The Roots of Suffering

DREAMING ME

An African American Woman's

Spiritual Journey

Jan Willis

Riverhead Books: New York, 2001

352 pp., $23.95 (cloth)

BEING BLACK

Zen and the Art of Living With

Fearlessness and Grace

Angel Kyodo Williams

Viking Press: New York, 2000

200 pp., $23.95 (cloth)

In countless stories that record an American's odyssey to Buddhism, we find the broad outline of a spiritual paradigm: First there is the experience of

or suffering, in one (or more) of its myriad manifestations, followed by exposure to the teachings of the Buddha, and finally the embracing of a practice that leads to enlightenment and liberation.

	More on Being Black and Being Buddhist Author Angel Kyodo Williams talks about practice, racism, and the true nature of American Buddhism. Plus: Check out a passage from "Being Black" by Angel Kyodo Williams. Read an excerpt from "Dreaming Me" by Black Panther-turned-Buddhist scholar Jan Willis. Join the discussion on race and Buddhism.

For African Americans, however, suffering takes a uniquely pernicious and psychologically damaging racial form--namely, the seismic blows to self-esteem in a society where blacks have, since the 17th century, been defined as this country's untouchables.

Yet seldom, if ever, do we acknowledge in our apolitical and nonracial discussions of Buddhism the fact that for many African Americans the "three jewels" of the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha provide, like Christianity, not only solace in the face of life's general sufferings (sickness, old age, and death) but also a clarifying refuge from white racism, Eurocentrism, Western hegemony, and even certain crippling aspects of black American culture itself.

It is timely, then, that as a new millennium begins and Buddhism enters its 26th century, two African American women have published books that attempt to provide insights into how the dharma can undo the damage inflicted on the embattled psyches of people of color.

Continued on page 2: »