Is this racism?

I believe that one of the central teachings in Buddhism is that we can learn how to see things as they really are. Many of us think we already see the world as is, but by practicing what the Buddha teaches, it soon becomes clear just how deluded we can be about people, places and things.

So I ask the question, is it racism being depicted in the clip below from a film titled “Windowbreaker?”

Let’s examine the basic elements of what we just viewed. It opens with two, small Asian children setting up a booby trap with marbles that is intended to act as an alarm should someone attempt to break-in their home. A Vietnamese woman is feeling fearful and vulnerable because of recent break-ins in here neighborhood. She is treated condescendingly by a white shop owner. A group of Asian youths is playing basketball on the street. We learn the hoop belongs to the white shopkeeper’s white assistant. Among the teens is an angry Asian youth. He is initially presented as being a real asshole. But we don’t know why he is an asshole. We just know that he is an asshole.

The children are left alone at night because mother has something she must do. The marble booby trap works; someone attempts to break in and wakens the children. The small boy goes to investigate, discovers the intruder, who is injured because he slips on the marbles and cuts his arm on the broken glass.

Next day, the white shopkeeper arrives at the woman’s house to install an alarm system. Outside, police are questioning all the Asian youth in the neighborhood. The officer hones in on the angry Asian youth.

The shopkeeper’s white assistant shows up at the house, his arm in a sling, to help install the alarm. He pauses when he sees the broken glass door. He turns to see the small boy. They recognize each other. At the end of the clip, we learn that the white shopkeeper has been paying his assistant to break into homes that people will become frightened enough to buy alarm systems from him.

Although this is just an 11-minute clip of a feature film, I think we can safely presume that the filmmaker’s intent with the clip is to give us a glimpse as to the nature of his film. And what I see being depicted is a white society operating under a presumption that the recent immigration of Vietnamese to the neighborhood is almost like an invasion. The Asian youths that play basketball are not using their own hoop; they come from somewhere else. The shopkeeper’s assistant is allowing them to play because he knows how they will be perceived. And it works. When another break-in is reported, who do the police question?

What we don’t know yet from this clip is why the angry Asian youth is so angry. My guess is that the film will eventually lead to two conflicts: one involving the young boy and the shopkeeper’s assistant, the other between the angry Asian youth and the shopkeeper’s assistant.

If we view things as they really are, it means that sometimes we – people who probably don’t think of ourselves as being racist, who would take extreme offense at the notion that we harbor racist feelings – must recognize that our actions are not well-thought out, that they are often automatic and proceed from a perspective that we perceive is normal, but which is perceived by others as oppressive and even racist.

This is a very difficult conversation for even the most “enlightened” among us to have.

What’s your reaction to the film clip?

Can we ever fully understand war?

I just finished watching an extraordinary movie. I bought a copy of Tae Guk Gi (The Brotherhood of War) probably two months ago at Reckless Records in Chicago, but I never felt ready to watch it. But tonight I said, what the hell, let’s take a look.

I am exhausted.

A Korean movie set during the Korean conflict, it has perhaps even more gut-wrenching intensity than Saving Private Ryan. Really, this movie took everything I had emotionally, and then wanted more. Now that I’ve had a moment to reflect on the film, some Buddhist concepts come to mind.

The story line is of two brothers: one who is bright (Jin-seok), and one who is not so bright but who is the anchor of the family (Jin-tae). They are both swept up into the Korean War, ripped away from their widowed mother and the woman Jin-tae wants to marry. Jin-tae vows to do whatever he can to send his younger brother home because he is the hope for the family; Jin-seok has a chance to go to college. But along the way, everything goes wrong. Jin-seok comes to resent what his brother is doing, and Jin-tae gets caught up in the delusion of nationalism and war.

Jin-seok, however, is not immune from change. There is a scene when the South Koreans are in bitter hand-to-hand combat with North Koreans. Jin-seok has a soldier beneath his bayonet and is about to kill him, but the North Korean pleads for his life, saying he is just 15 years old and was forced to join the army. Doubt rises in Jin-seok's mind and he relents, letting the boy live. But the North Korean lad immediately takes up the rifle with the bayonet and attacks Jin-seok, ready to kill him. Jin-seok struggles to grab a nearby knife and succeeds; he takes the blade and will kill the teen, but another soldier comes by and kills the boy first.

The First Precept tells us to not kill. It instructs us to respect all life and living sentient beings. But the Buddha also acknowledged that countries and kings have armies and they are wont to wage war. And that sweeps up common people into these schemes. Jin-seok recognized that he needn’t kill just because it was war. But when the ungrateful teen turned on him and was about to kill him, Jin-seok did what any of us would have done: defend his own life to the point of taking another’s.

Jin-tae becomes overwhelmed by the war. He begins with a good intention – he wants to do something to win a medal so Jin-seok can be sent home – but the war changes him. He no longer sees humans, no longer sees people; instead he sees symbols. When their platoon captures some communists, among them is a friend of theirs from back home. Jin-tae is ready to kill him because, as he says, all he sees are commies. Even with a good intention at the start, Jin-tae is easily corrupted by the violence and chaos of war. He initially believes the promises made to him, but eventually realizes that there are no promises, there are no guarantees. And so he sinks into chaos as he sees everything that is dear to him taken away.

God, this movie drained me of everything I had. I am an easy weeper, I will cry at just about anything; but this movie had me sobbing like no other. There were times during the movie I was beginning to wonder, “How much more can I take?” It’s still making me weep to think about it.

But one thing I certainly take from this movie: It’s not enough to have a good intention. In fact, sometimes a good intention is utterly meaningless. What matters is skillful action.

Forming a skillful response

We Buddhists have recently been faced with a challenge of faith, so to speak. Public figures from all across the globe have publicly commented on Buddhism in ways that many of us consider, to put it mildly, ignorant. There was the Rev. Rony Tan in Singapore of the Christian evangelical group Lighthouse, who used the dubious example of an allegedly former monk as an opportunity to denigrate Buddhism; there was Brit Hume of Fox News who inarticulately suggested that Tiger Woods ought to abandon his Buddhist practice and turn to Christianity where he would find the type of forgiveness that Hume suggested Buddhism did not have; and more recently we had Bill Maher who used Tiger Woods’ adulterous activities as an opportunity to bash Buddhism so clumsily that the normally erudite Maher sounded like a 12-year-old who asserts he’s an expert on sex after his first orgasm from masturbating.

We Buddhists who also happen to be gay are quite familiar with this type of ignorance. We’ve heard it from the people who like to lump homosexuals with pedophiles, suggesting that the terms are interchangeable; who assert that allowing same-sex couples to marry will surely lead down a slippery slope to humans marrying animals, that the institution of marriage will be so irreparably harmed that no decent straight person would want it; who stridently fight to deny us equal protection under the law, wrongly asserting that our “condition” is voluntary and chosen, failing to recognize that their protected religious affiliation is also voluntary and chosen; and who, when these straw men are knocked down, finally resort to that last refuge for those who have no rational argument by saying that homosexuals are sinful deviants who are despised by their deity because the Bible tells them so.

How do we respond to such ignorance? Should we respond to such ignorance? What could happen if we fail to respond to such ignorance?

John over at Sweep the Dust, Push the Dirt, recently asked these questions, which provoked a lengthy discussion in the comments to his post. You should take the time to read the responses if you haven’t already. Very interesting.

There are several passages in the Buddhist canon – from both the Pali texts and Mahayana sutras – that provide us clear guidance in this matter so we don’t need to debate when or how to respond to these situations.

First, there is the Brahmajala Sutta, in which the Buddha guides monks how to respond when someone misrepresents or disparages the Buddha, the Dhamma, or the Sangha.

“Bhikkhus! If others should malign the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Samgha, you must not feel resentment, nor displeasure, nor anger on that account.

“Bhikkhus! If you feel angry or displeased when others malign the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Samgha, it will only be harmful to you (because then you will not be able to practice the dhamma).

“Bhikkhus! If you feel angry or displeased when others malign the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Samgha, will you be able to discriminate their good speech from bad?

“No, indeed, Venerable Sir!” said the bhikkhus.

“If others malign me or the Dhamma, or the Samgha, you should explain (to them) what is false as false, saying ‘It is not so. It is not true. It is, indeed, not thus with us. Such fault is not to be found among us.’”

In the chapter titled Fortitude within the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha’s followers acknowledge that there will be times when they shall encounter people who “shall have much overweening pride and shall covet offerings, though their unwholesome faculties shall increase and they shall be hard to teach and convert, yet we, rousing the strength of great forbearance, will read and recite this scripture, bear and preach it, write and copy it, and in a variety of ways make offerings to it, not begrudging even bodily life.”

The chapter on Fortitude goes on with the many bodhisattvas proclaiming their understanding that an “evil age” will come when “…ignorant men … that revile us with foul mouths, or attack us with knives and staves … Men of twisted wisdom, their hearts sycophantic and crooked, (who) say they already have attained what in fact they have not yet attained, their hearts being full of pride.”

Faced with such calumny, the bodhisattvas proclaim, “Out of veneration for the Buddha, we will endure all these evils. By them we shall be addressed with derision … Such words of derision as these we will all endure with patience… We, venerating and believing the Buddha, will don the armor of forbearance and, to preach this scripture, will endure these troubles.”

This forbearance is anchored in the Four Ways of the Bodhisattva, which Thich Nhat Hanh describes as first being able to “dwell in a place of action.”

This means, “practicing patience and seeking harmony with others in everything that you do. If you are patient and tolerant of others, then you can create peace and joy for yourself, and thanks to that, those around you will also feel peaceful and joyful. Patience is not a weakness, but a stance of moderation and restraint. You do not try to force people to adopt your views,” says Thich Nhat Hanh in his book, “Peaceful Action, Open Heart: Lessons from the Lotus Sutra.”

Thich Nhat Hanh goes on to say that we shouldn’t directly engage “those who have worldly power, who practice wrong livelihood, or who have wrong intentions. This does not mean that you reject such people, but you do not seek them out to try and convert them.”

Developing and sustaining such restraint so that our responses are skillful is no easy task. We can be easily duped by ego into believing our intentions are correct and, subsequently, our actions are skillful. Which is why it is helpful to consider the Buddha’s teaching to his son Rahula on the importance of clearly reflecting on our intentions and actions not just before we engage in them, but during and after, discerning if what we are doing is, in fact, skillful and beneficial.

So out of all this, we see that responding to these and other events can be done skillfully, that we needn’t be silent doormats. But our response needs to be tempered and evenhanded for it to be skillful, something I struggle with all the time. Because what is the Dhamma? It is merely a raft we use to carry us across the river of samsara to the side of freedom. Once we cross that river, we abandon the raft. So if we become passionate about the Dhamma, that results in us clinging uncomfortably to something that we must ultimately let go.