Episode #205: Uncovering Dr. Leon Wright
“I had always been looking for representation,” Aishah Shahidah Simmons explains. “The path for me, in my lifetime, is the spiritual path of practicing vipassana meditation. My first teacher was S.N. Goenka, but there just weren't any references to African Americans in this specific lineage.” So when she first learned about Dr. Leon Wright, a little known African-American meditator appointed by Sayagyi U Ba Khin as a vipassana teacher in 1963, she was incredulous that Wright had not just passed under her personal radar, but that such an intriguing and important figure was so little known, period. “I felt like my head has just really opened and it's set me on this quest to learn as much as I possibly could!”
Aishah, currently a trauma-informed meditation teacher, spent 17 years practicing in the Goenka tradition, attending 40 retreats. She joins the podcast to discuss her research into Wright’s life and legacy, expanding on a talk she gave at Elm Community Insight earlier this year.
“Dr. Wright was a… scholar, theologian, author and cultural attaché to Burma, and in the 1950s he studied with Sayagyi U Ba Khin,” she explains, referring to the Burmese meditation master who established International Meditation Center (IMC) in Rangoon, where S.N. Goenka also learned vipassana. Born in 1902, he soon had to fend for himself as an orphan, but he went on to become a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Boston University, received a Sacred Theology Degree from Harvard Divinity School, and later, a Doctorate from Harvard University. He joined Howard University shortly after, and was an Associate Editor for the University’s Journal of Religious Thoughts. In 1952, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship, leading to his posting at the US Embassy in Rangoon from 1955 to 1957. More information about Dr. Wright’s life can be found in a recent paper, ‘Local Cure, Global Chant’, by Dan Stuart.
Just how unique was it for an African-American to achieve such success years before the Civil Rights movement? Aishah shares that while some Blacks were able to begin attending universities in the early 20th century, it was still far from the norm, as Jim Crow laws still enforced segregation in many states; Blacks did not have voting rights in many Southern states, and lynching was still commonplace. “So for him to be able to be admitted into these institutions, and then excel and get a PhD, it is just incredible!”
U Ba Khin’s letter authorizing Wright to teach came two years before Martin Luther King’s famous March on Washington, and also before the 1960s counterculture movement really took shape. The growth of Buddhist practice and the mindfulness movement in the West is largely a result of hippie travelers coming in contact with spiritual traditions in the East, and planting those initial seeds when they went back to their home countries (for example, there’s Michael Stein’s story about his establishing both Insight Meditation Society and Dhamma Dhara in Massachusetts in a recent podcast discussion). However, it’s quite remarkable that many years before these hippies— most if not all of whom were white— reached the far shores of Asia, Wright had already practiced with a Burmese meditation master, and again, been authorized to teach! For this reason, part of Aishah’s research into Wright has also gone into questioning why so much of the life of this “hidden figure” remains unchronicled. “You hear about the Western students, but Western often means, particularly in that time period [of the 1950s and 1960s], white. And so here’s Leon Wright!” This discovery was particularly meaningful to Aishah, given her longstanding practice in the Goenka tradition. “I really thought that [Goenka] was the chosen one… I had tunnel vision,” says Aishah. I’m grateful for what I learned during that time, and [also] grateful to be able to expand my vision.”
It was especially meaningful for Aishah that she learned about Wright during the summer of 2020, when the murder of George Floyd inspired the Black Lives Matter movement, which reverberated through American society. During that time, when the general awareness of the country’s continuing systemic racism was so heightened, many mindfulness and meditation organizations felt the need to look into their own diversity practices, including the appointment of teachers of color. For Aishah, it showed just how far ahead of his time U Ba Khin had been. “He had already laid the groundwork in terms of appointing a Black person,” she notes. Importantly, back then, Wright didn’t need to go through any white gatekeepers to seek this teacher appointment, because he had gone to directly the source of these teachings in Burma. “When we learn these things, it's kind of like we're tearing down Confederate statues,” she recalls, drawing another comparison to events in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. “When I think about my early days of practicing, if I knew that there was an African-American theologian who lived in Burma for two years, who studied with my teacher’s teacher, and then was appointed in 1963, particularly as somebody whose parents were in the Civil Rights movement… Like, that's where they met, I am here because of the Civil Rights movement… [So] yes, this is also part of my legacy. As a Black woman Buddhist, I've always had a deeper connection to [U Ba Khin,]… when I learned about this, my heart opened even wider.”
Wright’s influence spans oceans. In his 1990 thesis, Gustaaf Houtman describes how the very urbane and sophisticated educator, U Ko Lay, had initially been quite disinterested in Buddhist practice, until a chance visit to Washington, DC. He was brought by a friend to attend a lecture being given at the Burmese Embassy—by none other than Dr. Leon Wright! U Ko Lay was so moved upon hearing about his experiences with U Ba Khin that he not only became a devoted meditator, but also an important Buddhist scholar and author. “Life trajectories could have been very different and impacting all of us and who are,” Aishah remarks on Wright’s impact.
In tracing Wright’s background, Aishah provides context regarding the Christian community he operated within. She notes how the noted Reverend Dr. Howard Thurman, one of King’s mentors, wrote a blurb on Wright’s book, “From Cult to Cosmos, Can Jesus Be Saved?”, which illustrates the elite, vibrant, intellectual and activist community that Wright was a part of. And although he practiced vipassana meditation with U Ba Khin, she feels that he likely continued to identify as a Christian. “When he came back from Myanmar, and when he started teaching, he was incorporating what he learned. He was very much into the occult, psychic thinking, and the belief of metaphysical learning and energy. I have to say, he was ahead of his time,” she notes, adding that if he were alive today, he might be seen as embodying New Age perspectives.
Aishah explains that Wright felt that the true nature of humanity could be found by studying occult phenomenon, particularly understanding life after death, which to him was also a way of knowing God. “He was searching and open to different religions and spiritual and sacred practices. I would definitely say that foundationally, he was a Christian, and he incorporated different practices and different teachings.” Aishah emphasizes how remarkable it was that Wright— a member of the NAACP as well as Alpha Phi Alpha (a Black fraternity which also included Martin Luther King, Jr.)— was teaching the New Testament at Howard University, incorporating such topics as healing energies besides what he learned from U Ba Khin. One of the more famous documented cases involving Wright’s healing was Yvonne Seon, a scholar and a minister who he recognized as a “channel for the flow-through of the love of God.” She was legally blind following a car accident, but after Wright laid his hands over her eyes, she was able to see again! Although she is not well-known, her son is. His name? Dave Chappelle, the popular comedian.
Examining U Ba Khin’s influence on Wright, Aishah believes that it was profound. Besides being teacher and pupil, the two seemed to share a similar bent— for example, like Wright, his teacher also experimented with healing. There was a also a shared belief in spiritual forces beyond the seen; she describes how Wright struggled during his time meditating, not unlike many new students who came to IMC, and Mother Sayama, U Ba Khin’s assistant with apparent psychic powers, was called on to help him in battle the unseen forces he was facing. And it is clear from the surviving letters between Wright and U Ba Khin that they forged a deep, spiritual friendship after these experiences. “It's palpable. I actually wept the first time I read it, and it made long for a relationship like that, just to have that deep connection, and you can see that it was a two-way street,” she describes. “The depth of their love, and I speak as a queer person, so this is not any kind of homophobia in terms of saying that this is surpassing that kind of human love. Like, it's really a deep spiritual love! It's how I envision mettā.” Moreover, U Ba Khin stated that Wright had made more spiritual progress than you could find in 10,000 Buddhist monks in his country. This, combined with the fact that Wright was only one of a half dozen appointments that the meditation master made in his lifetime, certainly attests to the rarefied progress that Wright achieved at IMC, and affirms his qualifications as a Dhamma teacher.
Aishah believes there is a lot of mystery still left to uncover about Wright. For example, why did he get sent to Burma, of all places? Aishah has most often heard about African-American officials and diplomats being assigned to Europe, the Caribbean, or Africa during that time period, but not Southeast Asia. And what exactly was he doing there in Rangoon as an American official, as in the 1950s it was a battleground of Cold War ideology and intrigue—could he have been undercover with the CIA? And then, back at home, how was he involved in the Civil Rights movement, and did his spiritual practice inform his understanding of race relations? And finally, as Wright was alive for the first several decades of Goenka’s worldwide vipassana mission, did the two have any contact? Did Goenka ever reach out to him, as he did to other disciples of U Ba Khin
Not the least of these questions is what Wright actually taught to the 10,000 students he was believed to have guided. Aishah found reference to a “cleansing technique” from a former student, and interestingly, the Covenant Christian Community describes currently teaching a method in the tradition of Wright. “He probably he didn't need a quote unquote ‘center,’ as he had the classroom, he was a professor, he had teachers and students all of the time coming in and out. So while he did have retreats… he felt like he was able to engage and spread the word [as a professor].” Aishah surmises that while he did have white students, he was predominantly teaching other Blacks, including many who might not necessarily have had an interest in Buddhist practice—or even known that they were learning something with Burmese roots. Indeed, Aishah feels that Wright’s eclectic tastes in spiritual practices could explain why he has fallen through these historical cracks, as it were, because there is no obvious group to “claim” him.
“I feel like Reverend Dr. Wright is very much with me, and I feel very close to his spirit,” Aishah says in closing. “I have a lot of gratitude for Reverend Dr. Leon Wright, and for Sayagyi U Ba Khin, just tremendous gratitude in terms of my practice, and thinking about all of the all the ways that he's influenced me. I feel like I'm a part of that cycle or sphere of energy that came from U Ba Khin, which obviously came from people who proceed from U Ba Khin as well.”
You can learn more about Aishah Simmons' background, work and ongoing projects here.