, unsettled, and a little upset.

Afterward, I joined a few of my sangha friends for dinner. I was left in a very poor mood. We eventually visited the topic of sangha: our feelings, thoughts, and reactions. I had been reflecting until this point, and I finally shared that I was unhappy. I felt negative energy for several reasons. I did not believe that the two new members who introduced the inquiry practiced deep listening (part of right speech, an Eightfold Path branch and Five Mindfulness training) because they did not acknowledge the suffering others had expressed. Nor did they extend compassion to these members (a Four Immeasurable Mind). Their beliefs were formed on an intellectual level, one that exists in Absolute Truth. But as I understand the Two Truths (absolute and relative realities), absolute truth is only understood through our relative experiences. The strong implication I received from the two sangha members was that if we acknowledged the genuine pain felt in the room that we were bad practitioners who desperately clung to our identities and their associated experiences when, instead, we needed to shed these things to attain liberation.

I looked deeply into this aspect throughout the week after my sadness and anger passed. I disagree with this view for a lot of reasons, but I will share just two here.

The description, “true sangha,” is used to convey an ideal spiritual community for a person. The POC sangha is my true sangha because it reflects the world in which I live. We’re tall, we’re short; we’re young, we’re elders; we’re Buddhists, we’re non-Buddhists; we’re dark-skinned, we’re light-skinned; we’re straight, we’re queer. We are so many things. This is the world I see. Other sanghas I have attended are not this way. Every sangha is diverse, yes, because each person can uniquely contribute to a community. But there’s an inherent richness in an inclusive sangha—one which truly represents, and invites difference. (Please keep in mind that I appreciated the new members’ inquiry for this reason but I was hurt by the way they brought forth and pursued the inquiry.) A room consisting of people who look the same, talk the same, dress the same, and think the same—especially when you’re not the same—is false. When I attend a majority sangha, no matter how hard I try to bring an open heart, I feel like I’m underwater.

This feeling builds into my second insight that majority sanghas tend not to be inclusive. I believe that these sanghas possess a real earnestness to invite people of color and others, but they so often lack the skillful means (compassion, openness, deep listening) necessary to care and nurture diversity within their sangha. They simply do not know how, and in my experience many resist the notion when there’s an offer to teach them. This is an incredibly hard and painful experience for a person of color. Moreover, it feels like a betrayal to experience this kind of spiritual violence every day, and repeat it again and again with practicing brothers and sisters.

When I board a bus, I sometimes wonder how others see me. Am I another young professional rushing to the office? Or am I an out-of-place city kid who is venturing into a new part of town? Am I an aloof young person who prefers the back of the bus to ignore people? Or am I a polite rider who moves around to make room for families and elders? Am I pretentious hipster preparing the waste the day in my head? Or am I a pragmatic working person brooding over the day’s demands? So many stories; I am probably all of these things. People perceive me many ways because I do not appear to be any single way. I’m afraid that stories develop around me within a majority sangha. I stand out for whichever reason, so that if well-intentioned people reach out to me they load a set of expectations on me that is too heavy for any one person. I feel the heaviness, and I’m made even more uncomfortable.

An inclusive sangha, one that nurtures one of the six paramitas, does not feel this way—it feels light—inviting me to feel free to touch my Buddha within. People of color cannot realize their buddahood if they are contained. A David Whyte poem I recently discovered concludes, “Anything or anyone that does not bring you alive, is too small for you.” Most majority sanghas are too small for me. The danger, the poet has publically warns, is that our vision can, too, become too small so that we cannot see all the goodness that embodies a particular thing. I have tried, and tried again to do this with majority sanghas. At this time I do not believe that I’m making a mistake. I am too small within these sanghas because they make me small. So I go elsewhere.

I witness absolute truth every day. Home has become many places for me. I have always been sort of a chameleon. In fact, this week I was able to take part in a Baha’i devotional, organized by a law school friend. Truth comes in many forms, and I will not deny any of them.

Am I a less enlightened person for preferring a people of color sangha? No. The POC sangha just happens to be the truest sangha I have come across; it brings me closer to the Universe. I do not live in a colorblind world, but instead, I live in a colorful one for which I can see myself, and the world can see me.