Episode 17: Dhamma Diaries, An Assault on Faith
Sometimes a single moment can be so profound… or so complex… that it takes hours, or even days, following the encounter to get a handle on it. In the story that follows, that “moment” has been taking years to process.
This episode is part of our “Dhamma Diaries” series, in which we describe a single but impactful event that took place in a Buddhist context in Myanmar, and then flesh out its many dimensions to better understand the country, the culture, and the spiritual practice. While today’s story very much fits into the structure for this series, it also dovetails with our current series, the “Intersection of Race and Dhamma.”
The show that follows features a conversation between Joah McGee and Yonie Le Xavier. We begin by exploring Yonie’s background: an Ethiopian-American who grew up in a Christian family in Northern California and went on to graduate school in Texas, he caught the travel bug early and eventually visited over 40 countries.
A fateful turning point happened in an unlikely place: hanging out at a bar in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he met a guy who had just come out of a ten-day silent meditation retreat in the tradition of S. N. Goenka. Once he was back home, Yonie did some googling and ended up finding The Dhamma Brothers, a documentary about vipassana meditation courses held at a prison.
Yonie was inspired to take a course. Although he had enjoyed attending church on Sunday with his family, he found that it did not provide a lasting peace; plus, he was grappling with insecurity and depression. He knew he had found something special after he took his first retreat. In particular, from the very first discourse, he was moved by hearing Goenka speak of the Land of Dhamma, Burma. Yonie felt he had received a great gift in life and had a yearning to one day visit the Golden Land, meet the living Saṅgha, and experience the place that had given him his precious spiritual teaching.
After learning about what landed Yonie in Burma, Joah chimes in to describe how the two came in contact. He describes how—counterintuitively—the country’s biggest city and where he lives, Yangon, is also the most difficult for foreign yogis, and even monks, to find a monastery to stay at. For meditators looking to find lodging in a Dhamma environment before a pilgrimage or course, it can be frustrating to instead have to check in at a hotel, where the commercial and worldly vibe is quite a contrast to the spiritual purpose of their visit. For this reason, Joah and his wife received permission from a nearby Sayadaw to furnish four rooms that would be exclusively available to foreign practitioners passing through town. Although Yonie had never met Joah before, he had heard about him from his Dhamma friends in the US, and requested permission to stay at one of these rooms. As Joah was out of town during the visit, he made arrangements and asked his assistant and neighbor to help Yonie settle in.
The first few days of Yonie’s stay at the monastery were great. He meditated, made friends, and explored the surroundings. That all changed on the fourth day. Sitting on the floor in the dining hall waiting to eat, Yonie saw a number of new monks also in attendance. One of these walked over to him and kicked him on the shoulder. Stunned, Yonie sat in shock, waiting for an explanation or intervention. The monk then kicked him again, on his behind. Feeling tension and anger swelling up, Yonie went to his meditation practice, trying to observing sensation with equanimity. He left the hall, meditated for 20 minutes in his room, and then left to meet Joah’s neighbor. Although the neighbor did not address the specific incident, the depth of his mettā immediately calmed Yonie, and Joah’s assistant took him out to lunch; Yonie messaged Joah to inform him of what had just taken place.
Later in the afternoon Yonie met with a senior monk and witnessed another disturbing incident, when he saw a dog on the monastery grounds struck by another senior monk. As a lover of animals, this jarring incident, combined with his assault earlier in the day, awoke Yonie to the reality that even long-time monks are subject to strong defilements just like the rest of us. Thinking, “If after all these years being a monk you are still hitting dogs, what’s the point?”, he decided to drop his own plans to ordain in Burma, and leave that evening on the night bus to Bagan. Although still holding a lot inside from those two incidents, Yonie was careful to leave on a positive note, giving dana and bowing formally to the Sayadaw as he paid respects. He realized he was likely the first Black-American that the monks had ever met, and he felt it was important not to leave a negative impression that might prejudice other Black people they might meet in the future.
Joah also shared his side of the story hearing about the incident in real time. He was in China, and the news brought a sense of shock, anger, and shame. Although knowing that Burmese culture favors indirect communication and typically skirts delicate or sensitive topics—which this was surely one—he felt horrified that a sincere apology would from the monastery would not be a likely outcome.
There was a lot to untangle in even figuring out what had just taken place. After several hours of discussion, and then learning more in the ensuing days, the most he was able to piece together was a monk from out of town was in the dining hall that day, and wasn’t informed that Yonie was an American meditator staying and eating at the monastery. There was some suggestion that he was not quite “right in the head,” but nothing definite. Although this was not confirmed or even inferred from anyone associated with the incident, Joah wondered if Yonie’s features and skin color may have been misinterpreted as being Muslim.
The incident was a shock, and a learning moment for Joah. He realized that “white privilege” was not limited to an American context. Whatever the reason that Yonie was kicked, Joah was almost certain that he, as a white person, would not have received the same treatment. Beyond this, Joah felt a deep sense of shame that not only did this happen in the Golden Land, but that it took place in the very monastic compound where he and his wife had furnished rooms with good intentions to help foreign meditators passing through the city. Sadly, the moment impacted a faith he had long held, that any meditator, from any place, could happen into a Burmese monastery and meditation center and be embraced on their spiritual journey. Even if Yonie’s experience was an aberration, just that it had happened—and could again—was painful.
As for Yonie, the experience was just another sad marker of the existence of prejudice in this world. Having traveled extensively, he speaks from experience that discrimination is not only an American issue. As he says, the darker one is, the more likely the prejudice, and the bigger the burden that must be carried. Yonie prides himself on not being a victim, and has learned that, being Black, while he must continually face such incidents, what’s best for him is to move on quickly—again, and again, and again. He doesn’t want to look back on those traumatic experiences, but live in the present moment, and that is also how he responded on the day in question. He left with grace and traveled to Bagan. After becoming a serious meditator, Yonie also began to apply Buddhist concepts to his thinking about his encounters with prejudice, such as wondering if his past karma from a former life is now causing him to continually face such prejudice, which he can’t help but notice that his White friends are free from.
Going back to the incident itself, Yonie was further confused that no one had stood up or stepped in during this incident. After all, a number of monks and novices were in the hall that Yonie had befriended during his stay here. Here Joah explained a few things about Burmese culture and accepted modes of communication that Yonie had not been aware of. Aside from Burmese culture favoring indirect and non-confrontational forms of communication, it was also coming out of a brutal dictatorship, where staying silent was a survival mechanism. And in addition to this, open challenges to authority for any reason—as this would have been—are rare. Such discomfort around this sensitive issue resulted in many present to simply shut off to what was happening in front of them, and may have also contributed to those who heard about it later being unable to even express sympathy to me on Yonie’s behalf for the experience he’d had to endure there.
The saddest part for Joah was when he learned that Yonie say had arrived in Burma with plans for ordination. Yonie’s initial decision to ordain was not made lightly. He has dreadlocks, and explained that this hairstyle refers to the “dread” that Blacks feel in the world, so shaving his head in order to become a monk would have been far more than a simple haircut for him. There was just one man he would make that sacrifice for—the Buddha—and doing it the country where his teacher, S.N. Goenka, hailed from, would be doubly inspirational. Moreover, Yonie had by then seen many Asian monks, and even several White Western ones—but never a Black monastic, which he felt that this would be beneficial for others to see. But after that tumultuous day, he realized he could not go ahead with it as planned.
After they had discussed his story and some of its cross-cultural backdrop, Yonie took a moment to express his appreciation that the conversation between the two was able to take place. As someone who has generally tended to move on from unpleasant moments of prejudice, he found that their ability to explore these sensitive issues together would have been impossible without shared openness and trust. He said their conversation mirrored what was now happening across the US in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement, and what made him hopeful for the future. Plus, knowledge is power, and now that Yonie had learned more about Burmese culture and the country’s recent history, he said it would allow him to approach the situation with more compassion.
On the subject of difficult conversations, Joah shared about a time from his own study abroad experience in college, when he was in Paris for a semester. A cybercafe owner he had become friends with made an anti-Semitic comment one day. When Joah—who is Jewish—responded by informing him that he would not return to the café after hearing this derogatory language, the owner launched into a broadside charging that Joah was only sensitive because he was American, and that he was being too sensitive and making too big a deal out of it. Then Yonie shared that a similar thing happened to him while staying at a Bagan hostel, when a fellow guest dismissed the incident as nothing too serious, as Yonie had not been seriously injured or anything. And in Myanmar, as they had discussed earlier, such topics are rarely explored or discussed. So Joah offered that while he knew that some listeners will complain that this entire podcast episode was making a mountain out of a molehill, it was important to take a stand to stress the importance of speaking openly about acts of prejudice. He also mentioned the importance of a meditator maintaining the balance of calling out wrongful or hurtful acts, but in a way that doesn’t add harm to the world.
Their conversation moved to the recent Black Lives Matter movement in the US. Yonie acknowledged that his samādhi had not been so great, and attributed that to how closely he was following the news, and how challenging it has been to process the breadth of the social change now taking place. It was coming up in his sittings as intensely pleasant and unpleasant sensations, and try as he might to simply observe objectively, he was frequently finding himself caught up in the experience.
Yonie feels that an understanding of Dhamma and an active meditation practice is crucial to this current moment. For example, he believes that an understanding of anicca should allow us to recognize where change is possible. This includes not condemning a person for holding or expressing discriminatory views if they are able to genuinely apologize and change their ways. Yonie sees that Dhamma practice gives us a balance between neither “burning it down” or “rolling over”, but rather finding a way to respond with kindness and compassion. Speaking personally, he finds that the time he has spent sitting has allowed him to respond with mettā when facing racist and discriminatory acts, even towards someone who is actively hostile. Overall he feels calmer and more peaceful, and feels it when he misses one of his daily sittings.
Yonie does hope that more Black Americans will gravitate towards meditation, and always feels a deep wellspring of mettā when encounters them at the meditation center—even though he he has never met more than a handful on any given course. Just as he felt that Black monks could be an inspiration, he hopes to see the appointment of more Black teachers within the Goenka vipassana tradition.
Aishah Shahidah Simmons, a long-term Black American vipassana meditator formerly in the S.N. Goenka tradition and an award-winning cultural worker, joins our volunteer team as co-producer of this episode.
Also, please see here to read the preview essay that appeared prior to the podcast release, and is mentioned in this episode.