Roshi Joan Halifax, a Buddhist teacher who heads the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, NM., wanted to educate herself about American racism so she volunteered to to work as a chaplain in the US prison system, specifically death row. Here's what she discovered:
"As a white person, you’re not even aware that you’re swimming in the waters of racism. You have to step out, do what the Zen Buddhist Roshi Bernie Glassman calls, “taking a plunge.” You’ve got to put yourself in environments where the kind of suffering that you’re not even aware of becomes obvious to you. That was one of the reasons why I went into the prison system and worked as a volunteer on death row. I’d never thought much about our prison industrial system, but soon recognized that actually it’s a class and caste system based on race and economic factors. It’s unlikely you’d find many rich white men in these systems because they can buy their way out. Going into that system, you recognize how much rage there is—no matter what side of the equation you are looking at—but you also recognize how the roots of the rage are based on our social perspectives, values, and institutions."
"As a white person, you’re not even aware that you’re swimming in the waters of racism. You have to step out, do what the Zen Buddhist Roshi Bernie Glassman calls, “taking a plunge.” You’ve got to put yourself in environments where the kind of suffering that you’re not even aware of becomes obvious to you. That was one of the reasons why I went into the prison system and worked as a volunteer on death row. I’d never thought much about our prison industrial system, but soon recognized that actually it’s a class and caste system based on race and economic factors. It’s unlikely you’d find many rich white men in these systems because they can buy their way out. Going into that system, you recognize how much rage there is—no matter what side of the equation you are looking at—but you also recognize how the roots of the rage are based on our social perspectives, values, and institutions."
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