Disentangling our identities

Addressing a practitioner’s question

Somebody wrote in a question. He stated, “Unity is an important factor in the success of any group. Unity comes from a healthy sense of pride and love for the group one is in. Given current affairs, my question is in regards to ethnic groups. How does the Buddhist who is part of an ethnic group maintain and preach unity to his ethnic group, while practicing the Buddhist teachings of no self? Unity is so identity driven. How does a Buddhist preach unity to a divided ethnic group like African Americans or Latinos who have self-hate while still upholding the teaching of non self?’

These are good questions—really thoughtful questions! We all belong to different groups whether they’re ethnic, religious, racial, socio-economic—whatever it is. I think what’s important, in whatever groups we belong, is to remember that they’re merely conditioned phenomena. They don’t last forever, and they come about due to causes and conditions. They don’t have any inherent nature. So, we may have certain “conventional identities” throughout our lives, but these identities are not who we are. They are just things that we happen to be associated with for whatever period of time. They are not us. 

There are different ways of seeing identities. One way is as I’m suggesting: they’re just conditioned phenomena that we belong to temporarily that are not us. They’re based on conventions. They’re useful conventions, most of the time. I know that I belong to the group called “women.” It’s very helpful to know which public bathroom to use. I don’t need to make a huge identity out of it. It’s the same way I view having the identity of an American—that lets me know which Customs line to go to when I arrive in the country. But I don’t make a big deal out of it. It’s not a strong identity.

Identities and victimhood

We can choose to make our identities very strong. I could become a “rah-rah” American: “America first. America best. Everything American.” In relationship to my identity as a woman, I could take on an identity of “The whole system is pitted against me. I know already before I begin that they’d rather give the job to a man. And even if I get it, they’re going to pay a man more than they pay me. And when we go to board meetings, they’re going to cut me off and I’m not going to have my voice heard.” I could make a whole identity out of that. 

I came from a Jewish background. Oh, my goodness—talk about identities! I went to Israel, and I wrote an article afterward called “In the land of Identities.” There, you grow up with the idea: “We’ve existed for a thousand years. They’ve been trying to kill us off and exterminate us and they haven’t succeeded yet. We’re the chosen people.” There’s all this kind of stuff. And I just said, “I come from that ethnic group. I like vegetarian chicken soup. I know how to swear in Yiddish. But I am not developing an identity based on persecution because I don’t want to live my life with an identity based on persecution and victimhood.” 

Everybody here has different identities, so we can either treat them lightly as conventions that are useful or we can make hard-and-fast identities about them. The thing is that when we make hard-and-fast identities, we generally tend to make ourselves into a victim nowadays. So, women are victims; Latinos are victims; African Americans are victims. And now you have white Protestant men who are victims—that’s one of the bases of the white supremacist movement. “They’re taking our country away from us.” You can build so many identities, and nowadays so many of these identities are based on being victims. 

I remember last year around Halloween, so many people got very upset because different people who didn’t belong to a certain ethnic group dressed up at Halloween as members of that ethnic group. Some people got so offended by that. For other people, when somebody who’s not in their ethnic group cooks the food from their ethnic group, they say this is cultural appropriation and you shouldn’t do it. In these situations, everything becomes, “This is my identity, and therefore, you should treat me one, two, three, four. And you don’t treat me like that, so I am upset and angry and upset and offended and insulted, and therefore I have a right to blah, blah, blah. And you should not bluh, bluh, bluh.” My goodness, it’s exhausting—totally exhausting!

In response to this person who’s asking a really good question, I think we can look at the identities that we have and the groups that we belong to and see the good qualities. Those good qualities don’t necessarily apply to everybody in the group. We should also realize some of the bad qualities of the groups that we belong to. And again, the bad qualities don’t apply to everybody in the group. 

Coming from a Jewish background, it’s very interesting how you grow up with certain things. “The Jews are intelligent. We value education. You should marry a Jewish man. They’re much better husbands.” This was before Weiner and that other guy in New York; this was before them. “Marry a Jewish man. They’re better husbands, and they’re intelligent.” But the Jews had a very nice thing going where they also talked about all their faults, and they made fun of each other. If you watch Fiddler on the Roof, people are really making fun of Jewish culture, and the Jews allow themselves to make fun of their own culture. But God forbid anybody else make fun of their culture. That doesn’t work, okay? It’s all because of this attachment and making an identity. 

If you belong to a group, have a positive identity. Be aware of the false.  But don’t make everything so heavy and so confining because when the identities become very strong and confining like that, then we tend to make ourselves into victims and we also tend to compare ourselves with others. And, of course, when we compare ourselves with others, we always come out less than. Occasionally we come out better than, but then it keeps devolving into this whole thing of “Well, my group is better than their group because we do blah, blah, blah, but they don’t appreciate us,” or “My group is less than because of nah, nah, nah, and those people treat us inappropriately.”

This is all just conventions. They’re not who we are. We don’t need to make such a big deal about it. If you want to have pride in a group identity, then be proud of being a sentient being. Don’t even be proud of being a human being. Because sometimes as human beings, we have the idea that “As a human being, I have better intelligence than all the other animals and insects,” and then that gives us permission to not treat them well, to dominate nature and make it conform with what you want, which is not at all helpful.

Buddhist view of identity

If you really want an identity, be very inclusive. We are all sentient beings. We all want happiness. None of us want suffering. Therefore, if it’s suffering, it should be eliminated. It doesn’t matter whose it is. If it’s happiness, it should be gained. It doesn’t matter whose it is. And if you develop that kind of identity, then you see the good qualities of sentient beings: they’ve been kind to us, are kind to us, will be kind to us. You balance it out by seeing the bad qualities of sentient beings: they’re under the influence of afflictions and karma. That way you have a more reasonable take on different living beings and how to approach them and how to respond without the mind getting so tangled up in jealousy, competition, comparison, victimhood, arrogance—all this kind of stuff.

Audience: As Buddhists, we have an opportunity to use our identity to benefit others, especially if we have an identity or belong to a group that does not commonly identify with Buddhism. Because then we have the opportunity to share with them the Dharma. By the fact that they identify with who we are, they can relate to us whether it is because we speak the same language, because we have the same skin color, because we have the same gender. One of these are affinities that draw people to us. As Buddhists, that gives us an opportunity to share with them and to relate with them from a Buddhist perspective, which is very beneficial.

Venerable Thubten Chodron (VTC): That’s a very good point, and we do have certain identities that are conventional ones. And we can use them as you suggested—to make a connection with other people in order to introduce them to Buddhism. That’s very true. But again, we’re not holding that identity: “I’m only going to teach Latinos because they are my group,” or “I’m only going to teach women,” or “I’m only going to teach female Latinos.” But that’s true.

Audience: I think a lot of the confusion in regards to ethnicity is due to geography, too. For example, here in the United States, African is considered Black. Asian is considered Chinese. Latino is considered South America. But if you look at these terms, there’s a lot of diversity. For example, Asia is very diverse. Indians are Asian, too. Also, Middle Easterners, and Jewish people are technically Asian—from West Asia. It’s the same with the term Latino: French, Romanian, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese—these are all Latin countries, too. And then Africa’s very diverse; you have many tribes there—indigenous groups which don’t identify as either black or white. They identify as red people just like Native Americans. I actually descend from one of the indigenous peoples. They mostly inhabit the Sahara Desert. They are a matriarchal culture based on female descent and the men veil themselves, not the women—the men veil themselves. So, it’s a very unique desert culture—indigenous just like Native Americans. They’re also native Africans. 

And here in the United States, the term Caucasian is used to mean White, but actually the original Caucasian people were from the Caucasus Mountains like Chechens, Georgians, and as such. And what’s funny is, in Russia, the actual Caucasian people are called Black. I think in the US, we have a lot of confusion with geography. A lot of people don’t know where the original Caucasus is, or that the original Africa was in North Africa, in Tunisia, Libya, Morocco. That was called Africa. It’s the same with the original Asia; that was modern-day Turkey, in the Middle East. People get confused with these terms, and I think this is what leads to a lot of that. And as you said about a victim mentality too, as a “minority and mixed ethnicity,” I experienced that. And many others have experienced that, too. But, as you said, we cannot be victims. We have to rise up out of that. 

Being here at Sravasti Abbey, with many different ethnic groups, I just see fellow Buddhists. I see their culture, but I don’t feel like this is just Western. I just feel it’s another Buddhist that I’m sharing the dharma with. So, thank you for sharing.