Colbert to the left of me, white men to the right

And here I am, stuck in the middle with Assalayana.

Lately, I've been feeling like the legendary Assalayana, a 16-year-old student of the Brahmans who was given the unenviable task to dispute the Buddha's assertion that all castes are capable of enlightenment. And not just to dispute that assertion, but argue it head-to-head with the Buddha himself.

Needless to say, Assalayana didn't like this task. While he was an excellent student of many subjects, he knew that the Buddha was unassailable in debate. And it was quite possible that even before his personal encounter with the Buddha, he agreed with the Buddha's premise: he tells the Brahamans that the Buddha teaches Dhamma, which, when capitalized, is the Pali word for truth (lowercase it more closely translates as "dogma" or "doctrine"). So Assalayana tries to get out of this assignment. The Brahmans, however, impose their will, telling the erudite teen that if he's going to go down a loser, do it in battle.

And indeed, Assalayana goes down. So hard, in fact, that the youth droops into a deep depression right before the Buddha's eyes. Seeing this, in his immeasurable compassion, the Buddha shares with Assalayana a final Dhamma lesson that immediately convinces the youth to devote himself as a lay follower of the Buddha.

I've been thinking about Assalayana's experience recently in connection with the divisiveness regarding the #CancelColbert trend and the incendiary debate it has sparked.

For background, it began with a Tweet from @ColbertReport, an account connected with the Colbert show. The Tweet, which reportedly has been deleted, read: "I'm willing to show the #Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever." That Tweet, in and of itself, was extraordinarily offensive and struck me, at least, as being very much out of Colbert's character.

The Tweet launched the hashtag #CancelColbert, thanks to @suey_park, which rallied hundreds, if not thousands of non-white people expressing their outrage.

The Tweet came from this segment on his show, which was largely devoted to lampooning Daniel Snyder.

It also ignited a litany of counter-tweets from predominately white people whose message was essentially, "shut up all of you, it's satire you stupid .... (insert racist expletive/ad hominem of your choice)." That activity attracted attention from a multitude of ostensibly liberally-leaning news and information websites that most of which, in my opinion, immediately adopted a defensive and reactionary point of view.

Suey Park was invited on to HuffPo Live to talk about the issue, but was gaslighted by the host who shut her down as soon as it became apparent to him - a white man - that he wasn't interviewing a subservient, docile Asian woman (her segment appears at roughly the 30 min mark). It's worth pointing out it was Suey Park who behaved absolutely professionally despite the circumstances.

What astounded me was I found myself defending that anger regarding the Tweet, as well as its original context within the segment it was attached, against liberal white men and journalists that I normally would have thought to be allies in these circumstances; I was not deflecting attacks from right wing reactionaries (although they came out of the woodwork as well, as expected). My sense of astonishment soon became dismay as I realized from the many others I engage with on Twitter that this was not surprising at all, that white liberals remain blinded to a large degree by their privilege. And that blindness was glaringly apparent.

Of course, I was ridiculed for failing to grasp satire and how it works. And yet, presumably liberal-minded white men couldn't hear my message when I said that white men need to stop presuming they are the arbiter of what is or is not offensive to non-whites. But as the writer in this post so prosaically points out, satire is meant to punch up, not down; it's designed to ridicule power and those that hold it, not the victim of that power. No one, however, was listening; it was a perfect storm of white men clamoring to justify another white man's behavior because it was "art."

"He's playing a character, you dumb shit, don't you get that?" opined one on Twitter.

I had others "explain" to me the full context of the original episode while they arrogantly presumed I had not seen the full clip, that I was reacting only to the original Tweet.

I felt my shoulders metaphorically slump just as Assalayana's had. The premise that Assalayana was sent to defend against the Buddha was a very racist notion that the Brahmans were the highest caste, that no other caste was equal, and the only way to become part of that caste was to be born in it. The Buddha methodically destroys that delusion, yet all Assalayana can say is, Yes, I agree with you Goatama, but this is how the Brahmans believe.

It is the delusion of privilege, and Assalayana is feeling the pressure of having been sent to defend that privilege while simultaneously clearly seeing it is delusion. He feels helpless and overwhelmed, and right there in front of the Buddha, he slips into despair (It really is a fantastic sutta to read).

But the Buddha does give him an out by offering the compassionate hand of the Dhamma and Assalayana readily accepts the gesture. By doing that, the teen willingly walks away from the Brahman culture that gave him his education and taught him many vitally important lessons. Yet that single delusion, so tenaciously held by even the most erudite of the caste, made being part of that system of thought unpalatable for the teenaged Assalayana.

I do wish I had the Buddha's debate skills. For now, I will continue to muddle through life, shedding a bit more of my privilege every day because in the end, it is my karma that I carry, no one else's, and I create my karma on my own, no one else creates it for me.

Tumbling over privilege

My re-imersion into the Buddhist blogosphere, I'm afraid, is going to make people uncomfortable. Particularly white people. And I hope it does. But I ask of you, even beg of you, to persist, to stay with me as I examine the topics I've been pondering the most of late. Whether it's about race or queer identity, I will always attempt to provide a Buddhist framework, or at least a framework based upon my own experience with Buddhism and from my own reading of Buddhist texts.

And when I say "Buddhist texts," I'm not talking about some book by some popular Rinpoche or a San Francisco Zen master. I mean the Tipitika. Because the bottom line is even what some popular Rinpoche or San Francisco Zen master writes must hold up when compared with the Tipitika.

It's not just other people that I expect to make uncomfortable. I am uncomfortable myself. And frankly, I think that's a good thing. Because when we become aware of our personal discomfort and we are willing to explore the source of that discomfort, real learning and understanding takes place.

You can't learn anything new if you think you already know everything. The polarization of American politics should be evidence enough of that (not that the polarization within American politics is anything new, really; American politics has been polarized since the Constitution was first ratified).

Recently I started a new Tumblr blog that I call "Arf, She Said." When you first examine it, you might think there's no fixed theme to the items, mostly photos and animated GIFs, I post there. But there is. And when I launched this new Tumblr, I began following some other Tumblrs that more specifically relate to race (others tangentially).

It was via one of these Tumblrs that I came to read this article. A particular line from the article jumped at me.

"In conversations about race, I’ve frequently tried and failed to express the idea that whiteness is a social construct."

And I was like, "Yes, yes!" And I know that many of you reading this are also saying, "Yes, yes!" But the trouble is the reason why I am saying "Yes, yes!" is very different from the reason why some of you are saying the same thing.

When I read those words, it was like a giant ball and chain swung with such momentum and striking me in the chest, obliterating my sense of being. But that's exactly what needs to happen. Sitting on a cushion while contemplating beguiling notions such as "race is just a fabrication" doesn't help anyone at all. Clinging to such a notion is, bluntly put, a form of mental masturbation designed to give you momentary pleasure at how awesome a person you are. All that does is distance yourself from confronting the fabrication you carry around with you every where you go and exude like a plume of noxious gas every time you take a breath: Your privilege.

"Well, you sanctimonious little shit."

For many of you the initial reaction you'll have is I'm labeling you an awful person, and you'll likely retort that you're a very sympathetic white person who reads the right articles and votes for the right people and policies and thinks the right thoughts. In fact, you'll probably get angry with me, feel like I've just personally attacked you. That's not what I'm saying at all. Frankly, if the Buddha has taught us anything, you're just not that special to have such a self-centered reaction.

This thing is I am very sympathetic to your reaction. You still need to get over it. Just like I do. Everyday I discover how I act under the cloak of privilege and repeatedly vow to avoid it next time, but there I am, doing it again. As Ministry sings, the mind is a terrible thing to taste, and this is all about the mind.

The Buddha's words to the young and bright Brahman Assalayana show how resistant the mind can be to the privilege it creates. I wrote about this in a previous post, but you can read the entire sutta here. When the Buddha contradicted the Brahman premise, as presented by Assalayana, that it is the superior caste and all other castes are "dark", the teenaged Brahman does not disagree with the Buddha's answer, but repeats every time that this is a difficult concept for the Brahmans to grasp. There are other links within that post that are applicable to race and racism.

I don't expect all my posts to be about white privilege and race, but a good many will. This is where I am, and this is how I'm using my practice to investigate.