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Opening Dharma Access: Listening to BIPOC Teachers & Practitioners

Opening Dharma Access: Listening to BIPOC Teachers & Practitioners

By: Rev. Liên Shutt & Rev. Dana Takagi
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About this listen

Welcome to "Opening Dharma Access," a podcast where we hear stories from BIPOC teachers & practitioners about their Dharma experiences and practice, and how those inform the ways they are sharing & practicing the Dharma today.

Season 3 description: Hosted by Rev. Liên & Rev. Dana Takagi
This season, we will have a new focus: Uplifting and Forwarding Asian American/Asian Diasporic Buddhist Experiences in the West.

With our guests and audience, we will explore the specificities of Asian American/Asian Diasporic experiences. We take as given that there are generational differences (hence the historical moment matters!) and we hope to also delve into Asian family norms and values, our inchoate understanding of ancestor worship, issues of identity, representation, stereotypes about sexuality and sexual identity, and Asian American depression.

A theme we'll be using to help guide our conversations is The Disquiet - a term we are adapting from writer/poet Fernando Pessoa (The Book of Disquiet) -- which, in our view, signals a complex recognition of self, mind, and body. The evidence for the foregoing includes scholarly research indexed in aggregate statistics on depression, youth suicide, and other issues in immigrant or first-generation families. While Asian Americans are not alone in experiencing trauma, the racial languages and discourses of othering are different for us than for other groups.


What do we hope is the outcome of this podcast? Our first aim is to give voice to the range and depth of Buddhism in Asian and Asian American generations. We hope, in doing so, we help to shine a light on the limited or myopic envisioning of race in primarily white sanghas. Asian and Asian American diasporic truths about practice are a teaching for contemporary dharma organizations and centers. We recognize the depth and range of Asian and Asian Diasporic Buddhists is a wisdom mirror for organized Buddhism in the West.

Thank you to the Hemera Foundation for their generous support of Season 3!

Contact us at: Info.Access2Zen@gmail.com
Further Info at: AccessToZen.org

© 2025 Opening Dharma Access: Listening to BIPOC Teachers & Practitioners Spirituality
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Episodes
  • Grow Up in the Dharma with Mushim Patricia Ikeda

    Grow Up in the Dharma with Mushim Patricia Ikeda
    May 6 2025

    Secular & Buddhist teacher Mushim Patricia Ikeda in convo with Rev. Liên on how mature practice can help us deal with the current conditions of our world.

    GUEST

    Mushim Patricia Ikeda is an internationally-known secular mindfulness and Buddhist teacher working primarily with justice activists and Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) meditation practitioners and with people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. A core teacher at East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, California, she is an author whose writing has been published in Lion's Roar, Tricycle, Buddhadharma and various anthologies. Mushim was selected by Lion's Roar Buddhist media magazine as one of twenty-six "Great Buddhist Teachers" in the January 2022 issue.

    Connect with Mushim at:

    Website: www.mushimikeda.com

    Facebook: www.facebook.com/mushim.ikeda

    Bluesky: mushimikeda

    X / Twitter: @MushimCA1

    Instagram: mushimikeda

    LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mushim-patricia-ikeda-5307279/

    HOST:
    REV. LIÊN SHUTT (she/they) is a recognized leader in the movement that breaks through the wall of American white-centered convert Buddhism to welcome people of all backgrounds into a contemporary, engaged Buddhism. As an ordained Zen priest, licensed social worker, and longtime educator/teacher of Buddhism, Shutt represents new leadership at the nexus of spirituality and social justice, offering a special warm welcome to Asian Americans, all BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, immigrants, and those seeking a “home” in the midst of North American society’s reckoning around racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia. Shutt is a founder of Access to Zen (2014). You can learn more about her work at AccessToZen.org. Her new book, Home is Here: Practicing Antiracism with the Engaged Eightfold Path. See all her offerings at EVENTS
    Show More Show Less
    55 mins
  • June Tanoue Reads "Dwell Nowhere and Browse That"

    June Tanoue Reads "Dwell Nowhere and Browse That"
    Apr 15 2025

    June Kaililani Tanoue, Kumu Hula, reads her blog post, "Dwell Nowhere and Browse That." Listen as she reflects on a conversation with her husband Roshi Robert Joshin Althouse. Together they are cofounders of Zen Life & Meditation Center of Chicago. You can find the written piece on the Halau i Ka Pono website.


    About June

    June Ryushin Tanoue, B.S., MPH is co-founder of Zen Life & Meditation Center. Practicing Zen since 1993, she received Transmission in 2014 as a fully empowered Zen Teacher/ Zen Buddhist Priest and Inka as a Roshi in 2022.
    June is a Kumu Hula and founded Halau I Ka Pono, the Hula School of Chicago in 2009.

    Read June's piece, "The Hula Sutra" at Lion's Roar.

    zlmc.org

    halauikapono.org

    Halau I Ka Pono Facebook

    Instagram: @JuneTanoue

    June's blog posts: https://halauikapono.org/news
    Show More Show Less
    5 mins
  • Hula As Resistance

    Hula As Resistance
    Apr 1 2025

    June Kaililani Tanoue, Kumu Hula, talks about how to practice observing our thoughts rather than holding onto them, whether times are easy or tough. Hear about how June started Halau I Ka Pono as an offshoot of the Zen Life & Meditation Center after she moved to Chicago, and how Hula is the dance of being a pillar in one's community.


    About June

    June Ryushin Tanoue, B.S., MPH is co-founder of Zen Life & Meditation Center. Practicing Zen since 1993, she received Transmission in 2014 as a fully empowered Zen Teacher/ Zen Buddhist Priest and Inka as a Roshi in 2022.
    June is a Kumu Hula and founded Halau I Ka Pono, the Hula School of Chicago in 2009.

    Read June's piece, "The Hula Sutra" at Lion's Roar.

    zlmc.org

    halauikapono.org

    Halau I Ka Pono Facebook

    Instagram: @JuneTanoue

    June's blog posts: https://halauikapono.org/news
    Show More Show Less
    36 mins

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