Bhante Sumano

“These killings [of African Americans] were traumatic for a huge chunk of the population, and especially for practicing Buddhists who were people of color. There were people searching for support and understanding. And in a lot of the communities that even I am a part of, or have been a part of, the response of support, listening, understanding, and compassion just wasn't there.”

So says Bhante Sumano, a Black monk at Empty Cloud Monastery, on the Buddhist response to the social justice movement that responded to the deaths of George Floyd and others.

This is the 6th episode in our ongoing series, “The Intersection of Dhamma and Race.” It is our hope that this show, as well as the other episodes in this series, can be a platform for continued conversations that examine entrenched protocols, practices and biases within the vipassana and mindfulness communities.

Bhante Sumano spent his childhood in Kingston, Jamaica, and eventually moved to New York City to attend college and be near his mother. He stayed on after graduation, spending six years as a teacher in the New York public schools, largely to an immigrant population.

An interest in Buddhism was ignited from an unlikely source: “The Tao Of Pooh,” a book by Benjamin Hoff.  Although the book was more centered on Taoism, that exposure to Eastern philosophy led him to discovering Thich Nhat Hanh, and he undertook an extended retreat at the Vietnamese teacher’s Blue Cliff Monastery in nearby Pine Bush, in 2016. From there, the search continued; he studied under Thanissaro Bhikkhu at Wat Metta in California, and took courses at International Meditation Society in Massachusetts. He ultimately found a home at Empty Cloud in New York as he appreciated the flexibility and openness in how the monastery embraced different Theravadin traditions.

For some time, he joined retreats there as a lay yogi, and was satisfied continuing his lay life while pursuing a spiritual practice. Yet he was motivated to take the step to ordain when Bhante Suddaso, his future preceptor, pointed out that his current happiness was based on certain conditions, and that was bound to change based on karma, and so also would his happiness.

Although life is always uncertain, Bhante Sumano chose an especially unusual year--2020—to ordain, and found his monkhood confronting everything from the coronavirus pandemic to the social justice movement that arose in response to the police killings of George Floyd, among others. During times like these, he especially appreciated being a part of a community such as Empty Cloud, which as an institution not only supported the protests but also took an active role in some. Bhante Sumano felt a real sensitivity from the monastery in “walking the talk” around inclusion. He gives one example of this: typically, it is customary for the junior monks to stay at the rear during an alms walk, but the monastery was concerned about the optics of a single Black monk trailing a line of White and Asian monastics, and so ensured that he would never be at the end.

Bhante Sumano feels that the Buddha’s teachings have much to teach us about understanding racism and prejudice, noting that everybody is essentially in the same boat of trying to come out greed, hatred, and delusion, while also trying to let go of one’s ego and attachment to identity. Yet, he also acknowledges a careful balance in the value of minority communities having a sense of pride in their identity, and the need to create safe spaces where people of color can find a shared spiritual community.

As he says: “There is beauty in owning one's racial identity. There's beauty in owning, valuing, and respecting one's heritage, ancestors, sexual identity, and gender identity. But on the other side of the coin, there can also be imprisonment there. When you start to see that these things are who you are, and you can't do anything to step outside of that, or you can't do anything to change that. But everything's constantly changing! Everything's constantly in flux. And when we can hold these things loosely, or even better, not hold them at all… that's when I think we're getting closer to what the Buddha was talking about. But again, it's a progression. So I don't necessarily think that taking pride and one's identity is antithetical to the Buddhist teachings. What's antithetical to the Buddhist teachings in my view, anyway, is taking these things up and saying this is all we will ever be.”

That said, Bhante Sumano does feel let down by the response of many within the greater Buddhist community in the West, noting that even teachers for whom he had much respect seemed to misunderstand the needs of the moment and engage in spiritual bypass. Ultimately, he sees it as an issue of “blind spots,” acknowledging the challenge that so many of us face in truly understanding perspectives outside the limitations of our own personal experience and perspective. While this is the goal of most any spiritual practice, and particularly a Buddhist one, the current challenge underscores the difficulty that even advanced practitioners and teachers have in undertaking.