BLACK RELIGION/WOMANIST

THOUGHT/SOCIAL JUSTICE
Series Editors:
Dwight N. Hopkins and Linda E. Thomas

OBJECT RELATIONS,
BUDDHISM, AND
RELATIONALITY
IN WOMANIST
PRACTICAL
THEOLOGY

Pamela Ayo Yetunde

Black Religion/Womanist Thought/Social Justice

Series Editors
Dwight N. Hopkins
University of Chicago Divinity School
Chicago, IL, USA

Linda E. Thomas
Lutheran School of Theology Chicago
Chicago, IL, USA
The Black Religion/Womanist Thought/Social Justice Series produces
works engaging any dimension of black religion or womanist thought as
they pertain to social justice. Womanist thought is a new approach in the
study of African American women’s perspectives. The series includes a
variety of African American religious expressions; traditions such as
Protestant and Catholic Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Humanism, African
diasporic practices, religion and gender, religion and black gays/lesbians,
ecological justice issues, African American religiosity and its relation to
African religions, new black religious movements or religious dimensions
in African American “secular” experiences.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14792
 Pamela Ayo Yetunde

Object Relations,
Buddhism,
and Relationality
in Womanist Practical
Theology
Pamela Ayo Yetunde
United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities
New Brighton, MN, USA

Black Religion/Womanist Thought/Social Justice

ISBN 978-3-319-94453-1    ISBN 978-3-319-94454-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94454-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018948740

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.

Cover pattern © Melisa Hasan

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To my cousin Roderick Shipp who taught me what it was like
for him to live and die with AIDS.
 Acknowledgments

Many causes and conditions and many people have played a part in the
evolution of this book. I want to acknowledge my friend Dianne Jacob
who gave me Thich Nhat Hanh’s book Touching Peace and Eric Poche,
the former volunteer director at Zen Hospice Project, who right around
the same time (a month after the attack on the World Trade Center on
September 11, 2001) invited me to be a hospice volunteer. Through
mindfulness, meditation, and service to those who are dying, I have been
able to walk this planet with more ease, confidence, and compassion.
I also want to acknowledge the Community of Mindful Living in the San
Francisco East Bay, including Dharma Teacher Lyn Fine, and Spirit Rock
Meditation Center, including Dharma Teacher Gil Fronsdal, for their teach-
ings, communities, and leadership trainings of which I have been formed.
Volunteers at Zen Hospice Project introduced me to meditation retreats
and Dharma Teacher Gil Fronsdal. Gil, along with Chaplain Jennifer
Block, Diana Lion, and Zen Priest Paul Haller, led the Sati Center for
Buddhist Studies Introduction to Chaplaincy program where I met my
dharma friends Mary Doane, Robert Cusick, Lori Hefner, Janet Keyes,
and Kim McLaughlin. Their friendships have helped sustain me, my prac-
tice, and my dedication to spiritual care.
Alta Bates Summit Medical Center is where I did my Clinical Pastoral
Education (CPE) and San Francisco General Hospital and Pathways
Homecare and Hospice are places where I interned, volunteered, and
worked. These experiences eventually led me to work in another clinical
setting, Skyland Trail, where I learned more about what it means to be a
chaplain, pastoral counselor, and “spiritual clinician” in a mental health-
care organization.
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Pamela Cooper-White, Greg Ellison, Bill Harkins, Skip Johnson,

Emmanuel Lartey, and Carolyn Akua McCrary are some of the best pasto-
ral counseling professors one will find, and I’m especially grateful to Skip
Johnson for inviting me to participate in the pastoral counseling Basic
Residency program at Care and Counseling Center of Georgia, which led
to me going back to school, one last time, at Columbia Theological
Seminary. I want to thank all the women who participated in my disserta-
tion research project, which led to the writing of this book. The disserta-
tion would not have been written but for the engagement of my dissertation
committee Emmanuel Lartey, Pamela Cooper-White, Beverly Wallace,
and consultant Duane Bidwell. These learning experiences led to me being
hired as faculty at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. I want
to thank Carolyn Jones Medine for encouraging me to publish this book
and Chenxing Han for proofreading. Thank you Palgrave Pivot for taking
the risk of publishing this book. This has been an amazing life and profes-
sional journey that was made all the better with my spouse, Tracey Scott,
who has supported me all along the way. Gratitude to you all.
 Contents

1 What Is Buddhism, and What Is Buddhism in the Insight

Meditation Community (IMC)?   1

2 Womanism and the Absence of Explicit Black Buddhist

Lesbian—Black Christian Straight Interdependence
in Foundational Womanist Theological Scholarship  19

3 The Spiritual Practices and Experiences of African-American

Buddhist Lesbians in the IMC  39

4 Self, No Self, and the Paradoxes of Self and No Self

Preservation  53

5 African-American Women Buddhist Dharma Teachers and

Writers on Self and No Self  67

6 Object Relations in East and West: Self, No Self, the

Abhidhamma, and W.R.D. Fairbairn  77

ix
x Contents

7 Wholeness as Object Liberation: The Efficacy of Buddhist

Lovingkindness Meditation 101

8 Conclusions and Counseling Recommendations 115

Index 133
 CHAPTER 1

What Is Buddhism, and What Is Buddhism

in the Insight Meditation
Community (IMC)?

Abstract Buddhism is one of the largest religions in the world, but many
people, including Buddhist practitioners, do not understand the psychologi-
cal impact Buddhist practices have on their ego structures, internal object
relations, and external object relationships. Buddhism in the Insight
Meditation tradition includes teachings in the Four Noble Truths, the Noble
Eightfold Path, and the Brahma Viharas and is also practiced by women who
are African American and same-sex loving. The women in this study bring
an African-American norm of interdependence to their understanding of self
and no self, contributing to their “remarkable relational resilience” in patri-
archal, racial, homophobic, and Christian supremist cultural contexts.

Keywords Buddhism • Insight Meditation • The Noble Eightfold

Path • The Four Noble Truths • The Brahma Viharas

Buddhism is one of the largest religions in the world. According to the

Pew Research Center, there are about 400–500 million people in the world
who consider themselves religious Buddhists,1 and about 1.5 million
Buddhists2 in the US, including women, African Americans, and members
of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) communities.
Many more Americans of other religious traditions or no religious tradi-
tion have intentionally or unconsciously adopted Buddhist philosophy

© The Author(s) 2018 1

P. A. Yetunde, Object Relations, Buddhism, and Relationality
in Womanist Practical Theology, Black Religion/Womanist Thought/
Social Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94454-8_1
2 P. A. YETUNDE

(e.g. letting go), psychology (nondualism), meditation practices like

Mindfulness Meditation, and art (Buddha statues). Though millions of
Americans have some familiarity with Buddhism, most do not understand
the psychological impact Buddhist practices have on their ego structures,
internal object relations, and external object relationships. In fact, the
claim that Buddhist practice leads to detachment from others and culti-
vates introversion is not supported by my research on the psycho-spiritual
experiences of African-American lesbians in the Theravada Buddhism—
inspired Insight Meditation tradition.3 This research establishes how
Buddhism in the Insight tradition contributes to Remarkable Relational
Resilience, especially for women who live in a context where their human-
ity is in question based on gender, race, sexuality, and religious biases,
discrimination, and oppression, but also for others who are challenged by
US society’s disdain for people who are deemed radically different.
In Object Relations, Buddhism, and Relationality in Womanist Practical
Theology, I draw on a variety of resources including the narratives of the
women I interviewed, my own experiences in the Insight Meditation
Community, scholarly articles, commentaries from Buddhist teachers,
www.accesstoinsight.org, and the Pali Canon, a collection of suttas (like
sermons) that include the Anguttara Nikaya (AN)—Numerical Discourses
of the Buddha, translated by Nyanaponika Thera and Bhikkhu Bodhi;
the Digha Nikaya—The Long Discourses of the Buddha (DN), translated by
Maurice Welshe; the Majjhima Nikaya (MN)—The Middle Length
Discourses of the Buddha, translated by Bhikkhu Nanamoli and Bhikkhu
Bodhi; and the Samyutta Nikaya (SN)—The Connected Discourses of the
Buddha, translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi.
In “Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Buddhist Practitioners,” Wendy Cadge
writes about Buddhists of the Insight Meditation tradition who are gay,
lesbian, and bisexual,4 but not about African-American lesbians. Roger
Corless, in “Gay Buddhist Fellowship,” writes about white gay men who
are Buddhists and their experiences of their community,5 but his essay is
not about women, African Americans, or lesbians. Winston Leyland’s
edited volumes Queer Dharma: Voices of Gay Buddhists6 are about men.
This book attempts to fill epistemological voids in the psycho-spiritual
experiences of African Americans who practice Buddhism, the psycho-
spiritual experiences of African-American women who practice Buddhism,
and the psycho-spiritual experiences of African-American lesbians who
practice Buddhism through the narratives of Alicia, Deborah, Marcella,
Mary, Norene, and the 26 other women who completed the Fetzer
 WHAT IS BUDDHISM, AND WHAT IS BUDDHISM IN THE INSIGHT… 3

Spiritual Experience Index (SEI). Filling these epistemological voids con-

tributes to knowledge in several disciplines, including Women’s Studies,
Religious Studies, Buddhist Studies, Psychology, Psychotherapy, African-
American Studies, Interfaith Dialogue, and Pastoral Care and Counseling.
Most books in pastoral care and counseling are written from Christian
perspectives by Christians. In an attempt to include Buddhism into the
conversation on what is religious or pastoral or spiritual care and counsel-
ing, due to the rise in interest in Buddhist (religious, spiritual, and secular)
practices in the US, it is critical to understand some foundational concepts
about Buddhism that can be taken as religious or philosophical, or as a
way of life, a psychology, a set of ethics, or a combination thereof.
In this chapter, readers are briefly introduced or re-introduced to some
of the core elements of Buddhism in the Insight Meditation Community
(IMC). The core elements explored include: the founding of the IMC, the
relationship between the common Insight Buddha narrative and what is
taught in the IMC, the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, the
Brahma Viharas, the paramitas, the suffering of clinging and craving, teach-
ings on self and nonself, and some of the differences between various types
of Theravada Buddhism, the foundation for the IMC, and the IMC itself.
Chapter 2, “Womanism and the Absence of Explicit Black Buddhist
Lesbian—Black Christian Straight Interdependence in Foundational
Womanist Theological Scholarship,” introduces a black lesbian hermeneu-
tic into understanding what womanism was meant to be and is becoming,
relying on Alice Walker’s use of Audre Lorde’s essay “The Uses of the
Erotic, The Erotic as Power” in Walker’s 1979 short story “Coming
Apart,” where Walker first coined the term “womanist”; the invisibiliza-
tion of lesbians and same-sex loving women in foundational womanist
Christian theology, as questioned by Afrocentric Christian womanist theo-
logian Delores S. Williams; and the re-visibilization of Christian queer
African-American women in Christian womanist scholarship.
Chapter 3, “The Spiritual Practices and Experiences of African-
American Buddhist Lesbians in the IMC,” includes 38 statements from
the slightly modified Fetzer Spiritual Experience Index (SEI) that was
answered by 31 women; along with responses, analysis, and interview
excerpts from five African-American Buddhists lesbians in the Insight
Meditation tradition: Norene, Alicia, Deborah, Mary, and Marcella.
Chapter 4, “Self, No Self,7 and the Paradoxes of Self and No Self
Preservation,” illustrates the psychological-spiritual journey of these
women from Christianity to Buddhism, as well as their changing views of
self, no self, and the necessity and fallacy of self preservation.
4 P. A. YETUNDE

Chapter 5, “African-American Women Buddhist Dharma Teachers and

Writers on Self and No Self,” is an introductory discussion of the works of
African-American Buddhist women writers angel Kyodo williams, Jan
Willis, Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, and Jasmine Syedullah.
Chapter 6, “Object Relations in East and West: Self, No Self, the
Abhidhamma, and W. R. D. Fairbairn,” is a discussion on how mind
objects are viewed from Buddhist and Fairbairnian objects and object rela-
tions perspectives, the sources of those views, and the impact of those
views on how one understands one’s self or no self. Attention is paid to the
ego fracturing and creation of the Internal Saboteur, or persecutory
object, and contemporary object relations commentary from Aronson,
Muzika, Engler, Epstein, and Metcalf.
Chapter 7, “Wholeness as Object Liberation: The Efficacy of Buddhist
Lovingkindness Meditation,” returns to the conversation about intrapsy-
chic wholeness, the womanist value of wholeness, the introduction of
Theravada Buddhist nun Ayya Khema and her views on wholeness from a
Buddhist perspective, lovingkindness meditation as an antidote for ego
fracturing, a return to commentary from Engler and Muzika with an
introduction to another object relations commenter, McDargh.
Chapter 8 is the concluding chapter that offers care and counseling
recommendations specifically for African-American Buddhist lesbians,
but can be modified for others. Object Relations, Buddhism, and
Relationality in Womanist Practical Theology offers current scholarship in
Western Object Relations Theory, a Buddhist view on object formation
and dissipation through meditation, a Buddhist view on what it means to
be pastoral, an African-inspired relational dynamic not present in Buddhist
scholarship, a womanist definition with a black Buddhist lesbian herme-
neutic that expands what womanism means and can be, and demonstrates
how Buddhist practices in the Insight tradition promotes Remarkable
Relational Resilience for women marginalized by sexism, racism,
homophobia, and Christian supremacy.
Buddhism takes many forms around the world and in the US.8 Insight
Meditation Society (IMS) was originally founded in Massachusetts in 1975
by Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, and Sharon Salzberg. Since its found-
ing, an overwhelming number of dharma teachers, perhaps ironically in the
context of a racially and ethnically pluralistic society, happen to be white.9
Yet, as Insight Meditation has grown in the US, more dharma teachers of
color have been trained, including Larry Yang, Gina Sharpe, Spring
Washam, DaRa Williams, Bonnie Duran, Bhante (another word for
“monk”) Buddharakkhita, Anushka Fernandopulle, and JoAnna Harper.
 WHAT IS BUDDHISM, AND WHAT IS BUDDHISM IN THE INSIGHT… 5

Many more people of color, myself included, have been trained to be

Community Dharma Leaders (CDLers). Though CDLers are not full
dharma teachers, we can start meditation groups and communities and lead
short meditation retreats with the “blessing” of the Insight dharma teach-
ers and community. The impact of having teachers of color may not yet be
fully known, but there is greater awareness that the absence of people of
color who are dharma teachers has meant that the Insight Meditation com-
munities were virtually silent on the subjects of justice, pluralistic scriptural
interpretation, interracial dialogue, and critical race social analysis. Groups
for LGBTQ, women, and various ethnic groups and retreats specifically for
these various groups, have formed within the Insight communities, provid-
ing support to some and confusion for others who do not understand the
need to relate to like-minded people, or believe doing so is contrary to
what Buddhism is or should be. Given that Insight in the US was founded
by three white Jewish Americans just four decades ago, the growth and
diversity within Insight is remarkable. But what are the narratives under-
girding Insight Meditation that make it attractive to people from a variety
of backgrounds? Insight does not emphasize the depravity of women as
some strands of thought in Theravada Buddhism do; unlike some Zen
schools that emphasize the absolute or ultimate reality of no gender, Insight
acknowledges the relative reality and existence of different gender expres-
sions. The equality of women and embracing different gender expressions
separates Insight Meditation communities from an ancient and monastic
Theravada Buddhism, but what about sexuality and same-sex attraction?
Whether African-American Buddhist lesbians (or same-sex loving women)
left church looking for a safer spiritual home on the basis of sexual oppres-
sion (which many of the research participants did not), they have found a
place of relative “gay safety” in Insight. Cadge concludes:

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual people are comfortable today in all kinds of
Buddhist organizations founded by white people across the country because
Buddhist texts are generally read in the United States as being neutral about
homosexuality and there is little antigay discrimination and prejudice at
Buddhist centers. While there are certainly examples of homophobic behav-
iors at particular centers, these examples are fewer than in centers in many
other religious traditions.10

Though there may be little antigay discrimination and prejudice at Insight

Buddhist centers, practitioners like research participant Alicia may belong
to more than one center or sangha. Alicia said:
6 P. A. YETUNDE

I feel that some aspects of myself are validated [in sangha]. I feel like my
spiritual practice is definitely validated and supported … I don’t always feel
like my perceptions or my perceptions of reality as I experience it are always
validated as an African-American person, but it’s kind of funny that some-
times I do feel validated very much so …. I’m a member of a person of color
sangha, I’m a member of an LGBTQ sangha … so it just depends on what
sangha I’m in and what it is I need by way of validation …. It’s unfortunate
in some ways I have felt like I sort of segment—that I’ve had to, that I felt
like I had to join multiple sanghas to have my needs met.
I feel that some aspects of myself are validated. I feel like my spiritual
practice is definitely validated and supported by people in my sangha and by
my teachers. I don’t always feel like my perceptions of reality as I experience
it are always validated as an African-American person, but it’s kind of funny
that sometimes I do feel validated very much so. Most of the people in my
sangha are white and most are heterosexual, but I do have—I’m a member
of several different sanghas. I’m a member of a person of color sangha, I’m
a member of an LGBTQ sangha, a dedicated practitioner sangha at Spirit
Rock, I’m a member of a couple more sanghas [chuckle] so it just depends
on what sangha I’m in and what it is I need by way of validation. In the POC
[people of color] sangha I feel very validated as an African American person,
[in] my LGBTQ sangha I feel validated as a member of the queer commu-
nity … and that’s probably not an experience that someone who’s [record-
ing garbled, but I presume from the context Alicia was referring white
heterosexual Americans] has to contend with, you know, they can pretty
much show up at most of the sanghas in my spiritual community, in my
Theravada Buddhist community, and they will be welcomed and accepted in
the vast majority of them. But I don’t necessarily consider it a detriment
’cause I enjoy being a member of all these sanghas and I get to learn a great
deal about people and so it’s been nourishing nonetheless.

Cadge is close to being correct about homosexuality and neutrality for

white people in Insight communities, but it is more accurate to say sexual-
ity (heterosexual, pansexual, bisexual, asexual, homosexual, and all other
identities on the spectrum) are largely nonissues for dharma teachers to
dwell on with householders, and not addressed in Buddhist scriptures,
beyond the precept of using one’s sexuality responsibly for lay people, or
for the case of monastics, practicing celibacy since attaining the highest
level of spiritual attainment requires refraining from sexual activity which,
heterosexual or otherwise, promotes clinging, craving, and thus rebirth
into other rounds of suffering.
 WHAT IS BUDDHISM, AND WHAT IS BUDDHISM IN THE INSIGHT… 7

Though Insight Buddhism promotes equality, it comes from androcen-

tric roots and myths, including a prevailing narrative (there are many) of
who the Buddha was and how he came to be. It is important to know this
story in order to understand the core of Buddhist teachings and under-
stand why women, people of African descent, same-sex loving women, and
people with these intersecting identities (such as my research participants)
might find this story appealing. One of the prevailing narratives says that
Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha’s name before he became enlightened,
was born into a wealthy family. Seven days after he was born, his mother,
Maya, died. Siddhartha was raised by his father and Maya’s sister,
Mahapajapati Gotami. As the story goes, Siddhartha’s father, Suddhodana,
gave Siddhartha every material possession he could have with the hope his
son would want to inherit Suddhodana’s wealth, power, and status. The
strategy of spoiling his son worked for the first three decades of Siddhartha’s
life. Siddhartha married a woman, Yasodhara, who gave birth to their son,
but their possessions and his familial relationships were ultimately not
enough to keep Siddhartha committed to that way of life. Eventually,
Siddhartha left his comfortable community and encountered someone
who was sick, someone who was old, and a corpse. These encounters
shocked the wealthy, powerful, spoiled, and secluded Siddhartha and for
the first time he began to wonder if he might experience the same things.
Afraid for his own well-being, he left his wife and son, and fled to the forest
to engage in a variety of austere spiritual practices that he hoped would
help him avoid sickness, aging, and death. After six years of these practices,
including severely limiting his food intake to the point of near starvation,
a young girl named Sujata approached him with something to drink. He
dranks it and proclaimed the Middle Way—the way of no extremes—a shift
in consciousness that led to other insights about the nature of reality.
After his realization of the Middle Way, Siddhartha was heavy-
hearted. He knew that his knowledge was special and not known to oth-
ers. As he contemplated living as a recluse for the rest of his life, he was
visited by the creator god Brahma who told Siddhartha to reject his
impulse and instead, out of deep compassion, teach others so that they
could realize what he had realized. Siddhartha began teaching and
became known as the Buddha, the awakened one. The Buddha began to
attract followers as he went from grove to grove teaching a new dharma
(contrary to the prevailing Vedic dharma). The new dharma did not sup-
port belief in Vedic hierarchy, Vedic anthropology, or Vedic rituals. The
new dharma did not support the notion of a soul or a Self. The Buddha’s
teachings, or Buddhadharma, espoused no Self and therefore no hierarchy,
8 P. A. YETUNDE

and no usefulness in conjuring rituals. The Buddhadharma espoused the

Middle Way, liberation from delusion, deep concentrative meditation,
mindfulness, the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Noble Path, charac-
ter development, and a variety of ethical perspectives.
It is also said in some traditions that there will be many Buddhas and that
each time a Buddha is born, his mother dies seven days after his birth. The
word Maya (Siddhartha’s mother’s name) means “illusion,” as if she never
existed. It is also the case in some Buddha stories that the Buddha was con-
ceived through a white elephant entering Maya’s side. Some Buddhist
anthropologies say that a woman’s reproductive organs are vile and thus a
Buddha cannot possibly come out of such filth. The Vinaya, the code of
behavior for Theravada monastics, says it is better for a man’s penis to burn
in hot coals than to enter a woman’s vagina. This is not the Buddhism of
Insight nor the Buddhism of the women in this research project. Insight
Meditation communities in the US promote the Four Noble Truths, the
Eightfold Path, regular meditation, meditation retreats, and enlightenment
(insight or awareness are other words used to describe an evolved conscious-
ness). The understanding that Buddhism accepts suffering as a given for the
unenlightened, a method for the end of suffering including meditation, and
the promise of a new way of seeing and being, appeals to those who are open
to experimenting with their minds, and those who want to feel better than
they do—including women, people of African descent, same-sex loving
women, and people for whom these identities intersect. The IMC dharma
teachers play a significant role in how practitioners experience and become
Buddhists. An Insight dharma teacher is likely to become skilled in teaching
the core teachings in Theravada Buddhism including the Four Noble Truths.

The Four Noble Truths

The Four Noble Truths conceptually reduces our universal existential
threats into manageable “pieces” while also prescribing a step-by-step
method for easing the generalized anxiety of being human. The Four
Noble Truths include: (1) there is suffering; (2) suffering has its causes;
(3) there is a way out of the causes for suffering; and (4) the way out of
suffering is through the Noble Eightfold Path. The Noble Eightfold Path
includes: (1) Right View; (2) Right Intention; (3) Right Speech; (4) Right
Action; (5) Right Livelihood; (6) Right Effort; (7) Right Mindfulness;
and (8) Right Concentration.
Returning to the First Noble Truth that there is suffering—keeping in
mind the story of Siddhartha’s six-year attempt to avoid illness, old age, and
 WHAT IS BUDDHISM, AND WHAT IS BUDDHISM IN THE INSIGHT… 9

death through austere and extreme spiritual practices, it is considered a

“gift,” a relief to know that one’s innate suffering is not particular to one’s
particular body, one’s particular personality, or one’s particular thoughts.
This belief that “there is suffering” relieves one of the futile attempts to
avoid the unavoidable, freeing one to place that energy of avoidance else-
where. From an Insight Meditation perspective, the First Noble Truth, with
scant attention paid to Theravada Buddhist or Vedic cosmology that argues
that suffering comes from being born in the lower castes, places no blame
for suffering on deities or Gods. It might be appealing to someone who
grew up in church to know that their suffering is not caused by a God who
is not pleased with them. The Second Noble Truth states that suffering has
its causes? What are they?
Two overarching categories for the causes for suffering are unwhole-
some craving and unwholesome clinging. Craving is defined in the Tanha
Sutta as follows:

And which are the 18 craving-verbalizations dependent on what is internal?

There being “I am,” there comes to be “I am here,” there comes to be “I am
like this” … “I am otherwise” … “I am bad” … “I am good” … “I might be”
… “I might be here” … “I might be like this” … “I might be otherwise” …
“May I be” … “May I be here” … “May I be like this” … “May I be otherwise”
… “I will be” … “I will be here” … “I will be like this” … “I will be otherwise.”
These are the 18 craving-verbalizations dependent on what is internal.11

and in the Tanhavagga Sutta as:

If its root remains

undamaged and strong,
a tree, even if cut,
will grow back.
So too if latent craving
is not rooted out,
this suffering returns
again
and
again.12

The cosmic problem with craving that is not transformed into nonattach-
ment is that it leads to suffering in the life following the death in the pres-
ent life. In addition to craving, there is clinging. Clinging in the Upadana
Sutta is described as:
10 P. A. YETUNDE

Just as if a great mass of fire of ten … twenty … thirty or forty cartloads of

timber were burning, and into it a man would time and again throw dried
grass, dried cow dung, and dried timber, so that the great mass of fire—
thus nourished, thus sustained—would burn for a long, long time. In the
same way, in one who keeps focusing on the allure of clingable phenomena,
craving develops. From craving as a requisite condition comes clinging/
sustenance.13

It might strike some who wish to be reborn as a human being that the
Insight Meditation tradition promotes the end of clinging and craving
and thus ends the cycle of rebirth, but if human life and its universal exis-
tential suffering cannot be fixed, treated, or eliminated, then one lifetime
of suffering might be enough for others. The belief that through Buddhist
practice one can cease clinging and craving and therefore avoid suffering
is a great motivator. As it relates to causes of suffering, craving and cling-
ing can be transformed, and how is no secret, according to the Third
Noble Truth.
The Third Noble Truth, which states that the causes of suffering are
knowable to the sufferer, takes the mystery out of knowing oneself. Not
only does it take the mystery out, it empowers, inspires, and motivates the
believer. The potential for healing from universal existential angst lies
within humans themselves. A woman can heal herself from the pain of sex-
ism, a black person can heal from the pain of racism, a lesbian can heal
from homophobia, and a person with these intersecting identities can heal
from them all through Buddhist practice. When the First, Second, and
Third Noble Truths begin to ring true, it gives rise to faith (a spiritual
faculty) in one’s self and the teachings that come thereafter, the Fourth
Noble Truth, outlines an eightfold method to work with the knowable
causes of suffering so that one does not needlessly suffer from the univer-
sal human existential situation.

The Noble Eightfold Path

The way to reduce (some Buddhists say eliminate) suffering and end the
round of human rebirth requires: (1) Right View; (2) Right Intention; (3)
Right Speech; (4) Right Action; (5) Right Livelihood; (6) Right Effort;
(7) Right Mindfulness; and (8) Right Concentration.
 WHAT IS BUDDHISM, AND WHAT IS BUDDHISM IN THE INSIGHT… 11

Right View
To understand Right View on a phenomenological level, one must have
experienced meditation. In meditation, one can come to observe how their
thoughts come and go, how their opinions are formed and released, how
images arise and disappear, how agitation occurs, and eventually, how none
of those things are everlasting or solid. The ultimate Right View, from an
Insight Meditation perspective, is no view, the “view” that has arisen
through meditation that leaves one feeling like a pulse, a vibration, a breath,
and no more. Without this experience, Right View can be understood as “a
correct grasp of the law of kamma, the moral efficacy of action.”14

Right Intention
Right Intention is the intention of renunciation, the intention of good will,
and the intention of harmlessness. Recalling one of the Buddha stories,
Siddhartha Gautama was wealthy and powerful, a son and nephew, married
and a father, and he left it all to work through his existential crises and after
awakening and becoming the Buddha, he never returned to householder
life. Instead he became a renunciant—a monk—founded an order or
monks, then nuns, and monasticism became and remains the higher spiri-
tual way of being, thinking, believing, and living. Monasticism is not part
of the Insight Meditation tradition, but many in Insight hold Buddhist
monastics in high esteem, and some even become monks and nuns them-
selves. In Insight Meditation, dharma teachers do not teach their students
to renounce their parents, spouses, and children, but teach the renuncia-
tion of other things that cause suffering like unhealthy attachments.

Right Speech
Right Speech is considered truthful, promotes wholeness, and is meaning-
ful. It also includes renunciation from speech that follows ill will and
deception. Therefore, even when no talking is taking place, if the silence is
a renunciation from lying, it is considered Right Speech. Right Speech also
has other qualities which include an “art” of speaking so that wise ones
might say the speech was well spoken because it does not result in negative
kamma. In order for Right Speech to rise to the level of being well spoken,
the speech should be offered in a timely, friendly, and beneficial way with
Right Intention.
12 P. A. YETUNDE

Right Action
Right Action is behavior that does not result in suffering. Right Action is
refraining from killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct. One can argue
that Right Action involves more than refraining from killing, stealing, and
sexual misconduct because speech is an action; therefore, Right Action
involves the elements of Right Speech. Forming an intention is mental
action, therefore Right Action also involves the elements of Right Intention.

Right Livelihood
In Buddhism it is said that Right Livelihood is refraining from commerce
in activities that cause suffering, including human trafficking, weaponry,
consuming animals, intoxicants, and other things that kill people, includ-
ing poison.

Right Effort
When contemplating behaviors and the level of ease or intensity to enact
these behaviors, in the service of reducing suffering for others and one’s
self, Right Effort involves elements of Right View, Right Intention, mind-
fulness, the cultivation of wholesome desire, the renunciation of unwhole-
someness, the paramita15(character perfection) of determination for what
is wholesome, the ability to discern beneficial from unbeneficial possible
consequences, agency to make choices, an understanding of kamma, and
I would argue, wisdom about one’s limits.

Right Mindfulness
Mindfulness, in the Theravada Buddhist tradition, is the steady attention
on one’s body, mind, feelings, and mental qualities with the Right
Intention of abandoning greed and the release of stress about the state of
the world. Mindfulness is a method or technique to be at peace in the
world as it is without clinging and craving, and is said to be the foundation
for deeper states of meditation called absorption or Right Concentration.

Right Concentration
According to the Maggasamyutta,16 it is said that the Buddha said Right
Concentration is when a bhikkhu (a monk) is in a place secluded from
 WHAT IS BUDDHISM, AND WHAT IS BUDDHISM IN THE INSIGHT… 13

sensual pleasures,17 and secluded from unwholesome states enters into

ever-deepening states of meditation whereby the mind becomes unified.18
In essence, Right Concentration is not about how long one can keep
their attention on any one thing without being distracted, but
“Concentration” is progressive stages of a type of still and quiet conscious-
ness that cannot perceive pain, pleasure, or a mixture of sensations.
“Right” in this context is about wholesomeness; therefore, Right
Concentration is the progressively still and quiet meditative stages that
eventually go beyond perception of sensations that humans want to cling
to and ultimately crave, and perceptions that humans want to avoid.
The Noble Eightfold Path is a method of ethics that also reorients the
mind, changes behavior, and with mindfulness and meditation, brings
wholeness and wholesomeness to the transformative process from being
I-centered to other-regarding, and serves to protect practitioners from the
shock of life’s realities.

The Brahma Viharas

Buddhist scholars disagree on the origin and meaning of the Brahma
Viharas, which are often translated as the “four immeasurables” and include
compassion, equanimity, lovingkindness, and sympathetic joy. Some say
the Brahma Viharas originated out of The Buddha’s meditation, others say
that the Brahma Viharas are a direct political confrontation with the Vedic
priests about what and who is actually holy.19 No matter the origin and
meaning, cultivating compassion, equanimity, lovingkindness, and sympa-
thetic joy are part of the Insight Meditation community practice.

Compassion
Compassion means to suffer with others. In some Tibetan Buddhist tradi-
tions, compassion means to suffer for others. In some Zen traditions,
there is no difference between self and other, so suffering and compassion
are not localized. In the Insight tradition, compassion can mean teaching
others about the Noble Four Truths and how to travel the Noble Eightfold
Path. Recalling the Buddha story, Brahma, the creator god, visited the
Buddha after his awakening to encourage him to teach others what he had
learned. Dharma teachers in the Insight tradition tend to be revered
because they teach out of a dispassionate compassion.
14 P. A. YETUNDE

Equanimity
The concept of deep equanimity that comes from meditation was dis-
cussed in the section on Right Concentration, but mundane equanimity
can also be practiced through mindfulness and the cognitive technique of
dialectics as expressed in the eight vicissitudes of loss and gain, disrepute
and fame, praise and blame, and pleasure and pain.20 Insight practitioners
are taught that through mindfulness of thoughts, they can see the aris-
ing—and if not the arising, then the presence—of certain thoughts, like “I
have gained something.” The experience of having gained something that
was wanted can lead to a pleasurable feeling, a pleasurable feeling can lead
to an attempt to cling to the feeling because it is pleasurable. Rather than
get caught in the clinging that leads to suffering, practitioners are taught
to momentarily reflect on the feeling of loss to bring themselves to a state
of balance and avoid the narcissism that can come from over-identifying
with the gain. This balancing of cognitive processes can also be used when
one experiences fame, praise, and other types of pleasurable experiences.
The dialectical process also works in the reverse order to soothe negative
feelings. For example, if one experiences loss and pain resulting from loss,
and then aversion to loss when loss is inevitable, they can momentarily
recall an experience of gain to bring them to balance and support a holistic
or nondualistic way of thinking. Mindfulness meditation and Right
Concentration also support equanimity.

Lovingkindness
The Metta Sutta states that one should reflect on happiness and security
for all without discrimination.21
Lovingkindness meditation practice is based on the Metta Sutta. A
short version of the meditation might include these phrases, said silently
to oneself, or said aloud by a dharma teacher or leader:

May I be happy
May I be free
May I be free from suffering
May others be happy
May others be free
May others be free from suffering
 WHAT IS BUDDHISM, AND WHAT IS BUDDHISM IN THE INSIGHT… 15

The meditator, after having sat in silent meditation, may recite similar
phrases to themselves silently, or may be guided by a teacher leading the
student from cultivating lovingkindness for themselves, then for someone
they regard positively, then for someone they have neutral or mixed feel-
ings for, then for someone they don’t care for, then to all sentient beings
on the planet, in the universe, and throughout other realms of existence,
if Buddhist cosmology is part of the student’s belief system.

Sympathetic Joy
Nyanaponika Thera writes:

Sympathetic joy holds compassion back from becoming overwhelmed by

the sight of the world’s suffering, from being absorbed by it to the exclusion
of everything else. Sympathetic joy relieves the tension of mind, soothes the
painful burning of the compassionate heart. It keeps compassion away from
melancholic brooding without purpose, from a futile sentimentality that
merely weakens and consumes the strength of mind and heart. Sympathetic
joy develops compassion into active sympathy.22

Cultivating sympathetic joy is aided by Right Concentration coupled with

the belief, taught in Insight, that there is no self.23 Brahma Vihara prac-
tices themselves promote selflessness as in less selfishness, and the teach-
ings on whether this is or is not a self is debated in Insight communities.
It is taught in Theravada Buddhism, the tradition that gave rise to
Insight Meditation, that attachment (craving and clinging) leads to suffer-
ing. In the Chapter of the Fours, Four Wonderful Things, it is written:

People generally find pleasure in attachments, take delight in attachments

and enjoy attachments. But when the Dhamma of non-attachment is taught
by the Tathagata, people wish to listen to it, give ear and try to understand
it. This is the first wonderful and marvelous thing that appears on the mani-
festation of a Tathagata, an Arahant, a Fully Enlightened One.24

Buddhism in the Insight Meditation tradition is considered a way of life, a

religion, a philosophy, a practice, a set of ethics, and/or a psychology
depending on a variety of factors. Insight practitioners tend not to focus
on whether Buddhism is a religion or a philosophy but tend to think in
terms of practice as a way of life. Within the practice, there is mindfulness,
meditation, the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the paramitas,
16 P. A. YETUNDE

the Five Remembrances, the vicissitudes, the Brahma Viharas, and

Buddhist anthropology regarding the nature of one’s self or no self.
Buddhism is much more complex than these elements suggest because it
involves politics, history, the Vinaya, Buddhist ethics, dharma teacher and
dharma leader training, different types of meditation retreats, the Pali
Canon, the Abhidhamma, the Visuddhimagga, and the Dhammapada.
One can study Buddhism in the Insight tradition (and study is encour-
aged) for many years, if not a lifetime. The purpose of this chapter is to
introduce readers to some of the core elements of Insight Meditation
Buddhism. Though founded in the US in 1975 and predominantly popu-
lated and led by European-descended people, Insight has been rapidly
changing demographically over the past two decades. The inclusion of
more people of color, including teachers,25 has moved Insight in a more
relational and justice-advocating direction.
Understanding Buddhism, surprisingly, is also helpful in understanding
womanist Christian theology. The African-American, Buddhist practitio-
ner, sexually fluid novelist and poet Alice Walker coined the term “wom-
anist,” which gave birth to womanist Christian theology. In order to
understand Walker’s Buddhist-inspired, sexually fluid womanism more
fully, scholars need to incorporate a lesbian and Buddhist-inspired herme-
neutic and revival in womanist Christian theology.

Notes
1. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/05/christians-
remain-worlds-largest-religious-group-but-they-are-declining-in-europe/
(accessed August 15, 2017).
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_in_the_United_States
(accessed August 15, 2017).
3. Pamela Ayo Yetunde, “A New Spelling of Our Names: An Exploration of
the Psycho-Spiritual Experiences of African-American Lesbians in the
Insight Tradition,” 2016.
4. Wendy Cadge, “Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Buddhist Practitioners” in Gay
Religion, eds. Scott Thuma and Edward R. Gray (Lanham, MD: AltaMira
Press, 2005). The Insight Meditation tradition was founded in the 1970s
by three white Americans, Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield, and Joseph
Goldstein. They practiced Buddhism in the Theravada traditions of
Southeast Asia. Their form of practice came from months-long vipassana
(insight) meditation retreats. Their main retreat centers in the US are the
Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and Spirit Rock
 WHAT IS BUDDHISM, AND WHAT IS BUDDHISM IN THE INSIGHT… 17

Meditation Center in Woodacre, California. Spirit Rock is my Buddhist

spiritual home.
5. Roger Corless, “Gay Buddhist Fellowship,” in Engaged Buddhism in the
West, ed. Christopher S. Queen (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications,
2000).
6. Winston Leyland, Queer Dharma: Voices of Gay Buddhists (San Francisco:
Gay Sunshine Press, 1998) and Queer Dharma: Voices of Gay Buddhists,
Volume 2 (San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 2000).
7. I use the terms “no self” and “nonself” synonymously. I believe I first
encountered the term “nonself” in Thich Nhat Hanh’s writings, but the
term “no self” is used more frequently in other Zen traditions as well as
the Theravada and Insight Meditation traditions. My use of “nonself” is
not to suggest I have a preference for that terminology but to illustrate my
Buddhist formation and conditioning in the Community of Mindful
Living.
8. Read Buddhist Religions: A Historical Introduction, Fifth Edition (2005),
by Robinson, Johnson, and Thanissaro for a historical overview of the local
founding and global proliferation of Buddhism.
9. The names of some of the more well-known Insight dharma teachers who
are white also include: Sylvia Boorstein, Gil Fronsdal, Steve Armstrong,
Sally Armstrong, Guy Armstrong, Rebecca Bradshaw, Chas DiCapua,
Christina Feldman, Andrea Fella, Michael Grady, Kittisaro, Thanissara,
Tempel Smith, Mark Coleman, Sharda Rogell, Wes Nisker, Phillip Moffitt,
Donald Rothberg, James Baraz, Anna Douglas, Eugene Cash, and Debra
Chamberlin-Taylor.
10. Wendy Cadge, “Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Buddhist Practitioners,” 149.
11. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an04/an04.199.than.html
(accessed August 21, 2017).
12. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.24.than.html
(accessed August 21, 2017).
13. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.052.than.html
(accessed August 21, 2017).
14. Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering
(Onalaska, WA: Pariyatti Publishing, 1984, 1999).
15. Insight Meditation Dharma Teacher Sylvia Boorstein offers a commentary
of the paramitas in Pay Attention, For Goodness’ Sake (New York: Ballantine
Books, 2002).
16. The Maggasamyutta—Connected Discourses on the Path is in the Pali
Canon collection of suttas called The Connected Discourses of the Buddha—A
Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya by Bhikkhu Bodhi (Boston: Wisdom
Publications, 2000), 1523.
18 P. A. YETUNDE

17. When one attends a meditation retreat at an Insight Meditation retreat

center, they will typically find that the setting is clean, austere, scentless,
and occupied with only a few or no statues or other pieces of art.
18. Retreatants at Insight Meditation retreat centers are asked to refrain from
intoxicants, sexual activity, and other activities that might form or maintain
attachments, so that retreatants can experience wholesome states of mind.
19. John Peacock, a Buddhist scholar from Great Britain, spoke at my
Community Dharma Leadership training program, about the possibility
that the Buddha was more of a political figure than a religious figure. His
talk was rejected by many of my classmates.
20. The Vicissitudes of Life in Chapter of the Eights is in The Pali Canon col-
lection of suttas call The Anguttara Nikaya—Numerical Discourses trans-
lated by Nyanaponika Thera and Bhikkhu Bodhi (Walnut Creek: AltaMira
Press, 1999), 198.
21. Gil Fronsdal, The Issue at Hand: Essays on Buddhist Mindfulness Practice
(2001), 146.
22. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/wheel006.
html#inter (accessed August 23, 2017).
23. I argue that the confusion lies partly in the absence of teachers and stu-
dents discussing the suttas out of the context of Vedic beliefs where Atman,
or Self, meant soul and anatman meant no soul, not that there was no
body.
24. Anguttara Nikaya, 110.
25. According to Insight Dharma Teacher Larry Yang, George Mumford, an
African-American man, may have been the first person of color to become
an Insight dharma teacher through “transmission,” or individual mentor-
ing from another dharma teacher. A few other teachers of color followed.
According to Yang, “People practiced with individual teachers, mentored
with them … and then started teaching … all very ambiguous and loose. In
this way it could be very selective on a personal level and didn’t consider
the community or larger social needs. Ralph Steele was the first teacher of
African descent to go through the ‘official’ Spirit Rock Teacher Training
ending in 2002. After that, the next fully authorized teachers of color were
Anushka Fernandopulle, Gina Sharpe, Spring Washam, and myself in
2010.” Fernandopulle, Sharpe, Washam, and Yang were unauthorized
teachers long before they became authorized. Yang continues, “currently
there are only 10 teachers of color, who both self-identify as a POC and are
fully authorized to teach. That will change radically in 2020 when another
32 get added to this list of 10. Amazing. We will have 42 Teachers of color
in 2020. Amazing” (personal communication, August 21, 2017, via email).
 CHAPTER 2

Womanism and the Absence of Explicit Black

Buddhist Lesbian—Black Christian Straight
Interdependence in Foundational Womanist
Theological Scholarship

Abstract Womanism is a word coined by Buddhist practitioner and sexu-

ally fluid writer Alice Walker. Ironically, womanist theology evolved over
the decades without reliance on Buddhist thought and without reliance on
African-American lesbian epistemologies. Consequently, Walker’s four-part
womanist definition was split off from her original coinage in her short
story “Coming Apart.” The consequence of this split led to a womanist
theology that was overwhelmingly Christian and virtually heterosexual.
Womanism suffered, ironically, from a split while simultaneously espousing
a commitment to “the survival and wholeness of entire people.”

Keywords Womanism • Interdependence • Alice Walker • Audre Lorde

In order to understand how Buddhism informs Alice Walker’s womanism

and thus in the implicate order of things how Buddhism informs Christian
womanist theology, a black-woman-same-sex-loving-Buddhist-inspired her-
meneutic must be considered along with the movement toward further and
deeper engagement between African-American women who are s­ame-sex
loving and heterosexual, Buddhist, and Christian in order to revive and expli-
cate the heart of womanism in womanist Christian theology.

© The Author(s) 2018 19

P. A. Yetunde, Object Relations, Buddhism, and Relationality
in Womanist Practical Theology, Black Religion/Womanist Thought/
Social Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94454-8_2
20 P. A. YETUNDE

Insight Buddhism’s core teachings, including the Four Noble Truths,

the Noble Eightfold Path, the Brahma Viharas, mindfulness meditation
and Right Concentration, self and no self, the Five Remembrances, and
the paramitas are all implicated within the meanings of Alice Walker’s
womanism. In order to understand Walker’s Buddhist-inspired, sexually
fluid womanism more fully, theologians and other scholars need to
acknowledge and honor Walker’s spirituality and sexuality—and by exten-
sion Walker womanism’s—more deeply, by interpolating Walker’s 1979
short story “Coming Apart” into her 1983 four-part definition and inter-
preting womanism through a black lesbian Buddhist lens.

The Formation of a Black Lesbian Buddhist

Hermeneutic
As a black lesbian who grew up in the United Methodist church, having
inherited the homophobic theology of that church body before my sexual
identity was formed, I experienced, to borrow a term of art from First
Amendment jurisprudence, the “chilling effect” of homophobia in church
and society, as well as the ostracization and hatred by loved ones, based on
the same theology I was raised on. One of my maternal aunts, a woman of
conventional Protestant Christian faith, had a son who was gay. She
encouraged me to tell my mother I was gay, if I was. (I had not acknowl-
edged my sexuality to myself, let alone anyone else.) My mother (to whom
I am eternally grateful for her nurturance as I grew into adulthood), a
black Christian woman who raised me in the church, threatened me with
violence and attempted to degrade me in various ways when I told her I
was a lesbian. A different maternal aunt, a black Christian woman, wrote
that I should go back in the closet and that God would drown me, along
with everyone else living in the San Francisco Bay area where I was living
at the time, into the Pacific Ocean. Their words cut deeply, but what hurt
most was their years of ostracization. Though my mother and aunt
expressed their sadistic fantasies1 with me, my adoptive maternal grand-
mother, raised on the same theology, told me that she had always known
women who were in romantic relationships—they just weren’t called any-
thing like “lesbian” or “gay.” Sociologist Mignon Moore writes:

As Marilyn’s and Marisol’s remarks emphasize, there is nothing new about

Black women having a lesbian sexuality: rather, it is same-sex couples openly
living and raising children together in African American communities that is
 WOMANISM AND THE ABSENCE OF EXPLICIT BLACK BUDDHIST… 21

a distinct departure from past understandings of lesbian and gay behavior. In

the past, lesbian/gay practice was overshadowed by public identities that
emphasized racial group membership and deemphasized sexuality.2

My grandmother immediately named the problem—it was naming the

nameless and now having to grapple with the name and the named. She
cried with me as I told her of my hurt, disappointment, grief, and alien-
ation, and as she cried with me, she assured me that she would always love
me. She was my primary healer. Ironically perhaps, my secondary healing
came in a United Methodist church called Glide Memorial in San
Francisco. At Glide, Rev. Cecil Williams and his wife, poet Jan Mirikitani,
created a multi-cultural, multi-class spiritual community of radical accep-
tance, liberation, and recovery. My Methodist grandmother’s compassion
and lovingkindness in my life, and Glide’s theology and community, dem-
onstrated that United Methodist Christianity can also heal, but my moth-
er’s and aunt’s theology, chilling affect, threats of violence, “prophetic”
fantasies of harm and ostracization—all factors in the invisibilizing phe-
nomenon—eventually led me to my positive encounters with Buddhism’s
Brahma Viharas (lovingkindness, compassion, equanimity, and sympa-
thetic joy as the highest aspirations), interdependence, and dependent
origination.
The concept of interdependence is one shared by Buddhists and African
Americans. According to black womanist Christian pastoral theologian
and A.M.E. clergy Carolyn Akua McCrary, people of African descent have
a norm of interdependency. She bases her theory, in part, on NTU, a
Bantu-Rwandaise philosophy. McCrary describes NTU as

the unifying force which bespeaks the connecting essence of all that is; and
that at the fundamental core, there is an interconnectedness and an
Interdependence of being of everyone and everything, trees, rocks, rivers,
air, water, animals, birds, insects, time, place and form, etc. One cannot
therefore, relegate someone or something outside one’s realm of care and
concern.3

A black lesbian Buddhist hermeneutic might include a “triple dose” of

interdependence, or more intensity around the interdependence concept
due to the cultural norm, Buddhism, and the hurt of alienation, all of
which contribute to the motivation for interpolating “Coming Apart”
into the 1983 womanist definition. In addition, the Buddhist concept of
22 P. A. YETUNDE

dependent origination means nothing exists independently, that phenom-

ena arise dependent upon other phenomena and give rise to additional
phenomena. As dependent origination is applied to what womanism
means, 1983 womanism is dependent upon 1979 womanism and 1979
womanism gave rise to 1983 womanism. The black lesbian Buddhist her-
meneutic also gives rise to a particular gestalt or womanist universalist
orientation regarding the inclusion and fusion of multiple perspectives. As
an African-American womanist practical interfaith Buddhist theologian,
my womanist methodology for the study of the psycho-spiritual experi-
ences of African-American Buddhist lesbians in the Insight tradition, all of
whom grew up in Christian churches (as I did), also includes humanism
and feminism. Black women are human beings first, and there are shades
of difference between black and white, feminism and womanism, purple
and lavender. My methodology as it relates to womanist and lesbian schol-
arship should not and cannot fit neatly into dualistic frameworks. For
example, if I claim a womanist method, I may be perceived as disclaiming
a feminist method. If I claim a feminist method, I may be perceived as
disclaiming womanism. If I claim feminist and womanist, am I disclaiming
humanist? With no desire to claim one method at the expense of disclaim-
ing the others, I am also adopting a humanist-feminist-womanist-human-
ist (the spectrum of beginning at humanist and ending at humanist is to
denote a cycle, not a linear progression) methodological spectrum of ori-
entations and voices, open to including the works of theorists who are not
women and who are not black. Interdependence, from a Buddhist per-
spective, transcends racial, gender, even human constructs in the ultimate
or absolute reality;4 therefore, more perspectives can be included.

Walker’s Short Story, “Coming Apart”

In her 1979 short story “Coming Apart,” Walker writes about a black
woman who confronts her black husband on his use of pornography by
using black feminist lesbian Audre Lorde’s work in self-defense.5 In doing
so, her husband accuses her of being the only woman who is upset with her
husband consuming pornography. To show him that she is not odd, she tells
him to read Lorde’s essay, “Uses of the Erotic, The Erotic as Power”6 (this
is an act of a nascent womanist making black lesbians visible to a heterosex-
ual black man). She gives a copy of the essay to him and he begins to read it
knowing it was written by a woman. Due to an erotic passage where Lorde
had written, “moving into sunlight against the body of a woman I love,”
 WOMANISM AND THE ABSENCE OF EXPLICIT BLACK BUDDHIST… 23

he has an intrapsychic reaction and immediately questions whether the

essay was actually written by a woman. He wonders if “Audre” is actually
a man. When his wife assures him that Audre is a woman, he says, “No
dyke can tell me anything,” and he proceeds to throw the essay to the
ground.7 This is a violent act of invisibilization, and one she does not
accept. She picks up the essay and reads it to him. This is a nascent wom-
anist in the act of re-visibilizing her lesbian sister in the face of homopho-
bia and becoming intentionally interdependent on black lesbian wisdom.
She continues reading the essay while also holding, presumably, copies of
his pornographic magazines, and reads:

This brings me to the last consideration of the erotic. To share the power of
each other’s feelings is different from using another’s feelings as we would
use a Kleenex. And when we look the other way from our experience, erotic
or otherwise, we use rather than share the feelings of those others who
­participate in the experience with us. And use without consent of the used is
abuse.8

In addition to reading Lorde’s essay aloud while holding the pornography

as an example of using others, the wife proceeds to paste Lorde’s words
over a kitchen sink cabinet. Lorde has now become like an internalized
object for the wife, strengthening her ego to pursue her dignity and rescue
her marriage. Another day goes by, and she is reading another essay writ-
ten by a different African-American lesbian, Yoruba priestess Luisah Teish.
Her husband asked whether Teish was another “dyke,” and she retorts,
“Another one of your sisters.” This is a nascent womanist act of advocat-
ing for the inclusion of black lesbians into the black community. As she did
with Lorde’s essay, she begins to read Teish’s essay to him:

Films like Shaft and Lady Sings the Blues portray black “heroes” as cocaine-
snorting, fast-life fools. In these movies a black woman is always caught in a
web of violence …. A popular Berkeley, California, theater featured a porno-
graphic movie entitled Slaves of Love. Its advertisement portrayed two black
women, naked, in chains, and a white man standing over them with a whip!
How such racist pornographic material escapes the eye of black activists
presents a problem.9

Her husband, in growing disgust, refers to Teish as a “bitch” who cannot

possibly know anything about the Black Power Movement. His attempts
to invisibilize black lesbians intensifies, but because Lorde and Teish are
24 P. A. YETUNDE

not actually in the room, he then attacks his wife for being a “women’s
liber” and a “white women’s lackey” and calls white feminists like Gloria
Steinem an “overprivileged hag.” The wife considers these accusations.
She contemplates silently. She thinks to herself that she is not a dyke, nor
a bitch, nor a “women’s liber,” nor a “white women’s lackey,” nor an
“overprivileged hag.” She sees herself as more common. She is a woman-
ist.10 Based on “Coming Apart” alone, a womanist can also be defined as
an African-American woman, regardless of her sexuality, who has

the willingness to seek out wisdom from African American lesbians on how
to create safe spaces for themselves, in the midst of threats to their emo-
tional, mental, physical, and spiritual health, and take the risk of sharing that
wisdom with their oppressor(s) in a way that does not harm the oppressor(s),
with the intention to help the oppressor(s) awaken from ignorance and vio-
lence, and to be advocates for African American lesbians in the African
American community.11

Perhaps this is what the protagonist meant when she saw herself as more
common. What does it mean to be more common? Due to this gray area
where the woman is attempting to defend herself and her black lesbian
sisters against her husband’s many accusations, it is difficult to know which
particular accusation or accusations she takes issue with by claiming to be
common. It is this gray area where, I believe, homophobia and as Lightsey
put it, “bhomophobia,” has festered within some invisibilizing Christian
womanist theologies, for certainly the 1979 black woman especially
uncommon at the time utilizes African-American lesbians’ wisdom to
improve her relationship with her husband and proclaim herself, without
asking for permission from anyone, as womanist—coining a brand new
name in the process. “Coming Apart,” and its implications for under-
standing Walker’s 1983 definition, has been largely missing from Christian
womanist theology, but it is an omission that can be corrected, in part, by
re-examining Walker’s 1983 definition.
In 1983, Walker defined womanism, in part, as:

a. Acting grown up;

b. Women who love women, sexually or not and are committed to
survival and wholeness of all people;
c. Is a lover of life and herself and is spirited and spiritual; and
d. Is similar to feminism.12
 WOMANISM AND THE ABSENCE OF EXPLICIT BLACK BUDDHIST… 25

If we return to an examination of Walker’s 1983 four-part definition, we

see that there is no expressly stated obligation for a womanist to be interde-
pendently reliant on black same-sex loving women’s wisdom, so the split
between 1979 and 1983 contributes to the lack of a lesbian-inclusive episte-
mological methodology that would, if present, make black lesbian voices
more visible in Christian womanist theology. The additional womanist
­definition based on “Coming Apart” could contribute to the repair of the
dualistic (invisibilizing “Coming Apart” and separating it from the 1983
definition) and reductionistic (typically choosing one part of the four-part
definition) womanist method that has circumvented (consciously and
unconsciously) an explicit black lesbian—black Straight interdependent
methodology. Christian womanist Afrocentric theologian Delores S. Williams
in Sisters in the Wilderness called for an examination of this phenomenon.
Williams argues against homophobia and encourages dialogue between
straight and queer women, but it is one thing to hold the posture of
encouraging dialogue, and a completely different level of engagement for
straight women to actively choose black lesbians’ work to prominently
feature in one’s own work, which has not happened consistently.
Nevertheless, Williams offers instruction on how to help African-
American women thrive in an oppressive society, though her focus was
not on how African-American lesbians could thrive in a homophobic
society, or how Buddhists could thrive in a Christocentric society, or how
women with these intersecting identities could survive as triply or qua-
druply marginalized people.
Williams breaks “the black experience” or what she calls the “wilder-
ness experience” into four components: the Horizontal Encounter, the
Vertical Encounter, Transformations of Consciousness, and the
Epistemological Process.13 The Horizontal Encounter is the interaction
between black and white people in society and history. This encounter has
led to suffering for African-American people. The Vertical Encounter is
the meeting between God and subjugated people. This encounter results
in new “sustaining and nurturing cultural forms, like black religion.”14 It
also results in “positive psychological and physical states of freedom and
liberation.”15 Transformations of Consciousness are positive when
“oppressed people arrive at self or group-identity through awareness of
self-worth and through the appreciation of the value of black people and
black culture,” and negative when “black people give up positive black
consciousness and identify with alien and destructive forms of conscious-
ness.”16 The Epistemological Process is “a special way the mind processes
26 P. A. YETUNDE

data on the basis of action in the three categories above. The socio-histor-
ical context plays an important role in this process. Williams’
Transformations of Consciousness and Epistemological Processes are the
two components of the black/wilderness experience that will be chal-
lenged most by black Buddhist lesbian perspectives. Buddhism and
­womanism, as Walker understands it now, means:

Womanism and Buddhism are about “self-regard,” about “coming face to

face with a form of yourself that you have to let go of.17

If this is what womanism and Buddhism means, Williams, an Afrocentric

Christian womanist theologian, might find Buddhism undermining a pos-
itive Transformation of Consciousness as “negative” when “black people
give up positive black consciousness and identify with alien and destructive
forms of consciousness.”18 Research on the psycho-spiritual experiences of
African-American Buddhist lesbians in the Insight tradition does not sup-
port the notion that Buddhism, relatively new to African Americans com-
pared to Christianity, is not destructive, but relationally constructive and
supports positive psychological and physical states of freedom and libera-
tion—but have these experiences entered the Epistemological Process?
Williams does not expound on what the Epistemological Process looks
like, perhaps because it will be different for every individual’s black/wil-
derness experience, but she acknowledges that one’s ways of making
knowledge will change through the black/wilderness experience. As it
relates to the womanist epistemological processes of understanding
Walker’s womanist definition, it appears many womanist theologians have
not yet intimately met many black Buddhist lesbians in the deeper wilder-
nesses—the sexuality wilderness, the religion wilderness, the gender wil-
derness, and the deepest wildernesses where intersecting identities lie in
the sub-Horizontal Encounter. To put it another way, the body of
Christian womanist theology, as I have surveyed it, does not collectively
support the notion that black lesbians have become internalized objects,
strengthening egos, like Lorde became to Walker’s protagonist when the
wife placed Lorde’s words above her kitchen sink because Lorde, Teich,
and black same-sex loving women were their sisters and comrades, in the
universalist or communal sense.
Carrol A. Watkins Ali, in Survival & Liberation: Pastoral Theology in
African American Context (1999), writes that a communal response is
required for the survival of the African-American community.19 Without
 WOMANISM AND THE ABSENCE OF EXPLICIT BLACK BUDDHIST… 27

explicitly stating agreement, Ali and McCrary may be aligned on an inter-

dependence-as-norm-and-communal-survival spectrum. Ali says in the
preface of her book that her “primary objective is to introduce the signifi-
cance of womanist thought for pastoral theology.”20 Like Williams, Watkins
does not expressly include African-American lesbians’ participation in the
communal response, therefore, from their perspectives, it appears as if there
is no distinctive African-American lesbian voice, in early-to-middle woman-
ist theology, in the interdependence-as-norm-communal spectrum for the
survival of the black community except for Williams’ use of Audre Lorde’s
quote regarding the futility of using the master’s tools to dismantle the
master’s house21 but Williams and Ali are pre-#BlackLivesMatter move-
ment scholars. #BlackLivesMatter was founded by Alicia Garcia, Patrisse
Cullors, and Opal Tomefi22 and is a movement founded by queer black
women inspired, in part, by Audre Lorde’s writings. It is interesting to note
that Ali draws on the work of African-American gay writer James Baldwin,
but does so without mentioning his sexuality; however, she does not draw
on the work of black lesbian poet and feminist icon Audre Lorde, whose
main concerns, arguably, were survival and survival strategies, including
survival strategies for the African-American community as a whole. The
absence of Ali’s interdependence on her same-sex loving sisters, and the
reliance of Williams on Lorde (the only black lesbian voice), is specific not
only to Ali and Williams but to many Christian womanist theologians. Can
African-American lesbians, in addition to Lorde, have perspectives on how
black people can survive? The list of African-American Christian womanist
theologians who are same-sex loving is growing, and includes Renee
L. Hill, Pamela R. Lightsey, Phillis I. Sheppard, Raedorah C. Stewart,
Emilie M. Townes, and Nikki Young, but given the revival of black lesbian
voices in womanist Christian theology, is there also a growing interdepen-
dence between straight and queer womanist theologians?
Carolyn McCrary utilizes African theology, Fairbairnian Object
Relations Theory (a subject I explore in chap. 6), and the work of African-
American theologian Howard Thurman to establish the concept of inter-
dependence as a norm in the African-American community.23 McCrary,
like Ali and Williams, does not explicitly state that interdependence is a
norm that includes black lesbians. Like Ali, McCrary does not mention
black lesbians at all. Again, this absence is not particular to Ali and McCrary,
but is emblematic of black Christian womanist theology as a whole. But if
the need to survive communally, as Ali rightfully suggests, is needed and if
interdependence is a norm throughout the African-American community,
28 P. A. YETUNDE

as McCrary believes, then what explains the absence of an explicit reliance

on black lesbians and black Buddhist lesbians in womanist theology?
Renee Leslie Hill, in “Who are we for each other? Sexism, sexuality and
womanist theology (1993),”24 argues that Christian womanist theologians
are complicit in silencing African-American women who are lesbian
because some Christian womanists do not understand Alice Walker’s defi-
nition of womanist, because many Christian womanists focus on racism
and sexism within the black community, and because of concerns about
being labeled “feminist” or lesbian.25 If Christian womanists have betrayed
their queer sisters because their focus has been on their safety, then mind-
fulness, from an Insight Meditation tradition, can be a practice adopted by
Christians that might inspire internal focus.26 Williams was correct to sug-
gest, as a womanist method, dialogue between straight and queer women,
but the introduction of mindfulness into womanist identity and dialogue
holds the promise of making those dialogues intimate. But what if Hill’s
assertion is correct—that Christian womanist scholars do not understand
Walker’s definition?
Black feminist and professor of Ethics and African-American Studies
professor Traci West, calling on womanist religion scholars and theolo-
gians to do many things, writes:

While womanist religious scholars often reiterate their debt to Alice Walker’s
definition of the term womanist and its fundamental significance for their
work, Walker’s definition clearly supports an emphasis on nurturing lesbian
identity when it asserts that a womanist is “a woman who loves other
women sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women’s cul-
ture. Due to womanist theology’s reliance upon Walker’s definition, I
expect it to include a primary commitment to increasing the presence of
lesbian theological voices as well as to generating theology that nurtures
lesbian womanhood.27

What is clear to West, an expectation of a primary commitment to an

increasing presence of lesbian theological voices, is not clear to me with-
out the utilization of an Epistemological Process, preceded by, in my view,
the Transformation of Consciousness that Williams alludes to. A new
womanist definition coming from the black lesbians’ wilderness experi-
ences, contributing to a new Epistemological Processes informed by
Transformation of Consciousness, will help womanist theologians under-
stand Walker’s imagination and vision for a sexually inclusive, mutually
 WOMANISM AND THE ABSENCE OF EXPLICIT BLACK BUDDHIST… 29

interdependent black women’s community. We can take Walker’s example

of utilizing Lorde’s work in her 1979 short story “Coming Apart” as an
example of a Williams-envisioned Epistemological Process. In fact, I uti-
lized Lorde’s spiritual journey (as well as my own journey and the journey
of 31 African-American Buddhist lesbians), a subject I explore in chap. 4,
in the Epistemological Process of discovering that Buddhism in the Insight
tradition can promote a Remarkable Relational Resilience for African-
American Buddhist lesbians, and perhaps others. This Epistemological
Process revealed the opportunities for the womanist-Buddhist dialogue
Jennifer Leath imagined in “Canada and Pure Land, A New Field and
Buddha-Land: Womanists and Buddhists Reading Together.”28
Leath is a Walker womanist in that she focuses on the dialogue in
Walker’s dictionary definition of womanism, which states, “Traditionally
capable, as in: ‘Mama, I’m walking to Canada and I’m taking you and a
bunch of other slaves with me.’ Reply: ‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’”29
Canada is the land of freedom to which daughter desires to take Mama,
and Mama affirms her daughter’s ability to do so. Canada, the land of
freedom from slavery, is like Pure Land for Pure Land Buddhists, the ulti-
mate place of freedom. Daughter taking people to Canada is the interde-
pendent liberation process. Leath says the womanist-Buddhist dialogue
must be “qualified by the actions of walking—and taking others with
us.”30 Leath, a Christian, argues that womanist scholarship has been
enslaved by Christianity, but through dialogue with Buddhists, partici-
pates in the liberation from Christian hegemony:

If womanism attempts to remain true to its commitment to nondualism and

“radical relationality,” then it is incumbent upon womanist scholars to
retrieve and revive the nondualistic attitude and vision of Lorde.31

Thus, Lorde takes readers from the slavery of homophobia, “bhomopho-

bia,” heterosexism, Christian supremacy, patriarchy, Eurocentrism, dual-
ism, and racism to the free land, the Pure Land Dahomey.32 Lorde wrote:

It was in Abomey …
where I found my mother
Seboulisa …33
Bearing two drums …34
I will braid my hair35
Even in the seasons of rain.36
30 P. A. YETUNDE

I will braid my hair, even in the seasons of rain is in the womanist spirit of
loving oneself, regardless. Can black Christian womanist theologians allow
themselves to be taken by Buddhist lesbians to a new land—a place of
freedom from dualities? What if the origin of Christian womanist theology
was the creation of a freedom place for women seeking refuge from racism
and sexism, but not heterosexism and homophobia? What if womanist
Christian theology was originally conceived of as the freedom place for
black heterosexual women only?
Linda Hollies, Layli (Phillips) Maparyan, and Monica Coleman have
each edited books of essays on various themes related to womanist theo-
logical scholarship. Hollies’ Womanist Care: How to Tend the Souls of
Women (1992) is a Christian pastoral care collection about caring for
women in the church.37 Phillips’ The Womanist Reader (2006) is a histori-
cal collection providing the foundations for womanist thought and schol-
arship and its subsequent use in various scholastic disciplines.38 Coleman’s
Ain’t I a Womanist Too?: Third Wave Womanist Religious Thought (2013)
is a collection about how womanist religious thought is utilized by women
who are not necessarily African-descended, as well as by non-Americans,
men, non-Christians, and non-heterosexuals.39 The essays from these
three books may support Hill’s contention that some womanist theolo-
gians did not understand Walker’s womanism, but are evolving toward it.
Is Hill correct in her assertion that womanist theologians have silenced
African-American lesbians? I prefer the word “invisibilized” over silenced
because theologians who publish have the right to include or exclude
(invisibilize) other scholars, but unless they have the publishing power to
publish or not publish scholarship by African-American lesbians, they do
not have the power to silence (or censor) others, as evidenced by the fact
that Hill’s article was published. Another example of invisibilizing (not
silencing) is the brief notion of “Christian mindfulness” introduced by
black womanist psychologist and theologian Chanequa Walker-Barnes in
Too Heavy a Yoke: Black Women and the Burden of Strength (2014). Walker-
Barnes introduces the Buddhist practice of mindfulness to a presumably
black Christian female audience, but rather than include the voices of black
Buddhists who can attest to the transformative power of mindfulness in
their lives, she strategically suggests Christian mindfulness, knowing that
some Christian StrongBlackWomen will reject mindfulness outright as an
affront to their Christian identity.40 The consequence of this invisibiliza-
tion, even though the intentions toward her audience are arguably noble,
results in a misapplication of mindfulness—there can be no such thing as
 WOMANISM AND THE ABSENCE OF EXPLICIT BLACK BUDDHIST… 31

Christian mindfulness because there is no such thing as Buddhist mindful-

ness on the supramundane level, when one is practicing in the Four
Foundations of mindfulness orthopraxis. The inclusion of women who
practice mindfulness in the Buddhist tradition would have been a positive
step toward Leath’s vision of a womanist-Buddhist dialogue.
Pamela Lightsey, an un-silenced African-American Christian and queer
womanist theologian, brands the invisibilization of black lesbians by black
heterosexual women as “bhomophobia” to describe the particular attitude
of some African Americans, especially some African-American church goers,
toward gay people.41 Psychologist and womanist theologian Phillis Isabella
Sheppard is another un-silenced African-American lesbian theologian. In
Self, Culture, and Others in Womanist Practical Theology (2011), Sheppard
writes about the sexuality of African-American lesbians.42 Sheppard sites
some experiences of African-American lesbians, including Lorde:43

I remember how being young and black and gay and lonely felt. A lot of
time it was fine, feeling I had the truth and the light and the key, but a lot
of it was pure hell. There were no mothers, no sisters, no heroes. We had to
do it alone, like our sister Amazons, the riders on the loneliest outposts ….
We young and black and fine and gay, sweated out our first heartbreaks with
no school or office chums to share that confidence over the lunch hour.44

Sheppard also critiqued African-American heterosexual Christian feminist

Cheryl Sanders for Sanders’ questioning whether one need be same-sex
loving to be womanist. In this writer’s view, arguments about whether an
African-American womanist needs to be heterosexual or same-sex loving
obscures the fact that Lorde’s contribution to the humanist-feminist-
womanist-humanist continuum of thought helps womanist scholars
understand how dualistic thinking (feminist are white and separatist lesbi-
ans, womanists are black and communal heterosexuals) divides the black
community.45 Despite different aims and orientations, Afrocentric
Christian Williams, pro-Buddhist-Christian dialogue Leath, self psychol-
ogy post-Catholic Sheppard, and Alice Walker in “Coming Apart,” uti-
lized Lorde’s works. Lorde’s contributions to psychology and spirituality
are yet to be fully explicated.
Williams, Hill, West, Lightsey, and Sheppard provide much-needed
correctives to the invisibilization of black lesbians in Christian womanist
theological discourse, and Leath provides a needed corrective to the
absence of non-Christian voices, Buddhists in particular, but they all do so
without challenging the initial methodological duality and reductionism
32 P. A. YETUNDE

that led to the invisibilization of black lesbians from Walker’s work. I argue
that even Walker herself, perhaps unconsciously, engaged in dualistic and
reductionistic womanist methodology when she defined womanism in
1983 apart from her 1979 “Coming Apart.” The split can be corrected.
The additional womanist definition I espouse from “Coming Apart” is

the willingness to seek out wisdom from African American lesbians on how
to create safe spaces for themselves, in the midst of threats to their emo-
tional, mental, physical, and spiritual health, and take the risk of sharing that
wisdom with their oppressor(s) in a way that does not harm the oppressor(s),
with the intention to help the oppressor(s) awaken from ignorance and vio-
lence, and to be advocates for African American lesbians in the African
American community.

This 2015 Womanist Definition Addendum does not negate Walker’s

definition because she has the right to define the word she coined, but in
her attempt to define it, the word “womanist” was taken out of its literary
context with implications for the early black Christian theologians who
dualistically utilized piece-parts of the 1983 definition. Two levels of
dualism, or splits, have contributed to the invisibilization of African-
American same-sex loving women in Christian womanist theology—
Walker’s separation of her 1983 definitions from the 1979 short story,
and then the foundational or “first wave” Christian womanist theologians
who chose piece-parts of the four-part definition, perhaps ignoring, disre-
garding, or being blind to the fact that the definitions are conjoined and
not offered as alternatives. Dualism is a threat to womanist scholarship.
First, dualism is incongruent with the womanist sensibility for the whole-
ness of entire people and universality. Second, dualism contributes to
racial designations that separate pink cousins from brown cousins. Third,
dualism contributes to supremacist views as in white people are superior
to black people, men are superior to women, heterosexuals are superior to
homosexuals, Christians are superior to non-Christians, and therefore
black Christian heterosexual women are superior to black non-Christian
same-sex loving women. Dualism tears the black community apart, and
dualistic womanist theology contributes to that tearing. How can
Christian womanist theologians who have been dualistic our doubly dual-
istic (consciously or unconsciously) in their womanist methodology repair
the damage of invisibilization? First, adopt and add the new womanist
definition I will refer to as the “201546 Womanist Addendum” as an addi-
tion to Walker’s 1983 definition, honoring the 1979 context in which
 WOMANISM AND THE ABSENCE OF EXPLICIT BLACK BUDDHIST… 33

the word “womanist” was coined. Second, be open to the probability that
Christian theologies that have incorporated womanist thought have con-
tributed to a third level of duality—being Christian is better than being
non-Christian. Christian womanist theologian Kelly Brown Douglass in
What’s Faith Got to Do with It? Black Bodies/Christian Souls (2005) calls
Platonized (dualistic mind good, body bad) closed monotheistic (com-
pletely intolerant of other truth claims) Christianity dangerous for black-
bodied people.47 Once Platonized closed monotheistic Christian
supremacist attitudes are considered a possibility, a third step would be to
consider the value of cultivating nondualism from a humanist perspective,
one that is congruent with Walker’s womanism. Anthony B. Pinn in
African American Humanist Principles makes the case for an African-
American humanist tradition and for the need for people of African
descent to experience their complex subjectivity so that they are no longer
determined by limited theistic and racist notions of who and what black
people are.48 A combination of the 2015 Womanist Addendum, with
open-mindedness about if and how Christian womanist theologies created
an additional layer of duality on Walker’s 1983 definition, and an embrace
of a humanist tradition that embraces complex subjectivity without negat-
ing Christianity, may allow for the inclusion of black lesbians’ wisdom in
womanist epistemological methodology to become a naturally fluid act in
communal interdependence for survival, with less anxiety about what
­others think about another’s sexuality or politics. Nondualistic minds,
Buddhists have found, are less agitated by their own and others’ classifica-
tions. A less agitated nondualistic mind is a psychological survival mental-
ity that phenomenologically knows the interdependence norm—not based
on NTU but based on the emptiness of being. These are the gifts to
Christian womanist theologians from African-American Buddhist lesbians
which are discussed in more detail throughout the rest of this book.

Notes
1. Black Christian womanist theologian, United Methodist minister, and
queer scholar and activist Pamela R. Lightsey calls this kind of reaction from
black homophobic people “bhomophobia.” “Inner Dictum: A Womanist
Reflection from the Queer Realm,” Black Theology 10, no. 3 (November
2012): 344.
2. Mignon R. Moore, Invisible Families: Gay Identities, Relationships, and
Motherhood Among Black Women (Berkeley/Los Angeles and London:
University of California Press, 2011), 185.
34 P. A. YETUNDE

3. Carolyn Akua McCrary, “Interdependence as a Normative Value in Pastoral

Counselling with African Americans,” The Journal of the Interdenominational
Theological Centre 18, nos. 1 and 2, (Fall/Spring 1990/1991), 124.
4. Ultimate or absolute reality is a Buddhist cosmological concept that means,
in essence, that what the objects we perceive with our senses are not the
only reality, are part of a boundless reality, are interconnected with other
realities, and are interpenetrated by those other realities.
5. Alice Walker, “Coming Apart,” in The Womanist Reader, ed. Layli Phillips
(New York: Routledge, 2006), 3.
6. In Sister Outsider.
7. Ibid., 4.
8. Lorde, Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power. Though not referenced in
Alice Walker’s short story, the quote is from Lorde.
9. Walker, “Coming Apart,” 7.
10. Phillips, ed., The Womanist Reader, 7.
11. Recognizing that this definition is in some ways radically different than
Alice Walker’s 1983 definition and the definition that is currently in play,
I shared this definition with womanist practical theologian Phillis I.
Sheppard, an African-American same-sex loving woman. She writes, “Your
impulse in this definition is on the mark. Here are my brief suggestions for
fleshing it out a little more … it seems that you might want to say some-
thing at the beginning about womanism in general and about it emerging
from the experiences of A-A women. Then be specific about womanism as
lived out by or articulated by black lesbians beginning with their particular-
ity. I would say something about a lesbian womanist sharing her wisdom as
an expression of her commitment to black lesbians’ wellbeing as well as her
commitment to working for a transformed world. (then) Womanism as
articulated by black lesbians has several important features that are impor-
tant to this work; (then add the rest of your definition) ....” I wrote back
asking permission to add our communication to the dissertation and Dr.
Sheppard wrote back, “Yes … It occurs to me that you may want to explain
what you mean by ‘safe spaces’ because as we know from life, and Lorde, a
safe space is not one free of our fears or an awareness that our words can be
used against us!” I also had a conversation with womanist practical theolo-
gian Myrna Thurmond-Malone who recently completed her dissertation.
She said that in her research, she had not come across a womanist defini-
tion like the one I have crafted.
12. Alice Walker, “Womanist,” In The Womanist Reader, ed. Phillips, 19.
13. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness, 154.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
 WOMANISM AND THE ABSENCE OF EXPLICIT BLACK BUDDHIST… 35

16. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness.

17. Carolyn Medine Jones, “The Womanist-Buddhist Consultation as a
Reading Community,” Buddhist-Christian Studies 32 (2012), 49. Whether
Walker has always understood womanism and Buddhism as letting go of
form or has come to understand it as letting go of form is yet to be fully
explored in Christian womanist theology and can best be explored in wom-
anist Christian-Buddhist dialogue. Should Delores S. Williams enter this
conversation, I would ask her if letting go of form is what she feared when
she wrote that transformation of consciousness is negative when “black
people give up positive black consciousness and identify with alien and
destructive forms of consciousness.”
18. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness, 154.
19. Carrol A. Watkins Ali, Survival & Liberation: Pastoral Theology in African
American Context (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 1999).
20. Ibid., xiii.
21. Delores S. Williams, “Womanist/Feminist Dialogue: Problems and
Possibilities,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 9, nos. 1–2 (Spring–
Fall 1993).
22. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter (accessed November
4, 2017).
23. Carolyn McCrary, “Interdependence as a Normative Value in Pastoral
Counseling with American Americans,” The Journal of the Interdenom-
inational Theological Center 18, nos. 1 and 2 (Fall/Spring 1990/1991).
24. Black Theology: A Documentary History, vol 2: 1980–1992, eds. James
H. Cone and Gayraud S. Wilmore, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993), 345–351.
25. Hill, 344–350.
26. Chanequa Walker-Barnes said that practicing mindfulness was the single
most important practice for transforming herself from the StrongBlackWoman
to one less concerned with trying to be someone she was not.
27. Traci C. West, “Visions of Womanhood: Beyond Idolizing Heteropatriar-
chy,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 58, nos. 3–4 (2004).
28. Jennifer Leath, “Canada and Pure Land, A New Field and Buddha-Land:
Womanists and Buddhists Reading Together,” Buddhist-Christian Studies
32 (2012).
29. Walker, “Womanist,” 19.
30. Leath, 61.
31. Ibid.
32. “Dahomey,” Wikipedia (accessed February 17, 2016), https://en.wikipe-
dia.org/wiki/Dahomey. Dahomey was a kingdom in Benin from about
1600 until 1894. Lorde used Dahomey as a trope in invoking the power of
African-descended women because in Dahomey there was an all-female
military unit.
36 P. A. YETUNDE

33. Seboulisa was the African female deity Lorde called on for psychic and
spiritual strength, especially when she suffered pain from cancer.
34. Lorde learned to think nondualistically through explorations and practice
of the I Ching.
35. I will braid my hair even when the rain may unbraid it is like Walker’s wom-
anist dictionary definition “Loves herself. Regardless.”
36. Lorde, Dahomey, 239.
37. Linda H. Hollies, ed. Womanist Care: How to Tend the Souls of Women,
vol. 1 (Evanston, IL: Garrett-Evangelical Black Seminarians, 1992).
38. Phillips, ed., The Womanist Reader.
39. Monica A. Coleman, ed., Ain’t I A Womanist Too?: Third Wave Womanist
Religious Thought (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013).
40. A few years ago, at a meeting of womanist theologians at the Society for
Pastoral Theology, we discussed the implications of harshly critiquing
each other in print. From that discussion and my reflections on black
feminist poet Audre Lorde’s work (which I utilized in my dissertation), I
arrived at a womanist ethos for critique which includes reaching out to
the scholar before critiquing her in print. Having adopted that ethos, on
February 28, 2016, I wrote Walker-Barnes and shared my essay with her
before I presented my paper. Walker-Barnes wrote back on the topic of
mindfulness saying, “You’re absolutely right—I did a sort of mindfulness
apologetics. That was an intentional decision resulting, unfortunately,
from prior experience encountering resistance toward meditation among
African-American Christians. I had a similar challenge in writing Chap. 5.
As I worked to provide a “solution” to the S[trong]B[lack]W[omen], I
felt compelled to root it within Christian scripture because of the audi-
ence. I think that what you’re doing is expanding the conversation beyond
my original Christian audience, something I’d hoped that people would
do. I’m excited that you’re presenting.” Chanequa Walker-Barnes,
“Follow-up on SECSOR paper,” email message to Pamela Ayo Yetunde,
March 1, 2016.
41. Lightsey, “Inner Dictum,”: 339–349.
42. Phillis Isabella Sheppard, Self, Culture, and Others in Womanist Practical
Theology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
43. Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name.
44. Lorde, Zami, 176, quoted in Sheppard Self, Culture, and Others in
Womanist Practical Theology, 167.
45. By humanist, I mean Lorde’s analysis, critique, and advocacy was often
geared toward all of humanity, not just women, black women, lesbians,
black lesbians, gay men, and black gay men. According to Anthony Pinn,
African American Humanist Principles: Living and Thinking Like the
 WOMANISM AND THE ABSENCE OF EXPLICIT BLACK BUDDHIST… 37

Children of Nimrod (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 7, the human-

ist tradition in African-American communities includes: an “understanding
of humanity as fully (and solely) accountable and responsible for the
human condition and the correction of humanity’s plight; suspicious
toward or rejection of supernatural explanation and claims, combined with
an understanding of humanity as an evolving part of the natural environ-
ment as opposed to being a created being. This can involve disbelief in
God(s); an appreciation for African American cultural production and a
perception of traditional forms of black religiosity as having cultural impor-
tance as opposed to any type of ‘cosmic’ authority; a commitment to indi-
vidual and society transformation; a controlled optimism that recognizes
both human potential and human destructive activities.”
46. 2015 is the year in which I wrote “A New Spelling of Our Names: An
Exploration of the Psycho-Spiritual Experiences of African-American
Lesbians.” PhD diss., Columbia Theological Seminary, 2016.
47. Kelly Brown Douglas, What’s Faith Got to Do with It? (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis Books, 2005).
48. Anthony B. Pinn, African American Humanist Principles (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
 CHAPTER 3

The Spiritual Practices and Experiences

of African-American Buddhist Lesbians
in the IMC

Abstract African-American Buddhist same-sex loving women (or lesbi-

ans) in the Insight Meditation tradition, who grew up in Christian
churches, engaged in a mixed methods research study utilizing the Fetzer
Spiritual Experience Index (with some modifications) for the quantitative
portion of the study. Five women, Norene, Deborah, Marcella, Alicia, and
Mary (not their real names) participated in interviews. The quantitative
analysis was put in “dialogue” with the qualitative analysis from the narra-
tives, through a Sequential Nested Transformative Strategy (SNTS) to
find that Buddhism, in the Insight Meditation tradition, has a positive
relational impact on these women.

Keywords Research • Mixed methods • Narrative • Relational

resilience • Interviews

Chapter 1 was about Buddhism in the Insight Meditation Community

(IMC). In the IMC, Buddhist practitioners are taught about Siddhartha
Gautama’s life, the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the Brahma
Viharas, the paramitas, the Five Remembrances, self and no self, and more.
This is what is taught regardless of how practitioners identify themselves.

© The Author(s) 2018 39

P. A. Yetunde, Object Relations, Buddhism, and Relationality
in Womanist Practical Theology, Black Religion/Womanist Thought/
Social Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94454-8_3
40 P. A. YETUNDE

The belief is, no matter one’s age, gender, sex, ethnicity, race, nationality,
ability, religion, and other ways of identifying, we will all, as human beings,
face the existential predicament of being human, and suffer. Afrocentric
womanist theologian Delores S. Williams, and those who hold her same
Transformation of Consciousness concerns, may wonder whether Insight
Buddhism is good for black women, including black women who are
same-sex loving. This study supports the conclusion that Insight Buddhism
has been a positive transformation of consciousness for the women who
participated in this study.1
Though what Insight dharma teachers teach in sanghas is known, what
was not known was if and how those teachings impacted the women in
this study. In order to determine the impact of dharma teachings on these
women, I asked them to complete a modified Fetzer Spiritual Experience
Index which includes these statements:

1. I often feel closely related to power greater than myself.

2. I often feel that I have little control over what happens to me.
3. My practice gives my life meaning and purpose.
4. My practice is a way of life.
5. Ideas from faiths different from my own may increase my under-
standing of spiritual truth.
6. One should not marry someone of a different faith.
7. My practice is an important part of my individual identity.
8. My practice helps me to confront tragedy and suffering.
9. My practice is often a deeply emotional experience.
10. It is difficult for me to form a clear, concrete image of absolute
reality.
11. I believe that there is only one true religion.
12. It is important that I follow the religious beliefs of my parents.
13. Learning about different religions is an important part of my spiri-
tual development.
14. I often think about issues concerning my practice.
15. If my practice is strong enough, I will not experience doubt.
16. Obedience to religious doctrine is the most important aspect of my
practice.
17. My relationship to absolute reality is experienced as unconditional
love.
18. My spiritual beliefs change as I encounter new ideas and experiences.
 THE SPIRITUAL PRACTICES AND EXPERIENCES OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN… 41

19. I am sometimes uncertain about the best way to resolve a moral

conflict.
20. I often fear punishment in absolute reality.
21. Although I sometimes fall short of my spiritual ideals, I am still
basically a good and worthwhile person.
22. A primary purpose of meditation is to avoid personal tragedy.
23. I can experience spiritual doubts and still remain committed to my
practice.
24. I believe that the world is basically good.
25. My practice enables me to experience forgiveness when I act against
my moral conscience.
26. It is important that my spiritual beliefs conform with those of per-
sons closest to me.
27. Persons of different religions share a common spiritual bond.
28. I gain spiritual strength by trusting in higher power.
29. There is usually only one right solution to any moral dilemma.
30. I make a conscious effort to live in accordance with my spiritual
values.
31. I feel a strong spiritual bond with all of humankind.
32. My practice is a private experience which I rarely, if ever, share with
others.
33. Sharing my practice with others is important for my spiritual
growth.
34. I never challenge the teachings of my religion.
35. I believe that the world is basically evil.
36. Religious scriptures are best interpreted as symbolic attempts to
convey ultimate truths.
37. My practice guides my whole approach to life.
38. Improving the human community is an important spiritual goal.

Research participants had the option of responding to the state-

ments on a Likert Scale from 1 to 6 with 1 being strongly disagree, 2
disagree, 3 neither agree nor disagree, 4 somewhat agree, 5 agree, and
6 strongly agree. I categorized statements as either spiritual practice or
spiritual experience statements, and through Spearman Correlation,
determined the impact spiritual practices had on spiritual experiences.
A cursory analysis of the responses supports the conclusion that Insight
Buddhist practices are viewed, by the participants themselves, as having
42 P. A. YETUNDE

led to a positive transformation of consciousness. Some of the spiritual

practice statements include:

• My practice gives my life meaning and purpose.

• My practice is a way of life.
• My practice is an important part of my individual identity.
• My practice helps me to confront tragedy and suffering.
• Learning about different religions is an important part of my spiri-
tual development.
• Obedience to religious doctrine is the most important aspect of my
practice.
• I make a conscious effort to live in accordance with my spiritual
values.
• Religious scriptures are best interpreted as symbolic attempts to con-
vey ultimate truths.

Nearly 85% of the research participants agreed or strongly agree that

their practice gives their life meaning and purpose. Nearly 77% agreed or
strongly agree that their practice is a way of life. As would be expected,
given the self / no self teachings, mindfulness, and Right Concentration,
only 28% agreed that their practice is an important part of their identity.
On the other hand, 48% agreed or strongly agree that their practice is an
important part of their individual identity. Insight Buddhism, like most
other Buddhisms, promises the relief from suffering. Nearly 85% of the
research participants agreed or strongly agreed that their practice helps
them confront tragedy and suffering. Nearly 80% agreed or strongly agree
that learning about different religions is an important part of their spiritual
development. IMC dharma teachers, in my experience, tend not to be
dogmatic because being so would be inconsistent with the value of nonat-
tachment and the transformations of craving and clinging. Not surpris-
ingly, nearly 85% disagreed or strongly disagreed that obedience to religious
doctrine is the most important aspect of their practice. There is a strong
element of orthopraxy in IMC, thus, nearly 89% agreed or strongly agreed
that they make conscious efforts to live in accordance with their spiritual
values. The Pali Canon contains thousands of suttas, and many are written
about the Buddha teaching bhikkhus, or male monastics. Many of the sut-
tas are transmitted orally from dharma teacher to students in a dharma talk
given at a sangha, or in dialogue. Suttas are also often ­commented on by
dharma teachers in their articles and books, therefore orally and in writing,
 THE SPIRITUAL PRACTICES AND EXPERIENCES OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN… 43

many suttas are interpreted by dharma teachers before Insight practitioners

ever read a sutta and when they do, it has been translated into English.
Given the many interpretive lenses between Pali and oral and written
English versions of the sutta, it seems incongruent that only 26% of partici-
pants agreed or strongly agreed that religious scriptures are best interpreted
as symbolic attempts to convey ultimate truths. Thirty-­eight percent nei-
ther agreed nor disagreed with this statement. Though these women
believe their practices are beneficial, what are the impacts of their practices
on their lived experiences as women who are black, same-­gender-­loving,
and Buddhists in a Eurocentric, heteronormative, heterosexist, often
homophobic, and overwhelmingly Christian-identified society? Some of
the spiritual experience questions include:

• I often feel that I have little control over what happens to me.
• My practice is often a deeply emotional experience.
• My relationship to absolute reality is experienced as unconditional
love.
• My spiritual beliefs change as I encounter new ideas and experiences.
• I often fear punishment in absolute reality.
• I gain spiritual strength by trusting in higher power.
• I feel a strong spiritual bond with all of humankind.

Dharma teachers in IMC typically do not teach that there is a power

higher than one’s intention to practice, therefore it is somewhat surprising
that 60% of the women in this study agreed or strongly agreed that they
often feel closely related to power greater than themselves. It is somewhat
surprising but for the fact that just because these women practice Buddhism
does not mean they have rejected all aspects of Christianity, that some of
them have integrated African spirituality, including Orishas, and that per-
haps within the spiritual movements between Christianity and Buddhism,
they have engaged in the movement of deity exchange.2 Insight Buddhism
emphasizes orthopraxis supported by the orthodoxy of the Noble
Eightfold Path, therefore nearly 85% disagreed or strongly disagree that
they feel they have little control over what happens to them. Meditation is
a central component of Insight Buddhism. In deep meditation, often
experienced in meditation retreats, one momentarily loses the experiences
of physical sensations. On the other hand, retreatants often practice
lovingkindness meditation which can produce profoundly intense experi-
ences of merging. Sometimes deep silent meditation precedes guided
44 P. A. YETUNDE

lovingkindness meditation, therefore the responses to practice as a deeply

emotional experience vary. Twenty-three percent of participants said they
neither agreed nor disagreed that their practice is often a deeply emotional
experience. Nearly 35% somewhat agreed with the statement. Nearly 40%
agreed to strongly agreed with the statement. Unlike some Christian tra-
ditions that use fear to motivate adherents to believe the teachings, Insight
dharma teachers tend not to use fear, but living in the US can be fear-­
producing when gender, racial, sexuality, and religious minority statuses
are under attack. About 35% of participants agreed or strongly agreed that
their relationship to absolute reality was experienced as unconditional
love; however, about 85% disagreed or strongly disagreed that they often
fear punishment in absolute reality. Though they may not feel love from
an external transcendental entity, they do not fear it either. Thirty percent
agreed or strongly agreed that their spiritual beliefs change as they encoun-
ter new ideas and experiences. Nearly 81% agreed or strongly agree that
they can experience spiritual doubts and still remain committed to their
practice. It is taught in the Pali Canon that doubt is a significant hindrance
to practice, insight, and enlightenment, and therefore should be elimi-
nated. The fact that most of these women can experience spiritual doubt
and continue in their practice indicates strong healthy ego functioning,
resilience, and the absence of or de-intensification of an internalized per-
secutory object, a subject I return to in Chap. 6. Likewise, nearly 58%
agreed or strongly agreed that their practice enables them to experience
self forgiveness when they act against their moral conscience. Resilience
can also be felt in the strengthening of one’s spirituality. About 43% said
they gain spiritual strength by trusting in higher power, but perhaps many
do not believe in a higher power. Twenty-six percent said they disagreed
or strongly disagreed that they gain spiritual strength in this way. Reflecting
on the teachings against clinging, craving, and attachment, it is somewhat
surprising to find that about 67% agreed or strongly agreed that they feel
a strong spiritual bond with all of humankind but feeling a strong spiritual
bond does not mean they are clinging to the bond, craving the bond, or
attached to the bond. The spiritual practices of the women in this study
support the conclusion that Buddhism in the Insight tradition is generally
psychologically and spiritually beneficial because it gives meaning and pur-
pose, contributes positively to their identity formation, helps them con-
front tragedy, opens their minds to learning about different religions,
promotes flexibility, tends to be nondogmatic about scriptures, and pro-
motes integrity.
 THE SPIRITUAL PRACTICES AND EXPERIENCES OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN… 45

In addition to the positive views these women have about their prac-
tices, they also tend to positively view their experiences arising out of those
practices. For example, they still experience emotions, love, a level of fear-
lessness, open-mindedness, spiritual strength, and interconnectedness or
interdependence. Though the suttas do not espouse that Buddhist prac-
tice leads to relational resiliency, I deem these practices and resultant expe-
riences to be promoting a Remarkable Relational Resilience. For example,
Norene said:

I am the cat that sometimes finds herself on top of the book [recording
garbled] behind you and then when she falls she falls on her four paws and
then just keeps walking off. I have fallen more times than I can tell you in
my life and I keep landing on my four paws and I’m very very fortunate to
have experienced many lives in that …. I don’t know where the future lies.
In most cases I got up there to the top of the bookcases, I was curious as to
what was up there, I wanted to see, “umm,” piqued my attention and I
knew, of course, [recording garbled] I don’t know if that necessarily for me
speaks to my resilience, but what happens is when I get there, it’s a bit like
Rocky. Um, in Philadelphia on top of the stairs [sings the Rocky theme], I
get there and then no, possibly a slip or fall, and then when I do, something
happens in the fall, that’s where I would say the resilience comes in—there’s
a knowingness that I’m not going to get hurt and it could be from here to
here and somewhere in that trajectory is where it feels like (gasp) I almost
have wings or I have a parachute, that’s where resilience comes in.

Norene spoke about how her spiritual community promotes resiliency:

I have … two spiritual homes in my area which is really nice. I have Spirit
Rock that is long and standing and they also offer long retreats … whether
they’re month-longs or what have you and then I have Shared Meditation
Center.3 Their whole premise is on inclusion and spiritual growth from that
point of view. And there is a way that they hold people from all different
areas in this place of—you can find freedom in the liberation [recording
feedback], but walk in—our doors are open for you … [speaking of longer
retreats] … that’s where I believe I have the opportunity for the rubber to
meet the road. I actually have a longer time to do the work to go deeper in
myself to do that investigation of the nature of my mind and what I have
found is without the longer retreat, for me, it’s almost as if I just sprinted
[recording feedback] I have short sprints of the levels of understanding and
enlightenment, the longer retreats allow me to sit longer with myself and
cultivate resiliency, cultivate calm, peace, breath, letting go, presence, so for
46 P. A. YETUNDE

me Spirit Rock offering a longer retreat is just what I need, and it may not
be Spirit Rock. I just spent six weeks at IMS [Insight Meditation Society]
last year, it’s the longer retreats for me that are very, very important to add
into the rest of my life.

Deborah said:

[on experiencing resiliency] I haven’t allowed myself to become cynical,

even though I have experienced depression, many different facets of my
identity—assumptions that I’m not competent—I’m a professor of color—
especially colleagues or students—I have some kind of positive, glass is half
full … probably from my family. I was pretty healthy, I mean, a sort of
healthy family,4 so I can say nothing’s perfect but, there was a lot of love and
support and validation, from both my parents and my grandparents and
extended family, aunts and uncles, so it was probably shaped by that but I
also think—again, finding inner circles of people to help process, definitely I
can point to different cities I’ve lived in, roommates and friends I’ve lived
with who have been my support network especially during certain parts of
the path where we were in the same city … let’s say somebody at work
would say, you know, you’re always getting away with something whereas
no one else is being treated like that, like you’re not competent like you
don’t really know and like “Can you believe this is what happened to me
today?” We were there for each other and I think that’s where a lot of resil-
ience came from, like “You’re right, you’re good, the person was wrong, we
know about you. Of course they did that!” and “Oh yeah you’re getting
away with something. Of course!” … You can bounce back a lot easier when
you realize your experiences are … a part of a pattern and you know it’s not
really about you, it’s about a pattern … so I think resilience comes from
having the blessing of a strong family and supportive family and all of that
[and] being with others who can validate those experiences of points of pat-
tern and the dynamics that are at play, so we can see when you’re not in the
pattern, so doing that for you, doing that for each other ....
… Yes, I would say [my Buddhist community] could be a little more
direct about [promoting resiliency]. I think it is helpful to talk about … that
directly in Dharma talks like Bonnie Duran has done, and others—teachers
of color have done, I think—how can you be resilient when you’re getting
this message on the job, or from the media that your body should be a cer-
tain way or that your skin should be a certain tone, or that your hair should
be, you know. These images, even if a lot of people on the cushion got
through that it’s still something to just validate, and that’s why I [recording
feedback garbled] this way, or that’s why I, um, maybe they’ve already
worked most of that out, but it doesn’t hurt to just mention it directly
 THE SPIRITUAL PRACTICES AND EXPERIENCES OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN… 47

because it’s a common experience. I think that’s why we have new dharma
teachers coming up, I think they change with different generations, there’s
even a group in San Francisco that’s organized by an Indian woman, or a
Southeast Asian woman, for teachers and she also has a queer group, women
of color group, I believe, but she’s trying to get to those next generations,
and even Spirit Rock, because it had pressure from people pushing them,
they came out and said oh, let’s just include everybody, but from that pres-
sure Spirit Rock, very wealthy blah, blah, blah, very white now they have
teacher training programs for mostly people of color and the LGBTQ folks
and other marginalized people, for a lot of people of color intentionally so
that they can be the dharma teachers … that gives you more legitimacy to
be able to spread the dharma, be able to talk at different places than you
talked to before … so that’s an intentional way of bringing in the next gen-
eration that maybe is going to talk about resiliency in a way that people are
thirsty for, like how do you deal with such “isms”: sexism, heterosexism,
racism, you know classism and all of that and their intersections.
The dharma principle of if you use concentration on your breath, the
meditation principle, if you use concentration on your breath, you know
your breathing’s focused, regain your focus, bring your attention back to
your breath, without judgment, the vipassana tradition. I think that’s a form
of resiliency you can use on the cushion, like oh I got a little off my path, I
strayed, nonjudgmental, what do I need to do, bring myself back. I think a
lot of those principles really apply to, you know, let’s bounce back …. And
that can be principles of resiliency. And that’s been helpful for me.

Marcella said:

There were—I guess there have been those moments of suicidal thoughts
and, you know, just to bring yourself back into deeper things is really big …
and my ancestors5 were resilient. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for them. I
wouldn’t be talking to you if it weren’t for them. What they had to go
through for me to be here I’m very thankful for and I’ve, what I’ve been
told is, I’ve learned that I am a human healing myself so that when I’m in
my 40s and in my 50s my 60s my 70s and so forth I am able to mentor, you
know, people like me who are struggling [laughing] in their teens and twen-
ties, and 30s you know. You know, I went to [recording feedback garbled]
resiliencies, so learning about people like Audre Lorde, you know, all these
other, these other strong women of color Assata and Elaine Brown and
Angela Davis, learning about what they went through when they were
imprisoned all these things help fuel my fire too …. When I learned about
… the Urban Bushwomen, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar … they have a dance arts
and activism program that happens every summer and I did it in 2006 in
48 P. A. YETUNDE

Brooklyn and they go to different places, when I was—I love, I love ques-
tions like this. What I learned about field hollers like the way slaves, when I
hear Negro Spirituals, when I was practicing capoeira the Brazilian martial
art, where, where the slave songs in Portuguese, all those songs about slav-
ery, how to overcome whatever the master was doing to them, [she breaks
into a song in Portuguese] they’re talking about if I die in the transit from
Africa to the New World in the ocean, don’t worry about me because
Yemanja is going to carry me to wherever I go … I’m learning about how
my ancestors coped through songs, through dancing, through music … I
lived in a house this last year that was close to a creek, so I did some offer-
ings to Osun for my birthday with some people who dressed in all white and
we had some honey … and I have some honey on my altar. I think I have an
altar, that’s another thing where self preservation, where I have candles and
herbs, stones and gems and sea salts and you know, pictures and things, so I
um, yes all of those deities, those African ones, Wiccan [recording feedback
garbled] yea, I really, I really like how … ancestor worship or deity worship
can be integrated into your spiritual practice.
At the shared meditation center … in D.C., at the Insight group there,
there [were] different groups, like there’s a general open group, the LGBTQ
group, the POC [People of Color] group, and that’s validating of who you
are when you can go somewhere and you can, you know, during the dharma
talk you can say, you know someone, some white person at work or s­ omething,
said something very inflammatory to me today, you can discuss it in the
sangha and you can do things like that in your community that’s a big part of
your healing, so know when someone says something queerphobic while
you’re shopping, you know, or along those lines that it’s nice to have dialogue
in your community when you really show up and people are able to support
you and help you unpack, you know, whatever pain you may have endured.

Marcella concluded that her sangha promotes resiliency.

Alicia said:

In some ways yes, yes, yes [I am resilient]. I am resilient in some ways and
in other ways I don’t feel resilient. Resilience, for me, is the capacity to
bounce back and recover from an experience of stress or demand that might
make me feel like my inner resources are being, well, either my outer or
inner resources are being depleted or taxed in some way, being able to
recover from that and regain balance, regain a sense of balance and stability
and strength and hope that I’m not always going to be in that place of
struggle. Yes, yes, yeah that is my own personal experience of resiliency.
[regarding Alicia’s membership in various sanghas and their promoting
 THE SPIRITUAL PRACTICES AND EXPERIENCES OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN… 49

resiliency] Yes, yeah I would have to say all of them do …. Well, I think each,
in their own way, they rely on the Buddhist teachings, primarily, in regards
to this question, the Four Foundations of suffering [Four Noble Truths],
you know, there is suffering for all of us, investigating what the causes of
that suffering are, acknowledging that there’s a way out, and presenting that
way out in the form of the Noble Eightfold Path. It’s like whatever is com-
ing up for me in my life or someone else’s life who’s a member of the sangha
that is causing pain and suffering, we either directly or indirectly apply our,
I’m sorry, apply the Four Noble Truths, I said before foundations, apply the
Four Noble Truths to whatever that experience is and what makes it bear-
able, supports us as being resilient is being able to do that in community
knowing that even though our particular experience might be different, suf-
fering is universal and by helping, helping us, helping me to cultivate the
capacity to see suffering, that I might be perpetuating in my life, you know
consciously or unconsciously and discovering the ways in which I can tap
into my own internal resources, bring love and compassion understanding,
patience, kindness [recording feedback garbled] awareness to those experi-
ences, that practice, that process in and of itself creates resilience, that is
what creates resilience.

Mary said:

Yes [I see myself as resilient]. Resilience means in the face of challenges,

problems, issues that happen in life, things happen that you are able to be
okay, I can get through it, things don’t have to devastate me. I can bounce
back from them in a way. So, yeah, I actually do think I’m resilient. I think
part of it is … how I feel no matter what is happening. You know, that I can
feel, even feel happy or at peace when things are really difficult … then there
are times I’ve noticed when, that, times when I think—one of the things
that has happened for me which has been a great change—is that for a very
long time when I didn’t feel good, or was sad or angry, I didn’t question
where it came from, I just felt bad and when I felt good it was like, “Why
am I feeling good?!” You know, now it’s like when I feel good is like, “Oh,
I feel good.” And when I’m not it’s like, “Oh, what’s going on?” So that has
really shifted for me … it’s gradual. It wasn’t an abrupt shift, it was a gradual
shift. I think I noticed it one day and I said, “Wow! This is different.” But I
think it’s been changing gradually during the last ten years or so. Yeah, so
that’s part of resiliency, I sort of spend more time feeling good than I spend
feeling not …. I think resilience is, maybe, allows one to be more equani-
mous, so equanimity can help people become more resilient, but I think
yeah, they are close cousins, not synonymous, but close cousins. And they
can feed each other.
50 P. A. YETUNDE

No self and resiliency are connected. Inclusive and diverse sanghas, like
Shared Meditation Center and the one in Washington, D.C. that Marcella
mentioned, create communities for people of color and LGBTQ people.
The creation of these communities and the women’s participation in these
communities inspire them to be visible and authentic without espousing
pro-white and antigay rhetoric.
Relational resilience, as a byproduct of Buddhist practice, has not been
considered before, perhaps because it has never been tested empirically.
Testing relational resilience empirically, especially in the lives of same-sex
loving people, undermines the age-old homophobic stereotypes steeped
in psychological pseudoscience, that same-sex loving people are not rela-
tional and not resilient. W. R. D. Fairbairn, the Object Relations Theory
psychoanalyst whose work I draw on regarding the persecutory object,
was also a “grandfather” of conversion “therapy”6—the psychological
pseudoscience of radically changing a same-sex loving person’s attraction
toward people of the opposite sex. He wrote:

Perverse sexual tendencies [homosexuality] are not just unfortunate excres-

cences which in some mysterious fashion become attached to an otherwise
normal personality, but integral components of the structure of the person-
ality itself. Thus, homosexuality must be regarded, not simply as a perverse
expression of natural sexuality, but as the natural sexual expression of a per-
sonality which has become perverse in its essential structure … for what the
sexual pervert does is to capitalize his perverse tendencies instead of repress-
ing them, with the consequence that they not only become overt, but
assume a dominant position in the structure of his personality. The resulting
situation may, to use psychiatric terms, be summarized in the statement that
the sexual pervert is not a psychoneurotic, but a psychopath.7
The sexual pervert refuses to lead a normal sexual life within the com-
munity and, in so far as sexual life is concerned if in naught else, he refuses
to acknowledge allegiance to the standards of society. In confirmation of the
fact that an attitude towards the social group is involved, attention may be
drawn to the frequency with which individuals addicted to certain forms of
sexual perversion form groups of their own within the community. This is,
of course, particularly common in the case of homosexuals; and it is charac-
teristic of such groups that the difference between their standards and those
of the community is not necessarily confined to the sexual sphere.8

Fairbairn, a man with a complicated childhood sexual developmental

past that included being repeatedly fondled by his mother,9 repeatedly
degraded by his father,10 and fondled by a strange man,11 who suffered as an
 THE SPIRITUAL PRACTICES AND EXPERIENCES OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN… 51

adult with paruresis just as his father had,12 who wrote in his journals that
he had vagina envy,13 also posited that only heterosexual people could be
relationally resilient and suggested that gay men be encamped and segre-
gated from the rest of society to be converted into heterosexuals before
being released back into society. Fairbairn, perhaps because of his own
sexual shame, was wrong to categorize all same-sex-loving people as men-
tally ill and was wrong to exclude some heterosexual people as sexually
perverse. Fairbairn’s pseudoscience did not include empiricism, nor did it
include an exploration of how Buddhist practices supports relationality.
The exploration of the psycho-spiritual experiences of African-American
Buddhist lesbians, using a mixed methods approach using the Fetzer
SEI with a separation of spiritual practice statements from spiritual experi-
ence statements; Spearman Correlation to determine the impact of spiri-
tual practice on spiritual experience; and a Sequential Nested Transformative
Strategy,14 supports the conclusion that same-sex loving women of African
descent practicing Buddhism in the Insight tradition are relational and
resilient. What is remarkable is that the relationality and resiliency occur in
a gendered, raced, and heteronormative society.
Buddhism, in Theravada and Insight, promise, on one side, nonrela-
tionality as in Siddhartha Gautama leaving his wife and son and returning
to them as their dharma teacher, and holding the celibate monastic life in
the highest regard, with the householder life (which may include being
married and raising children) as secondary and hindrances to a more
evolved consciousness. Relationality, perhaps, is an inconvenient truth of
Buddhist practice in the Insight tradition because the relationship-­oriented
experiences of the women in this study do not support the belief that
Buddhism creates introversion, distance, aloofness, abandonment anxiety,
and detachment. Buddhist practices, at least for some Buddhist practitio-
ners, may actually support the opposite of what people have come to
believe about Buddhism—that it can actually lead to experiences that sup-
port relational resilience.

Notes
1. Pamela Ayo Yetunde, “A New Spelling of Our Names: An Exploration of
the Psycho-Spiritual Experiences of African-American Buddhist Lesbians,”
PhD diss., Columbia Theological Seminary, (2016).
2. I call these nonlinear movements self-preservation, rejection, migration,
longing, exploration, positive encounter-relocation, integration, re-evalua-
tion, transformation, longing again, letting go, and deity exchange.
52 P. A. YETUNDE

3. Shared Meditation Center is a pseudonym of an Insight community in

northern California. I used a pseudonym to protect the identity of research
participants who practice there.
4. Ja’Nina Walker and Buffie Longmire-Avital, in their article “The Impact of
Religious Faith and Internalized Homonegativity on Resiliency for Black
Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Emerging Adults,” Developmental Psychology
49, no. 9 (2013), 1723–1731, found that black lesbians utilized their fami-
lies and racial communities as sources of strength when faced with sexism,
racism, and homophobia.
5. Walker and Longmire-Avital found that some black lesbians struggling
with their sexuality may seek out religious support to work through their
oppression and cultivate resilience because of the black community’s belief
that religion may give meaning to systematic oppression.
6. W.R.D. Fairbairn, “The Treatment and Rehabilitation of Sexual
Offenders,” in Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality (London: Routledge,
1999), 289–296.
7. Ibid., 291.
8. Ibid., 292.
9. John D. Sutherland, Fairbairn’s Journey into the Interior (London: Free
Association Books, 1989), 66.
10. Marie T. Hoffman and Lowell W. Hoffman, “Religion in the Life and
Work of W. R. D. Fairbairn,” in Fairbairn and the Object Relations
Tradition, eds. Graham S. Clarke and David E. Scharff (London: Karnac
Books, 2014), 78.
11. Sutherland, Fairbairn’s Journey into the Interior, 73.
12. Hoffman and Hoffman, “Religion in the Life and Work of W. R. D.
Fairbairn,” 71.
13. Sutherland, Fairbairn’s Journey into the Interior, 72.
14. SNTS is a combination of Sequential Explanatory Strategy, Sequential
Transformative Strategy, and Concurrent Nested Strategy. These research
strategies can be found in John W. Cresswell’s Research Design: Qualitative,
Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches, 2nd ed. (Lincoln, NE: Sage
Publications, 2003).
 CHAPTER 4

Self, No Self, and the Paradoxes of Self

and No Self Preservation

Abstract Buddhism has been criticized for espousing detachment from

others, but though Buddhism promotes nonattachment, it does not state
whether its practices actually undermine the ability to be in relationship
with others. Buddhism has also been criticized for promoting nihilism, yet
it has not been well understood how teachings on no self actually promote
healthy relationality. Alicia, Norene, Deborah, Marcella, and Mary discuss
what no self means to them.

Keywords Self • No self • Christianity • Buddhism • Anxiety

Some people have criticized Buddhism for espousing detachment from

others. Muzika argues that abandonment anxiety is at the heart of
Buddhism.1 He believes one of Buddhism’s deepest concerns is the pain
that comes with being attached and the pain of grieving the loss of those
we were attached to. Muzika is correct in asserting that there is an
­abandonment anxiety “flavor” in Buddhism, but abandonment anxiety in
Buddhism does not mean that all Buddhists are anxious and anxious about
loss and grief. There are least 31 self-described African-American same-­
sex-­
loving women who practice Buddhism in the Insight Meditation

© The Author(s) 2018 53

P. A. Yetunde, Object Relations, Buddhism, and Relationality
in Womanist Practical Theology, Black Religion/Womanist Thought/
Social Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94454-8_4
54 P. A. YETUNDE

Community (IMC) whose Buddhist practices cultivate relational inter-

dependence, the opposite of abandonment anxiety. These women par-
ticipated in a mixed methods study as an exploration of their
psycho-spiritual experiences related to the teachings and practices in the
IMC. The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate the study’s findings on
the concepts of self and no self through a quantiative analysis of Deborah,
Norene, Marcella, Alicia, and Mary’s narratives, this chapter shows that
abandonment anxiety is not at the heart of these women’s Buddhism.

Spiritual Movements Between Christianity

and Buddhism

Ninety-two percent of the women in this study grew up attending church,

including Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, Pentecostal, and other Christian
churches. Before leaving their churches, they began questioning Christian
teachings as early as 5 years old, but 70% began to question between the
ages of 6 and 19. The reasons for questioning the teachings included the
teachings themselves, the behavior of people in the church, the church
not living up to expectations, and other reasons. Only 3.85% of research
participants said they left the church due to negative teachings on sexual-
ity. Most (57.34%) of the research participants left the church when they
were between the ages of 14 and 19, and 33.33% left between the ages
of 20 and 30. Nearly 69% explored other Christian denominations before
exploring Buddhism. Nearly 57% visited their first Buddhist group when
they were between 20 and 30, and nearly 70% identified themselves as a
Buddhist practitioner when they were between the ages of 20 and 40.
Though only research participants in the IMC were invited to partici-
pate, it may be the case that Buddhists from other traditions partici-
pated. The question posed was, “What Buddhist school of thought
do you most identify with?” Answers included Mindfulness (12.50%),
Insight (25%), Tibetan (4.17%), Zen (4.17%), Theravada (41.67%),
Nichiren (4.1%), and Soka Gakkai (8.33%). As Mary stated in her inter-
view, she is part of Insight, and identifies as Theravada and Christian and
often neither. As Marcella stated, she is in the Insight tradition and
embraces the Vedic concept of Self and African spiritualties. As Deborah
stated, she is in the Insight tradition and has been ordained in the
Yoruba/Orisha tradition. Alicia, a member of the Insight tradition,
spoke of past lives and multiple cosmologies. Norene was the only inter-
 SELF, NO SELF, AND THE PARADOXES OF SELF AND NO SELF PRESERVATION 55

viewee who did not speak of multiple spiritual or religious beliefs. With
regards to the Fetzer SEI statement “Ideas from faiths different from
my own may increase my understanding of spiritual truth,” nearly 80%
stated that they agreed or strongly agreed. Ninety-six percent of the
research participants disagreed or strongly disagreed that there is only
one true religion. These data demonstrate that these women’s spiritual
journeys between Christianity and Buddhism are not linear. Their jour-
neys can be described in movements, and there are several, including
Self Preservation, Rejection, Migration, Longing, Exploration, Positive
Encounter-Relocation, Integration, Re-Evaluation, Longing Again,
Transformation, Letting Go, and, in some cases, Deity Exchange.
The spiritual movement of Self Preservation is the attempt to keep
oneself safe in the face of danger. Rejection is a turning away from one’s
religious/spiritual belief system. Migration is the intrapsychic movement
from the belief system that was rejected to an open-mindedness to
another or other belief systems. Longing is the desire for a belief system
that is nurturing, empowering, wise, and transformative. Positive
Encounter is the first time someone meets a new tradition with ease, fas-
cination, or an automatic embrace. Integration happens when new belief
systems are incorporated into the old beliefs that are still held on to.
Re-Evaluation happens when new belief systems that are explored are
compared to old beliefs and what is longed for. Transformation is change.
Letting Go, in the mundane sense, is the process of releasing clinging and
craving and de-intensifying attachments. Longing Again occurs when
one realizes that their new belief system doesn’t answer all questions or
includes teachings that are rejected. Exploration is a conscious decision
to know more about the belief system one has migrated toward. Deity
Exchange happens when one’s prior concept(s) of god(s), goddess(es),
and deity(ies) are rejected in favor of the adoption of another or (an)
other god(s), goddess(es), and deity(ies). Not all of these movements are
linear. For example, Self Preservation can occur anytime one feels threat-
ened. On the other hand, Transformation occurs sometime after Positive
Encounter. For African-­ American Buddhist lesbians who grew up in
church and practice in the Insight tradition, the spiritual movements of
Self Preservation and Letting Go are aided by their understanding of self
and no self, mindfulness, and Right Concentration, which supports their
understanding of self and no self. In the qualitative method for the study,
56 P. A. YETUNDE

Alicia, Deborah, Norene, Mary, and Marcella were asked 15 questions

including these questions on self:

• What does the word “self” mean to you?

• Are you a self?
• Do you have a self?
• What attempts have you made to preserve self?
• Where did your concept of self come from?
• Have you transformed your notion of self?
• Have you let go of trying to preserve self?

Their answers are as follows:

Alicia

Self. Ah. When I think of the word self, what I have come to call my local
identity, my local and physical identity in this incarnation, and while there
might be moments when my sense of self feels fixed and permanent in some
ways, I know that, I know that that’s really just an illusion, I know that I’m
so much more than the container that this part of my consciousness is
focused in right now, at this moment, but I can say I was raised African
American, I’ve got some native ancestry, some indigenous ancestry, cer-
tainly have some European ancestry, but I have identified as African
American all my life. I can say that I’m a lesbian and that’s a part of my self
identity, I can say that I grew up working class, that’s a part of my identity,
being a spiritual seeker is a part of my identity, so I feel like I have multiple
identities that make up that self, but I also know that they are constantly in
flux and constantly changing and I also know that there are aspects of my
being and my consciousness that exists in the realms of the unseen that are
constantly, continuously having an effect on who I am as my consciousness
if focused in the body of Alicia that I might not even be aware of, you know,
most of the time. So, the notion of a self, the concept, it’s not true to who
I am in my entirety, spiritually and energetically ....
… I believe I am preserving self at every moment of every day that I exist
in this dimension. It’s what allows me to hold myself together … just at the
level of consciousness I am holding myself together so that I can navigate
through the physical reality that is this human experience. I guess on some
level that being done outside my conscious awareness to a certain extent, my
holding my notions of self identity I think a lot of that is happening outside
of my conscious awareness. I think it’s just an implicit part of who I am on
a more conscious level.
 SELF, NO SELF, AND THE PARADOXES OF SELF AND NO SELF PRESERVATION 57

I think I preserve my sense of selves by trying to surround myself with

people and experiences who reflect facets of who I am back to me so that I
can see myself being mirrored in others, I think that helps to preserve a
sense of self identity … so in terms of being an African American, in terms
of being a lesbian, in terms of having more progressive views politically and
socially, the way that I choose to eat is a way for me to preserve my notion
of who I am as a self … I think my concept of self is ever evolving. I think
it’s always changing and shifting, based on how I’m interacting with my
environment and the feedback I get from my environment. I think my
notion of self probably began when I was in the womb, if not earlier, having
chosen the parents I chose, the sibling I chose all began to mingle together
to kind of co-create an experience of who I thought myself to be, you know,
as an infant, as a child growing up. I have a self as a daughter, I have a self as
a sister, I have a self as a caretaker, but self is never in isolation, self is always
in relation to someone or something else.
I can’t, it’s not possible for me to even conceive of my having a self with-
out being in relationship to other beings …. It came from being in relation-
ship with my parents even long before, even long before I was even born.
I’m able to say this because I do have beliefs in reincarnation, I have rein-
carnated thousands and thousands of times. I know that I had a relationship
with my mother and my father and my brother even before I came into this
existence, so it’s like how can I say that my self began, or my self identity
development began after I was born? It began before I was born and has
been shaped by, as I said, my relationships with significant others in my life
and the significant experiences I’ve had in my life. The way in which I inter-
face with the world as someone who identifies as African American, my
identity as a person of African descent, my experience of being a woman,
being the female and interfacing with the world as a female has shaped my
sense of identity, my sense of self as a female … it’s about self in relation to
others ….
… I have definitely transformed my notion of self as the result of my
exploration in consciousness … You know a part of the reason that I’m so
attracted to Buddhism is because it is such an embodied practice and I
didn’t realize it until I was in my late 30s, early 40s maybe. I was not living
in my body. That, even though I thought I was, it wasn’t until I really began
to immerse myself in Buddhist practices in particular the Four Foundations
and those associated practices that I came to realize that my body and mind
were, were not well integrated, and so my mediation practice has really,
really supported me in living a more embodied life ....
… I find this existence really difficult, in part because I feel suffering so
deeply and for me this is a really challenging realm to live in and if I had my
way, if I was independently wealthy, [chuckle] didn’t have to work for a living,
58 P. A. YETUNDE

I’d probably be in meditation most of the time, you know, such that I would
have the experience of myself as transcending those facets of myself that I
identify with, hence achieving an experience of no self, or transcendent self or
big self, but I can’t live in that state of consciousness and survive on a physical
level in this plane and so I have to preserve those aspects of my identity, my
sense of self because it helps me to cohere who I am and it’s also hard to live
in this realm and to have to interact with the people so different from myself,
different ideas, different perceptions, different mental formations, different
beliefs and who may not take responsibility for those ideas, feelings, thoughts
and beliefs and maybe project them on to me first, so I often find myself
interacting with the projections of other people which in itself helps to pre-
serve my sense of self.

Norene

Today I would say it [nonself] means love and release. Yeah, that’s what I’d
have to say … my first thought was self/nonself, and then I went to self/love
and then I went, I had this thing of, an exhale of the breath and just let it go,
releasing … Well once again I’m trying to define, “Do I have a self?” first
and foremost and if I say … if I’m looking at is as a yes, do I have a self, then
how I have cultivated that today is very different than when I was a child and
part of that comes from not necessarily needing to be seen as I did as a child
and also recognizing consciously when I am holding too much attention or
attachment to this me that I am, this me, my, I, it’s mine, this is how I see it,
trying to build a world around me, almost as if there’s a box, concrete box,
actually concrete so very very different. As a child I had no real understand-
ing of the concept of—I didn’t even have a word for self I think—to be first
the best little girl, second, I didn’t want to get whipped [chuckle], I wanted
to be loved, liked, so very very different box, very different box ....
… I [transformed myself] through spiritual work, I would say through
being in prayer, meditation, cultivating the ability to let go, to—still on the
quest to understand why I hold things so tightly and in the letting go to feel
freedom in that so that’s been part [of the] process of understanding and
defining—do I have a self or not is one [question] I am conscious of holding
on. How can I take that three or four breaths to let go for a moment and
observe, investigate “oh, that’s what that was, there it is again, I’m clinging
to that, is that real?”… There are times when I’m fully creating boxes, fully
creating ego … No. No. [it is not healthy] … No. And I just want to say I
don’t necessarily, it’s not always a creation, it is sometimes a construct that
is created, not necessarily by me, so I fit into those boxes because I’m not
conscious of coming outside the box. I find myself fitting into the box and
not busting out so, when I was talking about, when I find myself in this ego
 SELF, NO SELF, AND THE PARADOXES OF SELF AND NO SELF PRESERVATION 59

place, maybe it’s a condition that is exterior to me and I kind of fall into it
or I better hold on to [it] so that I won’t get hurt or what have you. So I’m
actually feeding into a created form, well there are times I’m creating it
myself, I’m not going to say I don’t, but it’s not always the case that the self,
the ego is being created by myself, sometimes it is as you were saying with
Audre Lorde, self-preservation, I’m just holding on. I would say [ego is]
almost synonymous with self.

Deborah

It’s [self] this strong illusion that’s hard not to believe in or hard to shake
because we’ve been conditioned to believe in a concept of the self … maybe
a little bit of materialism … but I say [self is] more importantly believing that
you’re separate from other beings … I have been conditioned to believe that
[I am a self] by our society but I do agree that we are [undecipherable
recording] on kind of these illusory boundaries and I do think that we are
connected to all beings … I think it’s tricky because theoretically I know that
it is an illusion, but I’ve been so conditioned to, I mean so steeped in that
view it’s hard to let go. I think that it may take some practice and time … I
guess I’ll say it more coming from the Audre Lorde angle because I feel like
the notion of self and self in Buddhism is philosophical, it’s something to
work on, it’s not to deny [that you were] hit in the face or something because
you don’t have a self … it’s an interpersonal connection to others and to
other beings, animals, the spirit realm and to me it’s about the ego.
In the Buddhist paradigm they’re talking about the ego … believing that
this mind and its thoughts are real … more like individualism …I feel like in
the Audre Lorde perspective I definitely agree … she has really important
quotes about preserving, self preservation, self care, and being revolution-
ary, and so I feel like they’re using the same language but in different
ways … I’m a black-identified biracial woman from the South, lesbian iden-
tified, queer as well identified who has a lot of opinions and alternative views
that aren’t reflected in dominant society, media or other representation, so
my preservation of self has been finding like-minded people as my inner
circle of family and friends … We support each other and I think in my view
she [Lorde] is kind of having this womanist or feminist view … a lot of
activists should be more like Audre Lorde [chuckle]… the revolutionizing
process [is] how you’re really going to transform society and the way people
relate to each other and power differentials, to celebrate people’s strengths
and difference and care and nurture each other even though you know not
everyone is perfect … wisdom is really about self care and self preservation
… she [Lorde] was also writing in a time when she was trying to learn the
lessons from the late 60s, where it was like women and queer people can wait
60 P. A. YETUNDE

until after the revolution and we’ll include you … there was some infiltra-
tion or something unravelling that happened because some people weren’t
bonding, those were weaknesses of not being more unified about peo-
ple’s strengths and to me, that’s also what I mean about the Buddhist
community ....
… the non-profits I’ve been a part of are celebrating people’s assets and
their strengths across difference in terms of identity, sexual orientation, in
terms of race and ethnicity, black and brown together, Asian and other
groups and white allies, class differences, like all types of differences … Well,
we live in such an individualist society, I think that is where I picked up
those concepts [of self] through schooling and media and I think it’s really
good to get to know yourself deeply [by being] still [and] let it all come up
… but I think society’s notion that the individual is separate from other
people is the dominant view and then I’ve been blessed to be part of sub-
cultural groups black and white in Atlanta where, you know, collectives
where my experience has been more in the collective notion of identity—
you’re an individual person but you are also a part of this collective symboli-
cally, but also this group in this particular setting … but also theoretically. I
wasn’t in Ferguson2 in body, but it’s like it happened to me, like it was
someone in my family in terms of police brutality again where black men
and black women and Latino men and Latino women … so I don’t think it
really serves one well—I’ve seen it go wrong [chuckle] when it’s just think-
ing about yourself … those collective notions of self I had growing up,
being part of the black community have been strengthened, and being
queer, family becomes like friends and you create your own family, so there’s
definitely an emphasis on the collective survival, but also to thrive … and
also for wisdom to emerge …. I think it’s interesting like in a Buddhist way,
expanding the notion, for me nonself is about understanding the ego is
operating or the mind believes every thought, or that separate of that we
can connect or travel [out of body]. I’ve read a lot about the jhanas—there
are just whole other realms out there—to me what I’ve learned a lot about
is engaged Buddhism.
There are a couple of books that I liked on that [engaged Buddhism] and
there’s also Dharma, Color, and Culture3—they are a little bit more engaged
as a collective to me, well, this is not vipassana but in the Zen tradition I went
on a Thich Nant Hanh retreat he has in upstate New York … and I have
always liked his books. What I liked, I think he was trying to get at the ques-
tion [about] no self, but that doesn’t mean you don’t help people who are
suffering. He talked about colonialism, he talked about the French coming
into Vietnam, the American imperialism, the Vietnam War … he got together
social workers … Whether there’s no self or not, in engaged Buddhism where
you’re helping, but not just healing, it’s like solidarity in a communal stance,
 SELF, NO SELF, AND THE PARADOXES OF SELF AND NO SELF PRESERVATION 61

to make things better for the group that you’re a part of or becoming a part
of [it] gives it more meaning … I think I’m in the process of letting go. I
mean, not in the Audre Lorde sense, but in the Buddhist sense of self,
through my different experiences on the cushion, off the cushion and in
terms of really trying to apply the dharma.
Interesting that word “preserve,” you know, even monks who have been
on retreat or the teachers on retreat have been very clear or the lay people
who have been the teachers, you know, are clear, like people have asked I’ve
been in a domestic violence situation and the monk will [say] preserve your
life, you’ve got to hit back to protect your child. It’s not like you want to be
violent in general but for self defense or protecting a life. I feel like they
could be a little more clear about [what to do when being] abused emotion-
ally or any other way … There is a theoretical tension because there’s no self
and we are reincarnated … Is it just a piece of you that is reincarnated? I
don’t know. I think that gets a little tricky theoretically and philosophically,
you know, I haven’t heard anyone resolve that yet. I have to let it go and be
in conflict …. In some way I think I’ve always been a little bit focused on the
spiritual. I’ve also got some kind of initiation with the Yoruba, Nigerian
Orisha tradition and incorporate that a little bit.

Marcella

I think it’s just a reference point for who you are, I think that the core of
who it is and I think the way I kind of understand for Insight practices
there’s also this kind of idea that you have to let go of this idea of your self,
who you are to attain enlightenment and you know that’s something I’m
still trying to understand and embody but when I think about Self with a
capital “S” that’s surely about how you feel when your connection is to your
own person, that is how I would described it.

Marcella is a yoga teacher, and some Vedic traditions use capital “S” in Self
to name God/soul/spirit, so I asked Marcella what she meant by self with
a capital “S” and she said:

I think there’s an emphasis on yourself as being important and I think when

I think about my childhood, only being exposed to Christianity in that way,
it was almost like Catholicism like your relationship to God was like being a
child of God, so there was this diminutive relationship with God and even
my mom to this day, I love her a lot, has this—there was God always punish-
ing you or you always have to go through this struggle towards the end of
your life or when you die and go to heaven that’s when you know, you can
62 P. A. YETUNDE

really attain—that’s where you get your gifts for having attained and being
dedicated to God, but I, I am God. God or creator or creation creating in me
that big force, that important alignment of energy is me and I am—that’s
why I think it’s important to capitalize “S” for Self …. I guess I feel like I feel
empowered and embodied and I think of myself as Self … I think self is your
reference point again for who you are in the world … I’m still trying to
understand and embody but when I think about Self with a capital “S” that’s
surely about how you feel when your connection is to your own person
… you’re supposed to work towards, not just your personal alignment, your
relationship to food, your relationship to sex, your relationship to others in
the community … the ego, I’ve learned both in yoga and meditation that
you’re supposed to diminish the ego … I certainly think there’s yoga practice
and meditation practice and I went to nutrition school … where they taught
nutrition in a holistic manner … becoming reiki master … learning about
how to make raw food, [having] a spiritual mentor … having a wholesome
relationship to money … You know, those things are a spiritual practice
too … You know, generosity is a spiritual practice too … and developing a bet-
ter understanding of myself and healing myself … I think I have many selves.
I have the self that I am when, during yoga or meditation or dancing or
cooking or writing, traveling, any of the things that make me feel close to
God that’s the self that I am. When I’m at work I’m clearly another Marcella,
another self, a different self to my family … I would like all of those [selves]
to be integrated … I want to be myself in every variation of my self … to
have a more integrated approach to how I show up …. All of the concepts
of who I am [come] from my upbringing. I’m a woman of African descent,
I’m also a woman of indigenous descent. My grandmother was Cherokee
and black even though she did not register herself as Native American.
Culturally and spiritually with all the different ways that I learned about
different spiritual practices, that has helped me develop my concept of self.
I’ve been to several different countries in my adult life and travel has been a
way for me to [to be in] an environment where you don’t speak the lan-
guages, your traditions are different than theirs, you feel like you have a
deeper relationship to yourself and this [is] really [a] beautiful way …
Learning how to properly eat, prepare food has helped me develop a con-
cept of myself … I was kind of an activist [in] social justice circles and learn-
ing about Mumia Abu-Jamal and reading things about Assata Shakur,
Angela Davis, and people like that helped me understand in some ways
myself more as a black woman, so those are some ways that I developed my
concept of self … It’s just that whole piece about surrender again, when
you’re able to sit down on your cushion or on your yoga mat, not run away
from … you know, sometimes it’s really nightmarish when you’re in silent
meditation because you get to the core of everything that you experienced
 SELF, NO SELF, AND THE PARADOXES OF SELF AND NO SELF PRESERVATION 63

in your whole life and that came up for me yesterday … it’s just a way to
help inform you about, how again to use that word [self] again [to] be
whole … There have been points in my life where I certainly had suicidal
thoughts … I was getting to that point where I understood why people
“off” themselves because sometimes the pressure and the struggle and the
suffering just takes you there … but knowing that there’s space now, there’s
a LGBTQ sangha, a people-of-color sangha … these are resources that I
have now that are life affirming.

I asked Marcella whether the intergenerational transmission of her spiritu-

ality fell within or outside an African spirituality. She responded:

I think it was very African even though I always wondered why my mom and
grandmother liked going to like a quieter church because I felt like every
time I, when I was in middle school and high school when I was going to
church with my other friends there were the tambourines and the guitars
and what I learned later in college was, what I learned about Africa was
about enslavement practices and colonialism and when I started taking
classes about the African diaspora—the shout or field hollers—those are all
things in different parts of the new world, to carry on traditions and it felt
like reading tea leaves. I do think that was the only way of learning more
about the African traditions. After studying abroad in Brazil I always felt,
like in the largest African population outside of Nigeria, you know just see-
ing the way Dahomey, the religions of Dahomey in West Africa has strong
traditions in Brazil, I [saw that] some of the same ways we eat our food,
interact with each other as African Americans, and some Black Americans
may not want to acknowledge it, but there are definitely remnants of
Africanist, we interact as spiritual people. [Dahomey is] like a family of tradi-
tions which springs from the western part of the continent of Africa and so
when you learn about like Santeria or like Brazilian Condumble or even like
Haitian Vodun those styles of spirituality from that region of Africa are, you
know that is what I was taught.

Mary on Self/Nonself

It’s [self] something that is for me a useful concept, but I know that at some
level it is not true. It’s useful to think about me as an individual person for
life and living life, but I know that there’s a way that’s not really the case
that I’m this individualized, atomized sort of person you know that’s truly
individual and truly myself, it’s a strange concept you know and I haven’t
really delved deeply into Buddhist philosophy. There’s a lot of different ways
64 P. A. YETUNDE

people think about the self. I think for me there’s the sort of—it’s layered.
There’s the sort of usefulness of it and the sort of other piece that, something
about the way in which at least for this moment in time that is human life
there is a, how can I describe this, there is a part, there is this me that con-
nects with the greater universe God, whatever that is, but then underneath
there is that—I’m sort of this drop that’s going to go back into the ocean,
you know, at some point. So, I’m not really me … ultimately there are no
boundaries between me and everything else. That everything is, that I am
like a drop in the ocean. I am totally in, there are no boundaries and you
know, in fact, there is on a physical level, like if you go down to the tiny little
physics there are not boundaries. Because we feel this is all very permeable,
things are all changing you know, on a microscopic level and so I think …
there are no boundaries ....
… on one level, every day I make an attempt to preserve myself. I eat,
sleep … I want to take care of myself. I think that there were times in my life
where I, things were difficult, so I worked on … I went to therapy for many
years and done a lot of personal growth work, is that preserving self? I don’t
know. I think as I get older, I guess maybe wiser, I understand that no self
better, so I’m not as attached I guess to things about, for many years I had
various, I mean for me identity was really important. Identity in terms of
what I did in the world, scientist and then after that I did technology work
as a web developer and then I went to seminary and became a seminarian
and I was going to become a pastor and then it didn’t work out to be a pas-
tor and so I was in this “Oh my God what am I?” And I think I’ve been able
to disconnect that, I do various things, but I don’t need to have an identity
as something that I do, that I’m doing this thing. I’ve let go of that identity
which has been really important for me. It’s true about my spirituality. I’m
not a Christian and I’m not a Buddhist. I mean I am a Christian and I am a
Buddhist. Those are traditions that I follow, but don’t feel the need to say I
am one or the other. But I spent a lot of time trying to figure that out. Am
I a Christian or am I a Buddhist? You know, and I’m both and neither.
I think [my concept of self has] been changing. I think we have in our
culture a very specific way of thinking about ourselves. A very individualistic,
particular way that Americans think about self or selves and what we do and
so of course I picked that up—you cannot help but pick that up if you’re an
American, generally, and then you know I also learned some things from
Christianity which I’ve discarded mostly which have to do with original sin
and then I learned about self and no-self from my Buddhist practice and
from reading various things. I mean my Buddhist reading is more broad
than my practice, I read Tibetan and I read Zen, Theravada stuff, but my
practice is very specific Theravadin, but I have read some Zen stuff that is
very specific about no self and such. So anyway, I can say I have a sort of
broad perspective from the Buddhist sense of self and no self …
 SELF, NO SELF, AND THE PARADOXES OF SELF AND NO SELF PRESERVATION 65

I think as my practice has deepened, almost 25 years … I mean as a non-­

Christian, non-Buddhist and these days I’ve been more focused on my
Buddhist practice, since I’m not really a part of a church and I’m not doing
anything related to that stuff, and so I think things are shifting in my sense
of self have changed … I think I have [let go of trying to preserve self]. I
would have to agree. I would say “yes.” I mean, between that identity thing,
I think about being willing to say I don’t have an identity and also lately I’ve
had a very, I mean I was an activist for many years … I have come to under-
stand that, I have come to fully accept how completely messed up things are
and that there isn’t much that I as an individual can do about it and so I’m
focused more on how I treat people when I meet them and what I do in
those everyday interactions, that sort of thing and in that sense a letting go
of myself.

These women confirm Alice Walker’s assertion that “Womanism and

Buddhism are about ‘self-regard,’ about ‘coming face to face with a form
of yourself that you have to let go of ’.” In these women’s experiences,
they are not letting go of self-regard because they practice lovingkindness
meditation and understand nonself to be interdependence, but they are
letting go of placing importance on solid and unchanging self concepts,
self images, and, to an extent, self preservation.
Muzika said abandonment anxiety is at the heart of Buddhism, but the
data demonstrates that not all Buddhists experience abandonment anxiety.
The Buddhists in this study, though it is possible that as human beings
some of them experienced generalized anxiety or abandonment anxiety at
some points in their lives, did not express abandonment anxiety as Buddhist
practitioners. Their positive responses to Fetzer SEI statements such as

1. I often feel closely related to power greater than myself.

8. My practice helps me to confront tragedy and suffering.
24. I believe that the world is basically good
31. I feel a strong spiritual bond with all of humankind.
33. Sharing my practice with others is important for my spiritual growth.
38. Improving the human community is an important spiritual goal.

and their negative responses to the following statements

20. I often fear punishment in absolute reality.

32. My practice is a private experience which I rarely, if ever, share with
others.
66 P. A. YETUNDE

indicate an absence of abandonment anxiety due to Buddhist practices and

an embrace of Buddhist anthropology of the self and no self, the para-
doxes of preserving self and no self, and a working through of the spiritual
movements between Christianity and Buddhism.

Notes
1. Edward Muzika, “Object Relations Theory, Buddhism, and the Self:
Synthesis of Eastern and Western Approaches,” International Philosophical
Quarterly 30, no. 1 (March 1990), 60.
2. Deborah is referring to the police shooting of the unarmed black teenager
Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014.
3. Dharma, Color, and Culture: New Voices in Western Buddhism is edited by
Hilda Gutiérrez Baldoquin and was published by Parallax Press in 2004.
 CHAPTER 5

African-American Women Buddhist Dharma

Teachers and Writers on Self and No Self

Abstract African-American women who practice Buddhism and write

about Buddhism are emerging. Books about Buddhism have been written
by angel Kyodo williams, Jan Willis, Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, Jasmine
Syedullah, and Cheryl A. Giles. Self and no self are examined through the
writings of williams, Willis, Manuel, and Syedullah.

Keywords Self • No self • angel Kyodo williams • Jan Willis • Zenju

Earthlyn Manuel • Jasmine Syedullah • Carolyn Akua McCrary

Ancient Theravada Buddhism is androcentric because its teachings are

largely based on the life of one man and the teachings for his monastics, the
privileging of male monastics over females, and the “marks of a great man”1
with no mention of there being any marks of a great woman. Most books
about Buddhism written in the US for general consumption are authored
by people of European heritage. It is a very recent phenomena that people
of African descent are publishing books about Buddhism, including angel
kyodo williams, Jan Willis, Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, Jasmine Syedullah
(who co-authored a book with williams and Lama Rod Owens, an
African-American man who is a dharma teacher in Tibetan Buddhism),

© The Author(s) 2018 67

P. A. Yetunde, Object Relations, Buddhism, and Relationality
in Womanist Practical Theology, Black Religion/Womanist Thought/
Social Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94454-8_5
68 P. A. YETUNDE

Gaylon Ferguson, and Ruth King.2 Manuel and williams are queer-identi-
fied Zen priests, King teaches in the Insight tradition and has self-identified
as same-sex-loving, and Willis, who does not identify herself as queer, is a
Tibetan Buddhist practitioner and scholar, and identifies as Baptist and
Buddhist. Together, their writings provide new voices and perspectives on
Buddhism. In the introduction to williams’ book she states:

At a time when many of us are no longer plagued by just how we can survive
and live, we can begin to ask how we can live better. The questions of who
we are and what role we play as black people in America now have room to
coexist with the larger questions, “Who am I, and what role do I play as an
individual in the world?”3

She speaks of self and no self in ways that are nondogmatic, nondoctrinal,
and on its face, maybe not even Buddhist, at least initially. For example,
writing to an audience of African-descended people, she says:

Some days it seems like the world has it in for us, trying to ruin our days or
plans in a series of bad events stacked up one after the other. But life really
has no interest in whether we want it to turn left or turn right. It is only the
fact that we view our own desires as special that makes us think we should
have things exactly as we want them.4

As it relates to Buddhist self and no self concepts, williams begins with the
process of blaming undistinguished others for unsatisfactory experiences
that we would prefer to be satisfactory. She is talking about self as projec-
tion and clinging to desire, and warns black people against fooling them-
selves into thinking that clinging to desire, even “good” desire, is not
engaging in the “selfing” process:

Sometimes, our wants seem grand and altruistic, and we do not think of it
as something that we cling to. All I want is to be a better person … become
more spiritual … They will see me as special and I will be revered. We shouldn’t
fool ourselves, because before we know it, such a goal can become one and
the same as wanting and desire.5

The desire to be seen by others as positive is a “selfing” process fraught

with delusion and confusion about the true nature of our selves. It also
carries the risk of living disembodied experiences. As williams notes, “We
can become so full of the sense of wanting, that we do not take the time to
feel whether we really want or not. We do not know where wanting ends
 AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMEN BUDDHIST DHARMA TEACHERS… 69

and where we begin.”6 Selfing, in williams’ Zen Buddhist belief system,

includes the risk of protracted cognitive distortions and deepening
ignorance:

We filter reality through our experiences, needs, and desires. We are fixated
on the idea that because we see things in a certain way they must be so. We
forget how many factors contribute to the way we see.7

While williams does not preach nonself in an obvious way, she firmly
argues against being attached to desire. Throughout the book she makes
her beliefs about nonself more emphatic while also separating herself from
Buddhist dogmatics:

If I just sit here not wanting anything, wouldn’t I stop being a person?
That’s just not human … To get straight to the point: Because our desires
are so persistent and so constant, we think we are our desires. And that
shows how really, really attached to them we are.8

She is concerned that desire and being attached to desire limits human
capacities: “When we live with compassion, we step beyond our limited
selves into the wide-open spaciousness that is love.”9 But then some
Buddhist dogma on self appears in williams’ writings:

When you learn to be more patient than your thoughts are persistent, they
stop showing up and cluttering the space in your mind. When that happens,
even if it is only for a few moments, there is nothing left but you. Without your
thoughts there to tell you that you are you, there’s really nothing left at all.10

And Buddhist doctrine also appears:

As you grow older, you begin to construct more ideas about exactly who
your “self” is. It’s only the activity of your mind and the sensations of your
body that keep you separated, that draw the line between “me” here and
“you” over there. But Me and You are only ideas that we have made to
describe what we see as the difference between us. The moment that we do
that, the potential for conflict begins … We don’t so much need to be taught
how to preserve the self as much as we do how to release the self.11

She wants to make the case that African-descended Buddhist practitio-

ners, living in an era of more freedom from racial oppression, can live less
defended and less oriented toward self preservation if they let go of
70 P. A. YETUNDE

attachment to desire; let go of thoughts, positive and negative, about

themselves; drop the grasping for approval; and understand they are not
really separate from others. Those views are consistent with Zen
Buddhism. Does Tibetan Buddhism influenced by early childhood Baptist
baptism, from one African-American woman’s perspective, offer black
people a different view on self and no self?
Willis does not write about self and no self per se, in her memoir.
However, she writes after her baptism at age 14:

Maybe this was what Jesus had felt when the dove appeared in the sky above
Him. These hands [of church members] were wondrous things. They were
like the Holy opening its arms to me. There was more love there than I had
ever felt; and it felt bigger precisely because it was extended not just to me.
This love, in a flash, dissolved all fears.12

No self, as a transcendent or transpersonal state, arguably, can be expe-

rienced in non-Buddhist, even in a black Baptist context. It can involve
other people relating to one another joyfully and involves equanimity
or the feeling of being in balance and at peace. This expression of non-
self also includes a feeling of being connected to all living beings, or
interrelatedness.
In studying of 31 African-American Buddhist lesbians in the Insight
tradition, I asked questions about their Christian roots, including: “What
church most formed your Christian identity (whether you still identify as
Christian or not)?” and “Did you explore other Christian denominations
before exploring Buddhism?” Nearly 35% said they had been Baptist and
12.5% said they had explored becoming Baptist before exploring
Buddhism. Is there a connection between growing up Baptist or being
exposed to Baptists beliefs and community and understanding Buddhist
self and no self as interrelationship and interdependence? This study sug-
gests there may be a connection and an opportunity for additional research.
No self can also be experienced as not being the former self. Willis
describes a dream she had where images from her life flashed before her
as well as images from an imagined future self where she appeared as a
contented older woman standing on a cliff and looking down on the
earth: “I found scenes of my life racing at top speed before my eyes. I
was standing on a high green cliff, the wind blowing my hair, though
it was tied in a bun on top of my head. I wore a full-length dress and
an apron. I was older, perhaps 65, my hair was white, and I felt satis-
fied, as though my life had been fruitful. I stood above the cliffs, the
cool wind lifting my dress. Below me, the deep blue ocean pounded
 AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMEN BUDDHIST DHARMA TEACHERS… 71

against the rocks. The day was brilliant. I was convinced that the place
was Ireland. A deep smile or contentment crossed my lips.”

Then suddenly I was snatched back. There was another great spiraling.
Confused scenes whirled by. I felt myself being born .... I saw Dot holding
the snake that made me drop my bottle, the white school superintendent,
Sandy, my mom and dad, the dogs and horses, the Klan. Suddenly I woke
up and realized that I was in this body again.13

In Willis’ dream, she experienced herself as someone she was not, as

herself being born, with her life history flashing before her. Though
Buddhist writers, in my experience, tend not to write about their dreams,
this dream is consistent with a consciousness toward not being attached to
one’s present self as their “self.” And although Willis practices in a tradi-
tion that is different from williams’, she holds a similar self belief:

When I first met Lama Yeshe I arrived carrying a lifetime’s worth of self-pity
and low self-esteem … But peace was what I was after, some way to still the
constant frustrations I experienced and to feel comfortable living in my own
skin. Whether our suffering takes the guise of self-pity or self-absorption, its
source is the same: holding too tightly to our projected images of
ourselves.14

With an understanding that holding too tightly to a projected self image

or being attached to our desires and not knowing the difference between
our no self and self (dichotomous thinking for the sake of argument), it
does not appear to be a natural consequence to let go of the attachment
or mechanisms of projection. Willis wrote that she was afraid she might
lose herself if she succeeded in her Buddhist practice.15 But even with
this transient fear, Willis engaged in nonself practices, like tonglen (send-
ing self and receiving other) meditation. In another meditation experi-
ence, Willis talked about experiencing nonduality of object and subject.16
Her meditation experiences produced a consciousness whereby she could
identify as the other while keeping to the belief instilled in her by Lama
Yeshe that at the core of her and everyone else’s being was something that
is “pure, intelligent, compassionate, and powerful.” The Theravada and
Zen views do not support the existence of a material spiritual core, but
Theravada and Insight teachings support the notion of purity as being one
with Consciousness.
72 P. A. YETUNDE

Manuel, another African-American queer-identified Buddhist woman

and Zen priest, writes about awakening, or enlightenment, through the
constructs of gender, race, and sexuality by stating that she has carried a
variety of labels related to race, sexuality, gender expression, and class:

I have subscribed to these labels over time, to acknowledge my particular

lived experience shaped by its particular suffering. Yes, my bones know the
absolute life, unencumbered by labels, fixed perceptions, and appearances.
But the absolute life has never been the problem I have to face in the world.
In this twenty-first century, many have agreed that race is a construct or illu-
sion used to create racism.17

Though Manuel understands these labels as fluid and empty of “intrinsic-

ness,” with respect to her lived and felt experience, she does not believe
the absence of labels is synonymous with liberation:

What I found is that flat, simplified, and diluted ideas could not shake me
from my pain. I needed to bring the validity of my unique, individual, and
collective background to the practice of Dharma. “I am not invisible!” I
wanted to shout.18

Manuel has come to understand that no self means interrelationship:

For many, spiritual paths should tend toward the invisible, the unseen. With
this view it is easy to mistake a favorable blindness—not seeing skin color,
gender, etc.—for seeing an invisible truth of life. We may even consider this
blindness to be a higher state of being. But the wisdom in my bones says
that we need this particular body, with its unique color, shape, and sex, for
liberation to unfold.19

Jasmine Syedullah, a black queer woman, Buddhist practitioner, and inter-

disciplinary20 scholar wrote about her first meditation experiences:

One of the things that had drawn me to Buddhism was the notion of no self.
I was fascinated by the prospect of being Jasmine and not being Jasmine. I
did not realize that before I could decenter myself, there had to be a self to
decenter. I would have to discover who I was beneath all that self-hatred … It
was something I would have to sit with … I was mining the painful ruins of
my efforts to overcome this tokenized exceptionalism, the precarity of
model minority meritocracy.21
 AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMEN BUDDHIST DHARMA TEACHERS… 73

Williams, Manuel, Willis, and Syedullah, like Deborah, Norene, Mary,

Marcella, and Alicia, do not define no self as not existing, but together
support the notion that no self means existing in interrelational inter-
dependence. Their narratives also support the quantitative data from
the 31 research participants that point to valuing relationships.
Together, this supports the belief that practicing Buddhism can also
support interdependence, communal survival, and positive transforma-
tion of consciousness.
Based on the classic or foundational Theravada Buddhist teachings on
nonself and my experiences in the IMC, I was surprised to hear that the
research participants’ narratives on self and nonself focused on commu-
nity, collectivism, and communalism. African-American womanist pastoral
theologian Carolyn Akua McCrary, ordained in the African Methodist
Episcopal (AME) church, believes people of African descent have a norm
of interdependency. She bases her theory, in part, on NTU, a Bantu-
Rwandaise philosophy, Howard Thurman’s theology, and Fairbairnian
Object Relations Theory22 (a subject I return to in Chap. 6). NTU,
according to McCrary, who draws on African scholar Alexis Kagame’s La
Philosophie Bantu-Rwandaise de L’etre [Bantu-Rwandaise Philosophy of
Being] (1956), is the common denominator23 or common ground of all
being.24 NTU is understood as four categories of philosophy on being: (1)
Muntu which means human being; (2) Kintu which means thing; (3)
Hantu which refers to place and time; and (4) Kuntu which means modal-
ity. Quoting the fourth edition of Janheinz Jahn’s Muntu: The New
African Culture (1958), NTU is the cosmic universal force that coalesces
Being and beings.25 McCrary writes:

NTU is the unifying force which bespeaks the connecting essence of all that
is; and that at the fundamental core, there is an interconnectedness and an
Interdependence of being of everyone and everything, trees, rocks, rivers,
air, water, animals, birds, insects, time, place and form, etc. One cannot
therefore, relegate someone or something outside one’s realm of care and
concern. For since we are all inextricably joined to everyone else and every-
thing else—at the point of NTU—then whatever we do to another being, is
done at the fundamental level of our own being.26

No one in this study mentioned the word NTU, but Marcella and Deborah
mentioned how African spirituality impacted their spiritual lives.
74 P. A. YETUNDE

In the common themes selected from the interviews and qualitatively

analyzed, African spirituality is connected to some of the women’s need for
self-preservation,27 African goddess deity exchange,28 self-acceptance, rea-
sons for leaving churches focused on a white male god, and the celebration
of diversity. With a connection between African spirituality and or Baptist
Christianity, and interpretation of no self as interdependence, it is possible
that NTU, though unarticulated and perhaps even unknown by these
African-American women, is a philosophy that operates in African spiritual-
ity that, when adopted, impacts how Buddhist self and nonself is under-
stood as relational interdependence by these women of African descent.
African-American women who are dharma teachers and writers write
from classical Buddhist frameworks (williams) as well as Buddhist frame-
works that have been revived through race, gender, and/or sexuality
(Manuel, Syedullah, williams, Willis), and Buddhist frameworks influenced
by Christian Baptists (Willis), and African spirituality in Yoruba, Orisha,
and NTU (interviewees and AME pastoral theologian McCrary) may also
impact how Buddhism is viewed by these women as relational and
interdependent.

Notes
1. “Lakkhana Sutta: The Marks of a Great Man” in Digha Nikaya: The Long
Discourses of the Buddha, translated by Maurice Walshe (1987), 441.
2. Ruth King, Mindful of Race Transforming Racism from the Inside
Out (Louisville, CO: Sounds True, 2018).
3. angel Kyodo williams, Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with
Fearlessness and Grace. New York, NY: Penguin Compass, 2000, 2.
4. Ibid. 20.
5. Ibid., 21.
6. Ibid., 22.
7. williams, 54.
8. Ibid., 72.
9. Ibid., 153.
10. Ibid., 164.
11. williams, 172.
12. Ibid., 57.
13. Willis, 151.
14. Ibid., 183.
15. Willis, 233.
16. Ibid., 243.
 AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMEN BUDDHIST DHARMA TEACHERS… 75

17. Manuel, 7.
18. Ibid., 18.
19. Manuel, 26.
20. Syedullah earned her PhD in Politics with emphasis in Feminist Studies
and History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz.
21. Williams, Owens, Syedullah, 16–17.
22. I also utilized W.R.D. Fairbairn’s Object Relations Theory in my disserta-
tion, but Object Relations Theory is not the subject of this chapter.
23. Carolyn Akua McCrary, “Interdependence as a Normative Value in Pastoral
Counseling with African Americans,” The Journal of the Interdenominational
Theological Center 18, nos. 1 and 2, (Fall/Spring 1990/1991), 123.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid., 124.
26. Ibid., 124.
27. Self-preservation is one of 12 spiritual movements (akin to spiritual forma-
tion stages) that some African-American Buddhist lesbians experience
between growing up Christian and becoming Buddhist.
28. African goddess deity exchange is one of 12 spiritual movements (akin to
spiritual formation stages) that some African-American Buddhist lesbians
experience between growing up Christian and becoming Buddhist.
 CHAPTER 6

Object Relations in East and West: Self, No

Self, the Abhidhamma, and W.R.D. Fairbairn

Abstract There are many ways to understand the formation of egos and
mind objects. Buddhism is known for espousing “egolessness,” but it is
not the release of the ego as understood in Fairbairnian Object Relations
Theory. Buddhist psychology offers its own understanding of the develop-
ment of mind objects. Through deep meditative states, one can experience
the pristine ego and through lovingkindness meditation, ease the intensity
of the Persecutory Object. Buddhist psychology and Object Relations
Theory inform one another, providing for a more comprehensive way of
understanding internal mind object formation and cessation.

Keywords Object relations • The Abhidhamma • W.R.D. Fairbairn

As discussed in Chap. 2, Delores S. Williams breaks “the black experience”

into four transforming components for the well-being of the African-­
American community, two of which are Transformations of Consciousness
and Epistemological Process.1 Transformations of Consciousness are
­positive when “oppressed people arrive at self or group identity through
awareness of self-worth and through the appreciation of the value of black
people and black culture,” and negative when “black people give up positive
black consciousness and identify with alien and destructive forms of conscious-
ness.”2 The Epistemological Process is “a special way the mind processes

© The Author(s) 2018 77

P. A. Yetunde, Object Relations, Buddhism, and Relationality
in Womanist Practical Theology, Black Religion/Womanist Thought/
Social Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94454-8_6
78 P. A. YETUNDE

data on the basis of action in these categories, (along with Horizontal and
Vertical Encounters). As discussed in Chap. 1, Buddhism in the Insight
Meditation tradition, strictly understood, may promote an alien form of
consciousness to many black Christians, but as concluded in Chap. 6, is
not a destructive form of consciousness. Walker-Barnes was concerned
about this as she contemplated how to introduce mindfulness to a black
Christian female audience, but that foreignness is not negative or destruc-
tive. If meditation promotes the temporary cessation of data processing,
that cessation does not mean there is no communal survival Epistemological
Process taking place thereafter. Moreover, even if Buddhist teachings and
practices promote a “negative” black consciousness by temporarily elimi-
nating attention to race and racism, that does not mean all African
Americans who practice Buddhism are orthodox Buddhists in how they
see themselves as black people in America. Rev. angel Kyodo williams,
Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, Jan Willis, and Jasmine Syedullah are four African-
American Buddhist women who advocate for black people and the black
community. The 31 women in this study collectively demonstrated that
relationality is an important value, and Alicia’s, Deborah’s, Marcella’s,
Mary’s, and Norene’s narratives attest to their identification as African-
American women. How can Theravada and Insight Buddhism’s ultimate
consciousness away from race and racism also manifest as remarkable rela-
tional resiliency within and toward the black community? One way of
understanding this paradox in through Buddhist-­ Fairbairnian Object
Relations dialogue.

Buddhist Objects
In Buddhist-Fairbairnian Objects dialogue, one text to be referenced is the
Abhidhamma. Within the Abhidhamma is the chapter Alambanasangaha or, in
English, the Compendium of Objects. It states in part that objects, essentially,
are interrelated formations that have sound, smell, and taste elements, and are
visible, tangible, and mental. Mental object is sixfold including: sensitive, subtle,
consciousness, mental, Nibbana, and concepts. It also mentions citta (that
which experiences objects and can become an object), another type of mental
object and cetasikas, objects of mind-door processes.3 The Platonized, closed
monotheistic Christian orientations Douglas argued against because it has led
to the enslavement of black bodies and minds also makes it difficult to under-
stand nondualistic perspectives on mind and consciousness from non-Pla-
tonized, nonclosed monotheistic perspectives, including Buddhism. Buddhist
 OBJECT RELATIONS IN EAST AND WEST: SELF, NO SELF… 79

psychology may be difficult to understand from dualistic perspectives, but it

is possible to understand its spirit. This section of the Compendium of
Objects represents the belief that images in one’s mind (mind objects) are
created by the encounters between external things (objects) and our body
parts that are sensate. The sensate body parts include the eyes, ears, nose,
tongue, and the body itself through touch. There are also mind and con-
sciousness. The body parts, mind, and consciousness perceive external
objects after their initial encounter is processed through what is called “mind
doors”—the transitional pathways to recognition. Mind objects correspond
to how they were initially created, that is, if an external object was first
encountered through the eyes, the object in the mind is called an eye object.
Thinking nondualistically, a citta is not a discrete element in object forma-
tion because in Buddhist psychology, there is no ultimate separation between
the external object and the internal object formation. Buddhist psychology
attempts to explain mental object formation in detail through the 52 cetasi-
kas. Sankhara, the energy that “fashions” things, is one of those invisible
mind processes that Buddhist psychology attempts to identify and label.
People with the highest form of consciousness are considered arahants
because they have experienced nibbana. Object formation is not separate
from self formation. Self formation is object formation. Nibbana is akin to
objectless consciousness. Nonself is objectless consciousness. Nonself as
object consciousness is nibbana.

Fairbairnian Objects
W. R. D. Fairbairn was introduced briefly at the beginning of this book. I
utilize Fairbairnian Object Relations Theory in large part because I reso-
nate with his theories on ego formation, the human as a relational being,
ego splitting, nondualism, and self-persecution. I also believe some of
these theories help create a bridge for Western and Buddhist religious and
psychology dialogue. I do not resonate with his theories of same-sex lov-
ing people, but to understand his theories on object formation and object
relations, it is important to also understand something about his views on
his own human sexual development.
Fairbairn was born in 1889 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was an only
child, whose mother was “exacting” and “maintained an over-intensive
supervision of all his activities throughout his early years.”4 Fairbairn had
a strong attachment to his mother who was often sick and required the
attention of the family. She was strongly against Fairbairn’s sexual curiosity
80 P. A. YETUNDE

and very involved in overseeing and managing how he related to his penis.5
Fairbairn’s mother’s fear-mongering micromanagement of his eroticism,
Fairbairn’s sexual play as a boy with his female cousin while they were
nude, having his penis touched by a man in a park which led his mother to
blame her young son, led to him having, by his own admission, vagina
envy. Fairbairn’s father had paruresis (a phobia of urinating when others
are present). Fairbairn, when he was eight years old, witnessed his father
trying to urinate and felt frightened. He wrote in his journal:

Father seemed in great pain and had the greatest difficulty in passing water.
It took a tremendous time for him to pass it; and it only came in driblets. He
‘sweated blood’. It was like seeing Christ on the Cross. I was closely identi-
fied with Father in the experience.6

Later in life, Fairbairn himself developed debilitating paruresis. He had

indeed identified with his father’s disability, but not with him as a person:

I didn’t see why he should frustrate me so much, and why he should find it
necessary to oppose me in so many things … indeed I had barely concealed
death-wishes towards him.7

Fairbairn, in addition to sexuality ambivalence, seemed to experience some

gender ambivalence. He wrote:

I wanted to be like my mother. She was much better looking than my father;
but my preference went deeper than that. I think I must have identified
myself pretty strongly with my mother; and that may have to do with my
adopting a feminine role—as I undoubtedly did.8

Sutherland makes note that there is no mention in Fairbairn’s university-­

years journals of him being sexually attracted to anyone. Sutherland,
Fairbairn’s biographer wrote:

Sexuality and its aura of guilt and sin were almost unmentionable, a phe-
nomenon in puzzling contrast with their universal everyday manifestations.
The presence of his [Fairbairn’s] own conflicts could be inferred from his
inhibited sexual development, the choice of his career, and from his embark-
ing on a personal analysis—an unusual decision in the early 1920s—when he
was half-way through his medical training.9
 OBJECT RELATIONS IN EAST AND WEST: SELF, NO SELF… 81

Given his passion for a masculine Christianity, Fairbairn studied for the
intermediate degree in divinity at London University and then returned to
Edinburgh University for theological studies in the Presbyterian Church.
He remained a churchgoer all his life, but interestingly, his religious beliefs
were subjects he did not talk with Sutherland about.
Fairbairn enlisted in the army and was part of their officer training in
1915. In 1919 he began a four-year training in medicine with the objec-
tive of becoming a psychotherapist. In 1920 he began reading Sigmund
Freud and Carl Jung, and underwent psychoanalysis first with E. H.
Connell and then Ernest Jones (both Freudian) for about two years. He
received his medical degree in 1923.
In 1939 he wrote several entries in his journal about his childhood years,
including entries about wetting the bed, his mother instructing him not to
touch his penis so that he would not become paralyzed,10 his mother putting
her hands in his pants to make sure he wasn’t touching his penis,11 and his
mother applying ointment to his penis.12 Fairbairn was deeply and negatively
affected, perhaps even traumatized, by the way his mother reacted to this
sexual development and natural curiosity. Sutherland notes that when
Fairbairn was six or seven years old he began having suicidal ideation after his
mother beat him and locked him in his parents’ bedroom for several hours
after he asked his mother about a blood-stained diaper.13 During that same
period in his life, he was sexually molested outside his home by a strange man
who told him, despite what his mother said, that it was good for a boy to
touch his penis. This molestation seemed to liberate Fairbairn from his moth-
er’s intergenerational transmission of masturbation anxiety onto her son.14
As Fairbairn grew older and psychoanalyzed himself in light of his
mother’s masturbation anxiety, he assessed that he had become afraid of
his own aggression, was libidinally inferior to other boys and young men,
had a weak ego, was unassertive, and regarded his mother as the superego
figure in his life:

I am sure I felt she didn’t like my penis; and this led me (1) to wish I
hadn’t got a penis and to adopt a castrated attitude, (2) to regard my penis
as a bad object which ought not to be made a source of pleasure. The result
was (1) the adoption of a rather female attitude and (2) considerable sexual
inhibition.15

In these passages, Fairbairn, without mentioning his concept of the perse-

cutory object or internal saboteur by name, identifies how suicidal ide-
ation became part of his endopsychic situation theories. It is very difficult
82 P. A. YETUNDE

to understand Fairbairn’s object formation and relations theories without

understanding how he understood his own object formation and relations
development. What is an object in Fairbairn’s theory?
In “Endopsychic Structure Considered in Terms of Object-­
Relationships,” Fairbairn holds that the libido impulse (the energy of love)
seeks an external human object, not pleasure as Sigmund Freud pos-
ited.16,17 The consequence of the libido being external human object-ori-
ented means that the origin of psychopathology is in the ego’s object
relationships during its developmental phase. Influenced by psychoanalyst
Melanie Klein, Fairbairn believed that introjected external objects and
their continuation internally is proof that the libido seeks objects.18 Unlike
Klein, he preferred using the language of “satisfying” and “unsatisfying”
objects over “good” and “bad” objects because “good” and “bad” were
rendered meaningless and were misleading.19 He wanted to avoid confu-
sion between good and bad as desirable and undesirable because a bad
object can be desirable.20 The unsatisfying object has the capacity to be
frustrating and seductive. Having been internalized, with both these qual-
ities, it leads to ambivalence.21 The inability to tolerate these opposing
poles results in the bad/unsatisfying object being split into the exciting
(needed) object and the rejecting (frustrating) object.22 A libidinal attach-
ment remains to both objects by way of pseudopodia.23 The baby survives
this ambivalent situation by “using a maximum of his aggression to sub-
due a maximum of his libidinal need.”24
Fairbairn’s view also arose from the observation and treatment of peo-
ple with “schizoid tendencies,” where external human object relationships
were difficult.25 Difficulties resulted because problematic personalities are
attached to the problematic relationships between the internalized objects
and various parts of the ego.26 Fairbairn’s nondualistic leanings are appar-
ent in his assertion that there is not one solid ego except the undivided
ego that exists before the central ego develops. In his endopsychic struc-
ture, there is a central ego that is a primary structure which gives rise or
birth to the other egos.27 The central ego works like a recorder:

[It] sits back in the dress-circle and describes the dramas enacted upon the
stage of inner reality without any effective participation in them. At the
same time, it derives considerable narcissistic satisfaction from being the
recorder of remarkable events and identifying itself with the analyst as
observer while asserting a superiority over the analyst as mere observer by
reason of the fact that it is not merely observing, but also furnishing the
material for observation.28
 OBJECT RELATIONS IN EAST AND WEST: SELF, NO SELF… 83

Yet impulses, as part of the endopsychic structure, do not exist without the
ego structure, therefore, nondualistically, impulses and egos are part of the
same substance, and id and ego, nondualistically, also lose their distinction.
These nondualistic views have implications for how repression is under-
stood. Fairbairn understood repression as not exercised against impulses,
but against bad internalized objects and ego parts that seek relationships
with the internalized objects.29 Repression, seen this way, has implications
for understanding how the sublimation of libidinal impulses work:

The repressed “impulses” are inseparable from an ego structure with a defi-
nite pattern. The correctness of this assumption is confirmed by the phe-
nomena of multiple personality, in which the linkage of repressed “impulses”
with a submerged ego structure is beyond question; but such a linkage may
also be detected in the less extensive forms of dissociation, which are so
characteristic of the hysterical individual. In order to account for repression,
we thus appear to be driven to the necessity of assuming a certain multiplic-
ity of egos.30

Whatever is repressed is “essentially structural in nature.”31 In Fairbairn’s

clinical practice, he treated a number of patients, leading him to the con-
clusion that most people with a psychiatric pathology were schizoid types,
representing a “sense of futility.”32 Yet schizoid types also possessed an
attitude of omnipotence. With the attitude of omnipotence coupled with
a sense of futility, schizoid types tended to be isolated, detached, and
preoccupied with inner reality.33 Obviously, the schizoid type is most
­
problematic for theorists espousing a libido-as-object-seeking view, and
deeper within the endopsychic structure, the schizoid type is severely
entangled by the creation of a moral defense established by the superego
as an internal object that confronts the central ego’s detached observer
position. At this level of moral defense, the internal saboteur/internal per-
secutor, in the form of exciting or rejecting objects, manifests to attack the
libidinal ego, cutting off the energy of love as expressed in object seek-
ing.34 Fairbairn arrived at his views on the prevalence of schizoid tenden-
cies through interpreting his patients’ dreams as parts of the dreamer’s
personality, dramatizations, or internalized objects.35
Using his interpretation of a patient’s dream where several people were
being attacked, Fairbairn grouped those dream characters into two
classes—ego structures and object structures. The ego structures include
the “I”/observing structure, the attacked ego, and the attacking ego.
84 P. A. YETUNDE

The object structures included in this particular dream another observing

object, the attacked object, and the attacking object. In a dualistic move,
the ego structures pair with the object structures, but nondualistically,
there are three pairs: the observing egos, the attacking ego and the attack-
ing object, and the attacked ego and the attacked object.36 The workings
of the attacked ego and attacked object are the main interests for this
writing:

The attacking ego may perhaps be most appropriately described as an “inter-

nal saboteur.” In an attempt to discover what this dream was stating and to
determine the structural significance of what was stated, I was accordingly
led to set aside the traditional classification of mental structure in terms of
ego, id, and super-ego in favor of a classification couched in terms of an ego-­
structure split into three separate egos – (1) a central ego (the “I”), (2) a
libidinal ego, and (3) an aggressive, persecutory ego which I designate as the
internal saboteur.37

The internal saboteur’s function in helping a baby survive her ambivalence

toward external human objects is to absorb excess aggression, which gets
placed on the mother or parental figure because she is dependent on a par-
ent who is seductive and unsatisfying simultaneously. Fairbairn was argu-
ably ambivalent about his sexuality and gender. He seemed to understand
the causes of his own ambivalences and the impact the sexuality and gen-
der ambivalences had on his self concept. I believe his understanding of
ambivalence informed his dream interpretations and his nondualistic lean-
ings toward integrated or interdependent mind structures. The ambiva-
lence is attached to aggression, which is worked through by the internal
saboteur and is directed toward the libidinal ego and the exciting object.
The internal saboteur, though not an object, as an ego structure, has a
libidinal attachment to its object—the internal rejecting object. Fairbairn
did not believe the internal saboteur had any moral significance.
Ambivalence is expressed in the attachment toward something that is
rejecting, but the aggression is directed to the libidinal ego to preserve the
rejecting object. Ambivalence toward an external object that was expected
to be loving is how the endopsychic situation manifests. The central ego,
the “I” rejects (has aggression toward) the libidinal ego and the internal
saboteur. Rejection is aggression, not libido, and rejection is also an aspect
of ambivalence, but aggression is subordinate to libido. If aggression is the
power that splits the ego, libido, in Fairbairn’s view, must be the super-
glue to bring cohesion to the egos.
 OBJECT RELATIONS IN EAST AND WEST: SELF, NO SELF… 85

There are similarities and differences between object formation in

Buddhist psychology and Fairbairnian Object Relations Theory, and yet
they complement each other. Broadly speaking, both psychologies share
the view that perception leads to object formation, but Buddhist psychol-
ogy does not focus on developmental psychology. Fairbairnian object for-
mation is described too simplistically compared to Buddhist object
formation. Buddhist object formation does not include a concept akin to
a persecutory object. The Fairbairnian endopsychic situation begins with
nonduality, results in dualisms and fragmentation under duress, and
through psychoanalysis attempts to approach ego unification. Buddhist
object formation begins nondually and operates dualistically in the spiritu-
ally unrealized mind. Both theories, arguably, are seeking unity, though
when it comes to object relationships with external human objects, there
are major differences. For example, arahants (considered in Theravada
Buddhism to be the epitome of a human being) practice celibacy and
are the ideal spiritual model. In Fairbairnian Object Relations Theory,
heterosexual sex within marriage is the ideal. Still, these theories can help
us understand the relational resiliency of women who are not necessarily
celibate and are not heterosexual even though we do not know their
developmental histories.
In the Abhidhamma, Chapter IX, “Compendium of Meditation
Subjects,” section 23, it is written, “There are three characteristics: the
characteristic of impermanence, the characteristic of suffering, and the
characteristic of non-self.”38 The guide to section 23 states:

The characteristic of impermanence is the mode of rise and fall and change,
that is, reaching non-existence after having come to be. The characteristic of
suffering is the mode of being continuously oppressed by rise and fall. The
characteristic of non-self is the mode of being insusceptible to the exercise
of mastery, that is, the fact that one cannot exercise complete control over
the phenomena of mind and matter.39

Whatever the self is (or is not), it changes from time to time, suffering
results when those changes are not accepted, and nothing can be made
permanent. In section 32 it is written:

He next comprehends, with the knowledge of comprehension, those for-

mations in terms of the three characteristics—impermanence in the sense
of destruction, suffering in the sense of fearfulness, and non-self in the
sense of carelessness—by way of duration, continuity, and moment. Then
86 P. A. YETUNDE

he contemplates with the knowledge of rise and fall the rising and falling
(of those formations) by way of condition and by way of moment.40

This may be what Alice Walker meant when she said womanism and
Buddhism is knowing form and letting go of it. The guide to section 32
states:

All those formations are characterized by “impermanence in the sense of

destruction” (khayatthena) because they undergo destruction exactly where
they arise, and do not pass on to some other state retaining their identity;
they are “suffering in the sense of fearfulness” (bhayatthena) because what-
ever is impermanent provides no stable security and thus is to be feared; and
they are “non-self in the sense of carelessness” (asarakatthena) because they
lack any core of self or substance or any inner controller … until one recog-
nizes that even in a single step formations are impermanent, painful, and
non-self.41

Nonself means there is no internal essence that can prevent the body’s
impermanence. Section 35 states:

Therein, the contemplation of non-self, which discards the clinging to a

self, becomes the door to emancipation termed contemplation of the void.
The contemplation of impermanence, which discards the sign of perver-
sion, becomes the door to emancipation termed contemplation of the
signless. The contemplation of suffering, which discards desire through
craving, becomes the door to emancipation termed contemplation of the
desireless.42

The guide to section 35 states:

When insight reaches its culmination, it settles upon one of the three contem-
plations—of impermanence, or suffering, or non-self—as determined by the
inclination of the meditator … This final phase of contemplation, being the
meditator’s immediate access to the emancipating experience of the supra-
mundane path, is thus called his “door to emancipation” (vimokkhamukha).
Here, it is the noble path that is called emancipation, and the contemplation
leading to the path that is called the door to emancipation.

The contemplating of nonself is termed contemplation of the void because

it sees formations as being void of a self, a living being, a person. The con-
templation of impermanence is termed contemplation of the signless
 OBJECT RELATIONS IN EAST AND WEST: SELF, NO SELF… 87

because it abandons “the sign of perversion” (vipallasanimitta); that is,

the deceptive appearance of permanence, stability, and durability which
lingers over formations owing to the perversion of perception. And the
contemplation of suffering is termed contemplation of the desireless
because it terminates desire by abandoning the false perception of pleasure
in formations.43 Nonself either means no living person or the formation in
the mind during contemplation is not a living person. Section 36 states:

Hence, if with the insight leading to emergence one contemplates on non-­

self, then the path is known as the void emancipation; if one contemplates
on impermanence, then the path is known as the signless emancipation; if
one contemplates on suffering, then the path is known as the desireless
emancipation.44

Contemplating on nonself creates a path to liberation. The guide to sec-

tion 36 states:

When the meditator attains the path through the contemplation of non-self,
the path makes Nibbana its object through the aspect of voidness as devoid
of self and it is thus known as the void emancipation.45

When contemplating on nonself creates a path to liberation, and the con-

templative has nibbana as its meditation object, void emancipation is the
consequence.46 When we take these chapters and sections together, we
understand from the Abhidhamma that clinging to notions of self and
nonself is suffering; that having a notion of self as permanent, with a core
or substance that can keep it permanent, is wrong view; that contemplat-
ing on nonself can lead to liberation; and that in reality there is either no
actual living person or in meditation, the mind object formation that gives
rise to the appearance of a living person is not real, but the difference
between what is taught in Theravada Buddhist psychology, and what is
experienced by African-American Buddhist lesbians in the Insight
Meditation Community tradition, all of whom grew up in Christian
churches, is contained in the narratives in Chap. 3. To summarize, the
interviewees said self is an illusion, a concept, a reference point to let go
of, to be distinguished from “S”elf, a local identity, in flux, not true, part
of a paradox, without boundaries, hard to let go of, an ego that needs to
be diminished, and ever evolving, and many. Nonself is also about under-
standing the ego, and about love and release.
88 P. A. YETUNDE

Buddhist Psychology and Fairbairnian Object

Relations in Dialogue Through African-American
Buddhist Lesbians’ Spiritual Practices
In Chap. 2 I discussed my humanist-feminist-womanist-humanist orienta-
tion. With that orientation in mind, and from Buddhist and Fairbairnian
perspectives, African-American Buddhist lesbians are born just as other
babies are born. When they are born, they have a parent, parents, or a
parental figure or figures, just like other babies. They have the same body
parts, sense doors, and consciousness as other baby girls. In terms of con-
sciousness, their brains are like the brains of other babies. Buddhists would
say that humans have cittas and cetasikas and therefore black baby girls
experience the same mental object formation process that other babies
experience, but Buddhist psychology needs to be in conversation with
Fairbairnian object formation theory because in Buddhist object forma-
tion there appears to be no acknowledgment of the internal and external
impulses or forces that cause psychopathological introversion, self-­
persecutory tendencies, and suicidal ideation. Ego fracturing is the inter-
nal impulse. Racial, gender, sexuality, and religious oppression are some of
the external forces that can impact ego fracturing. Meditation (and in
some traditions chanting), and the Eightfold Path (an ancient cognitive-­
behavioral psychological technique) are the main medicines in Buddhist
psychology. There is no body of peer-reviewed proof that sitting in medi-
tation and adopting Buddhist philosophies on self and nonself can cure
psychopathological introversion, self-persecution, suicidal ideation, and
schizophrenia spectrum disorders. However, there are reasons to believe
meditation and a commitment to the Eightfold Path helps ease suffering,
and that is why Fairbairnian Object Relations Theory needs to be in dia-
logue with Buddhist psychology. Buddhist psychology needs to be in con-
versation with Fairbairnian Object Relations Theory because Fairbairnian
theory includes human developmental theory.
Fairbairnian Object Relations psychology should be in dialogue with
Buddhism because Fairbairn’s ultimate psychological and spiritual aims
were the repair of the pristine ego that a baby is born with before they expe-
rience a dissatisfying parental experience that results in the first split of the
pristine ego into the central ego and the libidinal and antilibidinal ego and
their corresponding objects—the endopsychic situation. Fairbairn did not
find the right medicine—meditation—to help his patients re-­experience the
pristine ego. The endopsychic situation can be temporarily healed through
 OBJECT RELATIONS IN EAST AND WEST: SELF, NO SELF… 89

meditation according to the five women’s narratives and Manuel and

Syedullah’s testimonies. Fairbairn’s other aim was his attempt to convince
his professional colleagues that Sigmund Freud was wrong—that the intra-
psychic objects’ aim is relationships, not solely gratification. Though
Fairbairn has died, there are Object Relations psychologists, psychothera-
pist, pastoral and spiritual counselors, spiritual and pastoral psychothera-
pists, and Marriage and Family Therapists who do not know how Buddhism,
in particular Insight meditation, meditation retreats, and lovingkindness
meditation, help bolster the libidinal ego, lessens the intensity of the antili-
bidinal ego, and temporarily quiet the persecutory object. There are
Buddhist teachers wedded to nonduality who do not understand how intra-
psychic wars are created, manifest, and result in self destruction, but encour-
aging dialogues are taking place.
Psychoanalyst Muzika begins his analysis of the self and nonself in
Buddhism and Hinduism as follows:

The Hindu self has two levels: Jiva, or the individual soul, and Atman, its
universal and spiritual aspect, the experience of which is found in enlighten-
ment. Buddha denied that either self existed and maintained that the experi-
ence of Emptiness was the ultimate phenomenological substratum of both
the self and the world. Buddhism attempts a radical resolution to all psycho-
logical illnesses by ending their source, the self, and expanding conscious-
ness towards an identification with all of reality.47

Muzika, beginning his analysis in Hinduism, is necessary and important to

understanding the complexities that lead to confusion about self and non-
self in Buddhism. If self means soul/spirit, internally or externally, then
self does not mean the human body does not exist. The body exists. If self
means soul/spirit, internally or externally, then there is no substance for
reincarnation. If there is no substance for reincarnation, then there is no
past kamma. Muzika situating self/nonself in Jiva and Atman corrects the
nihilistic interpretations that arise in contemporary interpretations on
self/nonself.

The Theravadin Buddhist solution [to abandonment anxiety] is to end the self
along with its attachments to others (object relations). In the West we have an
old and popular saying, used to urge others to enter romantic relationships
despite their fear of them: “It is better to have loved and lost than to never
have loved at all.” Buddhists48 disagree, saying it is better never to have loved
than to suffer pain of loss of persons or objects. Buddha abandoned his family
90 P. A. YETUNDE

in order to seek his own escape from suffering. Love, for a Bodhisattva, is not
attached, dependent, or romantic—it is non-attached but compassionate.49

The lack of a thorough examination of Jiva and Atman, notions rejected in

early Buddhism, contribute to the confusion on self/nonself teachings.
Nevertheless, Muzika continues his analysis, suggesting that there are three
types of self in Western psychology—“the representational self of image,
idea, and memory of the object relations theorist; the body-self of Reichian
therapy; or the pure subjectivity of the Gestalt model.”50 He notes:

Psychoanalytic development psychology has emphasized the stages of self

and object development as representation and ascertained a tentative
sequential schedule of the development of ego defenses from the earliest
(denial) to the later and more complex (repression, sublimation). It has not
examined at all the mechanisms by which the self maintains its separation
from the rest of its experiential reality, such as the external world. It assumes,
along with Piaget’s scheme, developmental stages as givens determined by
neurological maturation. Such maturation would still be accompanied by
subjective, phenomenological mechanisms of boundary maintenance.51

Muzika believes nonself is a softening or releasing of boundary mainte-

nance through the projective identification impulse.52 Nonself as projec-
tive identification is not necessarily a healthy manifestation of nonself
when experienced as borderline personality—when boundaries are not
experienced and respected.
In addition to understanding projective identification, from a Western
psychology perspective, Muzika believes it is important to understand that
Buddhism has an abandonment anxiety.53 However, based on my experi-
ence and the experience of other women in this study, I do not support
this assertion, but Muzika makes an important point about Buddhism and
Western psychology—that there is a basic conflict between “ending” the
self and “rescu[ing]” the self. This is not the Jiva and Atman selves, but
the physical, mental, and emotional selves that give rise to suffering.
Muzika attempts to resolve this conflict by examining attempts by transper-
sonal psychologists to resolve the conflict. He disagrees with their stages
of development which include pre-personal level development and pathol-
ogies, personal level development and pathologies, and transpersonal lev-
els of development and pathologies.54 However, he agrees with their view
that meditation can help alter the course of depression and feelings of
inadequacy.55
 OBJECT RELATIONS IN EAST AND WEST: SELF, NO SELF… 91

Muzika likens meditation to the nonself state of being.56 Given his

emphasis on Zen Buddhism, he may not be aware of the jhanas in
Theravada, for he states that no one has “developed a taxonomy of merger
experiences which ranges from the emotional mergers with another per-
son, to mystical merger experiences with God, or feeling merged with the
world, to a full enlightenment experience where the self and the world
become one. Different boundaries and experiential contents must be
involved in each sort of merger experience.”57 He was speaking, perhaps
unbeknownst to himself, of Williams’ Vertical Encounter. The women in
this study talked about their experiences in lovingkindness meditation
(discussed in Chap. 7) and “boundarilessness” with others, with God, and
the universe. Merger can be mentally and spiritually healthy and unhealthy,
and meditation can contribute to positive and negative health outcomes.
Meditation can be used negatively and futilely, according to Muzika, as an
attempt to merge with nothingness to avoid real relationships and as a way
to escape internal pain and suffering. Meditation, according to Muzika,
can also be utilized positively to self-soothe, gain proficiency in one’s inner
world, experience awakening, and examine basic self structures through
what he calls microanalysis.

An example of this would be the discovery of abandonment anxiety or the

arising of rage associated with developing emotional closeness in interper-
sonal relationships. The consciousness of these linkages allows a “working
through” and gradual dissolution of them, allowing better developed, non-
pathological attachments …58 Negative self feelings can be watched, iso-
lated, and detached from the self. The self can become separate from
self-hate and worthlessness feelings; they can be observed as objects not
intrinsic to the self.59

Muzika’s view is similar to that of Fairbairn’s central ego function which

“sits back in the dress-circle and describes the dramas enacted upon the
stage of inner reality without any effective participation in them.”

Introspection in this matter can lead to the formation of new inner linkages
which encourage a strengthening of self. Just the ability to introspect makes
the self feel stronger—it has discovered and is exploring a whole new world
of meaning, thoughts, feelings, and body sensations. Part of the relinking is
to add the body sensations to our representation of self, giving it flesh and
depth.60
92 P. A. YETUNDE

In microanalysis, this author recommends paying attention to any resis-

tance to feeling a stronger sense of self to determine whether the resis-
tance is also an expression of a preference for nonself as commonly
understood in Buddhist parlance. Lovingkindness meditation may also be
utilized to help detach self-hatred and worthlessness from one’s self.
Muzika holds to the view that there is a self as understood in Western
psychology and a Buddhist nonself as experienced in meditation through
the softening of a bounded self, but the use of the word “self” remains
problematic.
Psychoanalyst Engler attempts to coherently state the differences
between the concepts of self and no self in Buddhism, and self in Western
psychology.61 He argues, from a Buddhist point of view, that experience of
nonself through meditation is the ideal state of being, and self-­preservation
is unenlightened suffering. Engler does not discuss whether race, gender,
sexuality or culture have any bearing on understanding these concepts or
the meditative experiences connected with the self and nonself concepts.
He does not critique the definitions of self and nonself in Buddhism, in
fact, he agrees with the notion of Buddhist self and nonself, but his main
premise is that in order to experience nonself, one must first be a self.
Engler sees the problem of Buddhist and Western dialogue on self and
nonself concepts as a difference in meaning: Buddhists are speaking about
an ontological state of emptiness and Westerners are speaking of a psycho-
logical emptiness.62 Engler notes, “Subjective feelings of inner emptiness
are mistaken for the experience of shunyata, or the absence of inherent
existence; and the experience of not feeling inwardly integrated for anatta,
or selflessness.”63
A review of the Abhidhammattha Sangaha, the Pali Canon, and some
dharma teachers’ viewpoints support Engler’s argument that there is confu-
sion, but there is also arguably a lack of agreement on the teachings within
Buddhism itself, for in Theravada and the Insight tradition, nonself is an
ontological concept as well as a psychological concept. There is not one
Buddhism that is in conversation with just one Western psychological theory
that is producing clarity or a bridge, therefore the confusion remains. It is
also a point of confusion when the commentator is not transparent about
which Buddhist story or stories of enlightenment they are drawing from to
undergird their theories. It is not known which Buddhist enlightenment
story Engler draws from. Engler is concerned about the presence of anxiety
in self, and the absence of anxiety in nonself. If the Buddhist story in opera-
tion is the one where Siddhartha Gautama, the son of a wealthy man
 OBJECT RELATIONS IN EAST AND WEST: SELF, NO SELF… 93

who (after Gautama’s mother died), raised him in economic, class, caste,
and “illusion privilege” (prevented Gautama from experiencing how people
lived, aged, became ill, and died), then Gautama’s father may have been
anxious, but Gautama was deluded. His delusion about the nature of being
human was met with the reality of our physical vulnerabilities that gave rise
to Gautama’s existential crises. Existential crises based on a privileged and
deluded existence, not anxiety, is the impetus for Gautama’s awakening.
Anxiety management is a byproduct of the meditation experiments in over-
coming the state of being human. When self and nonself are topics in dia-
logue between Theravadin Buddhists and Insight practitioners and Western
psychologists, self and nonself should be considered in the context of exis-
tential crises. With this understanding, self will age, become ill, and die.
Nonself (as the pristine ego, as consciousness itself) will avoid these experi-
ences. What is deathless is ultimate consciousness, ultimate consciousness is
what is experienced in meditation. To believe self can be nonself without
meditation is the Wrong View of self which is suffering. Likewise, psychia-
trist and Buddhist practitioner Epstein is not transparent about which
Buddhist enlightenment story informs his theories, but his thinking is largely
in line with mine.64 Epstein writes:

The “I” is not identical with the ego but is more precisely a component. It
is described as a self-representation as agent because it sees itself as the one
capable of activity. It “conceives of itself as existing actively to pursue and
insure its well-being and survival.” It is an idea, an abstraction, contained
within the ego that embodies the ego’s sense of itself as solid and real. It is
not, however, to be confused with the entire ego. Developed out of the
ego’s continuing sensation of itself, it remains, nevertheless, at base a con-
cept that the person holds dear.65

Without knowledge of Epstein’s Buddhist enlightenment story, and his

continued use of the word “ego” when talking about Buddhism, he per-
petuates some confusion while also illuminating a bridge crossing.

What is unusual about the Buddhist view from an object relations perspec-
tive is the assertion that an individual could experience the pure representa-
tional process without becoming destabilized. Thus, while the uncovering
of the self-representation as an agent is one major modification of the ego
system produced by insight meditation, it is unlikely to be the only one.
From the representational point of view this is clearly the major transforma-
tion. Yet from a functional perspective, a further compensatory modification
94 P. A. YETUNDE

is required in order for the requisite stability to be conferred, stability that

could only derive from the synthetic capacity of the ego.66

Epstein is speaking of self as a “representational process” that cannot take

place without the Freudian ego concept, and the representational process
in conjunction with meditation that alters the intensity of Freud’s ego’s
grip on itself—a process all people should want if they are interested in not
being mentally destabilized. In this view, the Freud ego is to be embraced
for its functionality in transcending the representational process. The
emphasis on process and understanding process is critical to deepening the
dialogue.
Religion professor Metcalf interviewed several Zen Buddhist practitio-
ners at the Zen Center of Los Angeles (ZCLA) about their experiences of
nonself.67 Some said nonself is “slowly widening the perceived experiencer
or self,” “the sense of self-centeredness has lessened somewhat,” “What I
thought it was, it turns out that it wasn’t,” and “to include everything.”68
It is unlikely that many of these people were of African descent because
Metcalf found that most of the people he interviewed did not value “mys-
tical experience in their practice, they uniformly argued for its irrelevance.”
Instead of Samadhi experiences, or even “sudden” or “peak” experiences
(to use, respectively, descriptors from Mahayana and humanistic psychol-
ogy), ZCLA members strive to continuously “embody awakening.”69
With these interviews, Metcalf interprets experiences through the lens
of Winnicottian Object Relations Theory, and concludes that there is a
bridge between Zen notions and experiences of nonself and Winnicottian
Object Relations Theory in that the infant begins life without a self in the
Buddhist sense, with the mother or primary parental figure acting as the
infant’s environment holding the infant’s life and environment together as
one.70 As the mother allows the child to mature without forcing continued
merger, the infant experiences loss and experiences duality.71 In Zen medi-
tation, or zazen, nonduality is re-experienced as one experiences merger
with the environment. Metcalf, through meditation and Winnicottian
Object Relations Theory, explains self and nonself in this way:

Experiences of zazen and other forms of unselfconscious experiences

threaten the cohesion of the personal self. This threat causes the experiencer
of the personal self, the conscious “I,” to react as the experiencer of the
nursing couple self did as the mother optimally failed it. Each clings to a
soothing transitional object to console itself during the process of weaning
 OBJECT RELATIONS IN EAST AND WEST: SELF, NO SELF… 95

the experiencer away from an older mode of experiencing. What is lost is

preserved through the transitional object, a structure—in a sense the
­structure—of a personal experiencing. We can see the transitional object self
as a symbol of the lost part of the illusory adult experience: the reified,
ongoing, individual “I.” This symbol both joins and separates the evolving
no-self and the coherence of personal experience. So, the first and last tran-
sitional objects are functionally parallel. The first helps the transition from
an illusory sense of non-duality to seeming duality. The second helps the
transition from an illusory sense of duality to seeming non-duality.72

Metcalf, through his examination of Zen practitioners in Los Angeles,

concludes in a way what black same-sex loving Buddhist women have con-
cluded about their practice in the Insight tradition. Metcalf found his
interviewees to have a playful sense of being relational beyond their imme-
diate associates because of their nonself experiences in zazen. How does
this expanded relational sense manifest outside of the meditation hall?
Psychotherapist and Buddhist teacher Harvey Aronson believes the
expanded relational sense of nonself experienced in the Mahayana Buddhist
(Zen is a part of this tradition) context can be expressed as altruism and is
also valued in the Theravada tradition.73 However, he makes no mention
of the Brahma Viharas (lovingkindness, compassion, equanimity, and
sympathetic joy), the paramis74 (giving, virtue, renunciation, wisdom,
energy, patience, truthfulness, determination, lovingkindness, equanim-
ity), or lovingkindness meditation—all altruism practices and teachings
found in the Insight tradition. Nevertheless, Aronson speaks of altruism,
in part, as selflessness.75 He quotes Engler’s (from the Theravada school)
view on healthy Mahayanan selflessness, or no self, as maintaining “the
healthy altruistic function of the psychological self while understanding
that there are no inherently existent components to that self, no substan-
tial soul to be found. … Within this ontological understanding, the
Mahayana practitioner would embody the most developed form of altru-
ism.”76 It seems as if Aronson is suggesting that Mahayanan experiences in
the expanded self, which is nonself, serves as a corrective to Theravada
nonattachment to others as unreliable. In Aronson’s view, healthy nonself
is caused by others through transmuting internalization. Quoting
Marianne Tolpin, a self psychologist, Aronson writes:

Repeated experiences of losing and refinding the auxiliary soother when it is

needed to restore equilibrium assist the psyche in the phase-specific task of
replacing maternal soothing with tension-reducing mental activity—the
96 P. A. YETUNDE

same process that eventually leads to the replacement of the soothing pos-
session itself with the inner mechanisms that produce the same effect.77

In this view, one’s Buddhist (Dharma) teacher, if experienced as soothing,

acts as a catalyst for nonself experiences that lead to expanded capacities
for relating or what, in this writer’s view is, also akin to Fairbairn’s theories
on incorporation.78 How we experience another’s self has a bearing, para-
doxically, on how selfless we may become.
The Buddhist teachings on self and nonself are not consistent. There
are many Buddhisms, including Theravada, Tibetan, Zen, and Insight,
each one having their own overlapping and nonoverlapping teachings on
self and nonself. The Abhidhammattha Sangaha teachings on self and non-
self are more complex than those found in the suttas in the Pali Canon,
and the suttas are often more complex than the dharma talks given by
dharma teachers. One could argue that the teachings on self in Western
psychology are not consistent. There are many Western psychologies, each
with their own view of what the self is. No view produces a “core” that can
be examined for the truth of what the self is, and perhaps it is the lack of
this core that keeps Buddhist and Western psychologists in dialogue.
Remaining in dialogue will probably not result in an ultimate truth that
will be embraced by each Western psychological theory and each Buddhist
psychological theory. As an African-American Buddhist practitioner who is
also same-sex loving, I agree with Williams that Buddhist mind object
concepts would be considered alien to most African Americans and is
“destructive” to an Afrocentric identity and worldview while the medita-
tor attempts to cling to that identity, or any identity, in meditation. On the
other hand, the destruction serves the purpose of transforming conscious-
ness beyond Afrocentricity when not in meditation and can include an
Afro-consciousness that is not exclusive to one’s identity, but through
Remarkable Relational Resilience, is felt as connection to all humanity.
The transformation of consciousness through Buddhism means that all
sentient beings are included in the field of compassion. Ego clinging to
Afrocentricity may impede the very transformation of consciousness
Williams argues is necessary for the black community’s survival. The
Epistemological Process that occurs in nonself is the reflection on the
Transformation of Consciousness. Reflection on the Transformation of
Consciousness is a result of having undregone the Epistemological Process.
They are the same and different—paradoxically interdependent.
 OBJECT RELATIONS IN EAST AND WEST: SELF, NO SELF… 97

For African-American Buddhist lesbians living in contexts where others

have said they exist (family of origin) or do not exist (Buddhist no self
dogma), where their existence is valued less because they are women, or
because they are same-sex loving, or because they are of African descent,
or because they have chosen to incorporate Buddhism into Christianity, or
because they have abandoned Christianity, or where they are valued
“equally” as no more or less nonexistent than others, it is incumbent upon
these women to determine, should they choose to, which psychologies
and practices help them survive and thrive as relational and compassionate
beings in the midst of alienating and isolating social forces.

Notes
1. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness, 154.
2. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness.
3. Bodhi, Abhidhammattha Sangaha, 136.
4. Sutherland, 1.
5. Hoffman and Hoffman, 3.
6. Ibid., 71.
7. Ibid., 78.
8. Ibid., 78.
9. Ibid., 11.
10. Sutherland, 66.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., 67.
13. Ibid., 72.
14. Sutherland, 73.
15. Ibid., 76.
16. W. R. D. Fairbairn, “Endopsychic Structure Considered in Terms of
Object-Relationships,” in Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality. (London,
UK: Routledge, 1992), 82. The paper was written in 1946.
17. Fairbairn, “Practicing Psychoanalysis,” 82. According to Fairbairn,
impulses are the dynamic aspect of endopsychic structures and cannot be
said to exist in the absence of such structures—nondualistically, impulses
constitute the forms of activity in which the life of ego structures consists.
18. Ibid., 83.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Buddhists in Theravada and Insight traditions have noted through mind-
fulness of the body that there is a neutral position in addition to pleasant
and unpleasant sensation.
98 P. A. YETUNDE

22. Fairbairn, “Practicing Psychoanalysis,” 111.

23. Ibid., 112. Fairbairn contends that pseudopodia represents the “incipient
division of the ego and are rejected by the part of the ego that remains
central.”
24. Ibid., 115.
25. Ibid., 84.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid., 85.
28. Fairbairn, “Practicing Psychoanalysis,” 85.
29. Ibid., 89. Fairbairn did not conceive of a primary motivation for a baby
internalizing good objects except after when a bad object had been inter-
nalized. The internalized good object’s purpose was to defend the baby’s
egos.
30. Ibid., 90.
31. Ibid., 95.
32. Ibid., 91.
33. Buddhism, in the strict Theravada sense, runs the risk of promoting “schiz-
oidness” through no self futility (certainly not omnipotence), isolated and
detached meditation retreats, and preoccupation with inner reality through
meditation.
34. Fairbairn began using the terminology of “internal saboteur,” but later
changed it to “antilibidinal ego.” I use both terms and persecutor,
interchangeably.
35. Fairbairn, Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality, 99.
36. Fairbairn, Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality, 100.
37. Ibid., 101.
38. Bodhi, Abhidhammattha Sangaha, 346.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid., 350.
41. Bodhi, Abhidhammattha Sangaha, 351.
42. Ibid., 356.
43. Bodhi, Abhidhammattha Sangaha, 351.
44. Ibid., 357.
45. Ibid., 135.
46. It is relevant to this study that it is said that The Buddha taught that
women were incapable of achieving void emancipation. The contemporary
consequence of this teaching is the discrimination against nuns as “equal”
to monks. Khema advocated on behalf of nuns who were discriminated
against, as she was, based on the belief that women could not attain void
emancipation.
47. Muzika, 59.
 OBJECT RELATIONS IN EAST AND WEST: SELF, NO SELF… 99

48. It is important to make a distinction here between Buddhist teachings and

people who are practicing Buddhism. Buddhist teachings promote this
view, but many if not most Buddhist practitioners have been or are in
romantic relationships including myself and some of the AABLs I
interviewed.
49. Muzika, 60.
50. Muzika, 70.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid., 62.
54. Muzika, 65.
55. Ibid., 68.
56. Ibid., 70.
57. Ibid., 71.
58. Muzika, Edward G. “Object Relations Theory, Buddhism, and the Self:
Synthesis of Eastern and Western Approaches.” International Philosophical
Quarterly 30, no. 1 (March 1990), 73.
59. Ibid.
60. Muzika, 73.
61. Engler, 35–100.
62. Engler, 37.
63. Ibid.
64. Epstein, “The Deconstruction of the Self,” 61–69.
65. Ibid., 65.
66. Epstein, “The Deconstruction of the Self,” 66.
67. Metcalf, 191–206.
68. Ibid., 194.
69. Metcalf, 197.
70. Ibid., 199.
71. Ibid., 200.
72. Metcalf, 202.
73. Aronson, 265–289.
74. “Treatise on the Paramis, Access to Insight” (accessed January, 13, 2016),
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/wheel409.html.
75. Aronson, 272.
76. Aronson, 275.
77. Ibid., 277.
78. W.R.D. Fairbairn, “Schizoid Factors in the Personality,” in Psychoanalytic
Studies of the Personality (New York, NY: Routledge Press, 1952), 11.
 CHAPTER 7

Wholeness as Object Liberation: The Efficacy

of Buddhist Lovingkindness Meditation

Abstract Lovingkindness meditation is a practice that can de-intensify the

Persecutory Object and consequently promote intrapsychic wholeness.
Mary, Deborah, Alicia, Norene, and Marcella speak of their lived experiences
and understanding of wholeness. Buddhist nun Ayya Khema’s teachings on
lovingkindness meditation is offered as a guidance on how to experience or
re-experience the pristine ego through lovingkindness meditation.
Contemporary Object Relations theorists Tsigounis, Schaff, Muzika, Engler,
and McDargh contribute their thoughts on unhealthy ego functioning.

Keywords Wholeness • Object relations • Lovingkindness meditation

• Ego

In Chap. 1, lovingkindness was explained as one of the four Brahma

Viharas, or highest states of mind, and lovingkindness meditation as one
of the central practices of IMC practitioners. Lovingkindness meditation
contributes to psychological wholeness by de-intensifying, in Fairbairn’s
endopsychic situation, the Internal Saboteur, antilibidinal ego, and perse-
cutory object, but being whole, or wholeness, are not concepts expressed
in the Pali Canon, the foundational source of Theravada and IMC teach-
ings, leaving what psychological wholeness means, from a Buddhist and
British object relations view, nebulous. In this chapter, the wholeness con-
cept is explored through a variety of East-West intersecting perspectives.

© The Author(s) 2018 101

P. A. Yetunde, Object Relations, Buddhism, and Relationality
in Womanist Practical Theology, Black Religion/Womanist Thought/
Social Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94454-8_7
102 P. A. YETUNDE

In pastoral counseling communities, the word “whole” is often used as

an expression of ultimate health. Womanist scholars in the Alice Walker
tradition also hold wholeness as an important value. Alice Walker’s 1983
definition of womanist states that womanism is, in part,

Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female.

Not a separatist, except periodically, for health. Traditionally universalist, as
in “Mama, why are we brown, pink, and yellow, and our cousins are white,
beige, and black?” Answer: “Well, you know the colored race is just like a
flower garden, with every color flower represented.”1

Black feminist poet and activist Audre Lorde, whom Walker referenced in her
1979 short story “Coming Apart,” where Walker first coined the word “wom-
anist,” often wrote about self-preservation, survival, and wholeness, first
inspired, perhaps, by her positive encounter with I Ching nondualism while she
was in high school. Wholeness was later inspired by her positive encounters
with African spirituality and Eastern practices in secularized forms of medita-
tion and qigong. Lorde wrote about the many ways a person can be frag-
mented psychologically through violent and other forms of non-affirming
parenting, through being humiliated by teachers in elementary school, through
rape, through a society that discriminates on the basis of race and sexuality, and
global forms of exploitation and oppression. Lorde, who intimately knew the
suffering inherent in pitting one part of oneself against another (Fairbairn
called this dynamic the Internal Saboteur attacking the libidinal ego/object),
worked against self-sabotage toward psychological wholeness as radical self-
acceptance. Conscious and unconscious self-sabotage was not an experience
unique to Lorde, but one that has been shared by others, including some of
the women in this study and other conversation partners.
It is likely that some African-American Buddhist lesbians in the IMC
have experienced some form of the fragmenting dynamics Lorde experi-
enced and Fairbairn theorized. Though these women’s experiences in
fragmentation are not the subject of this study, there is much evidence
from this study suggesting that wholeness is important to these women.
The study participants were asked, “What does the word ‘wholeness’
mean to you?” Their responses are as follows:

Mary

Wholeness means integration. … If I’m in a place where I feel whole, there’s

a way in which I feel at peace with all of the different things about me that
 WHOLENESS AS OBJECT LIBERATION: THE EFFICACY OF BUDDHIST… 103

keep me disparate—it could be things that are horrible, things that are
good, and I’m okay with all of it … there’s a way in which I’m able to move
in the world that takes into account all the different things that are happen-
ing, all the different parts of me … living as an integrated person in the
world is conscious and it’s thoughtful and its full of love.

Deborah

Well, I guess it would mean bringing your whole self, all of your multiple
facets of self, integrating yourself, so that might be your politics … every-
thing, to have a sense of synthesis, of being whole … and to be in places
where that’s celebrated—to be whole.

Alicia

Wholeness means there’s nothing missing, there’s never anything missing.

That I possess and embody everything that I need, all the raw materials, all
the resources that I need internally, that’s there’s nothing broken, that
there’s nothing missing, that we are always whole as we are at any given
moment.

Norene

Wholeness … for me I think … means … what I’m feeling right now or

what I’m sensing into in this mind-body connection. Wellness of the mind,
wellness of the body, wellness of the inner landscape … nonfragmented.

Marcella

I think the word wholeness means when you’re able to integrate who you
are at every level, who you are … and the word Samadhi that I was talking
about when you can experience peace and bliss and being grounded at any
time, no matter what’s going on you have that access, that power, you can
handle that … wordlessness, like there’s still communication but you’re not
using words, even like with lovemaking, that’s a way of wordlessness that’s
like surrender and falling in love and that’s a way of attaining wholeness. I
feel like I’ve had a taste of wholeness in my sitting practice and in my medi-
tation practice and in my practice of recovery and healing myself. … I feel
whole when, if, when every part of who I am is validated and welcomed with
me first because I have to accept all these things about me first, then there’s
the community whether it’s my current yoga community or the global com-
munity acknowledges me and accepts me for who I am.
104 P. A. YETUNDE

To Mary, Deborah, Alicia, Norene, and Marcella collectively, the con-

cept of wholeness is a shared value and is described with words includ-
ing “feel,” “move” “conscious,” “love” to have a “sense,” “embody,”
experience “peace,” “bliss,” being “grounded,” and “surrender.” To
these women, wholeness is an active process whereby anxiety is dimin-
ished. Does valuing wholeness actually mean being in the process of
becoming more whole?
In the quantitative portion of the research project, women were asked
to respond to these wholeness-oriented statements:

• I often feel closely related to power greater than myself.

• My practice gives my life meaning and purpose.
• My practice helps me to confront tragedy and suffering.
• I often fear punishment in absolute reality.
• Although I sometimes fall short of my spiritual ideals, I am still basi-
cally a good and worthwhile person.
• I believe the world is basically good.
• My practice enables me to experience forgiveness when I act against
my moral conscience.
• I make a conscious effort to live in accordance with my spiritual
values.
• Improving the human community is an important spiritual goal.
• I feel a strong spiritual bond with all of humankind.

With each of these statements, the majority of responses were in the

categories of agree to strongly agree, with a majority disagreeing or
strongly disagreeing with the statement “I often fear punishment in abso-
lute reality.” Buddhist practices, including lovingkindness meditation,
contributes to wholeness, and that wholeness process contributes to
Remarkable Relational Resiliency as expressed in the high ratings on the
relatedness statements including:

• I often feel closely related to power greater than myself.

• My practice enables me to experience forgiveness when I act against
my moral conscience.
• Improving the human community is an important spiritual goal.
• I feel a strong spiritual bond with all of humankind.
 WHOLENESS AS OBJECT LIBERATION: THE EFFICACY OF BUDDHIST… 105

How do Buddhism and lovingkindness meditation contribute to whole-

ness and Remarkable Relational Resilience? One way to explore how
Buddhist practice contributes to psychological health is to examine the
writings on the subject of wholeness from Theravada Buddhist nun Ayya
Khema.
Khema, in her books reviewed for this study, espouses Theravada
Buddhism, dogma, and doctrine, without doubt or critique. Regarding
wholeness, she writes:

Harmony is togetherness with others but also togetherness within oneself.

Becoming a whole person brings harmony. The word “holy” is rooted in the
word “whole.” We need not be holy, just whole and complete in ourselves.
It’s the most difficult and the most worthwhile work we can do. When we
know that there is nothing lacking in ourselves, nothing that we have to find
somewhere outside, contentment and peace begin to fill our hearts.2

It appears that Khema is equating acceptance of oneself as wholeness and

is using wholeness synonymously with contentment, peace, and harmony.
Khema’s wholeness is a feeling of ease that comes from meditation and
contemplation, including contemplation on the body:

I teach a contemplation of the four elements: earth, fire, water, and wind,
the basic elements that comprise us and also comprise nature. And when one
places oneself directly in the middle of nature, without the least disturbance,
that is a good opportunity to feel oneself as completely connected with it
and to experience that we are nothing different from everything existing
around us.3

Khema believes that putting our attention on the properties that make up
our physical bodies, makes us aware of our connection to the universe.
Being aware of our connection to the universe is the experience of elemen-
tal wholeness because this awareness leads one to discover nonself:

We consist of the four great elements, and no core substance [Self] can be
found. This view is not intellectually realizable, nor will the mind accept it
unless meditation produces a state of peace and happiness independent of
outer conditions. Only a happy mind will accept such a radically different
viewpoint. A mind burdened by difficulties cannot possibly accept that there
is really nobody there who is experiencing those difficulties.4
106 P. A. YETUNDE

The experience of the lack of a core, also understood to mean the lack of
a soul or spirit, is the experience of wholeness, because experiencing a self
or soul, from a Theravada perspective, means we do not experience our
connection with the universe. Wrongly believing we have a core, Self, or
soul leaves us in ordinary dualistic thinking. Khema notes:

The everyday kind of consciousness—the one we all use, for making a living,
for relating to each other—is in a state of permanent duality. It is “me”
wanting something, “me” opposed to the world, “me” opposed to you. “I”
remain outside of everything, which is not conducive to peacefulness.5

Khema believes that ordinary dualistic thinking obstructs our ability to see
the holistic view of phenomena and that spiritual growth results in seeing
beyond the particular.6
Yet, as a Theravada Buddhist nun, Khema was concerned about one
becoming enchanted by whole forms, especially whole human forms. Her
antidote for Buddhist practitioners becoming enchanted or attracted to
whole human forms was another mindfulness of the body practice that
included the circumference of the body and everything in it:

If you feel strong desire for a person, instead of seeing the whole beautiful
form of that person, remember that this human being is made up of many
small parts, instead of becoming entranced with the outer shape, form, and
color, which are only the gift-wrapping.7

It may be difficult to understand how mindfulness of the body’s elements

and parts are congruent with lovingkindness meditation, but Khema
included four lovingkindness meditations in her book on no self,8
including:

1. Joy and Love: A Beautiful Inner Vision

Think of your parents, whether they are still alive or not, and
share your love and joy with them. As you see your own beautiful
inner vision of light, you realize that they, too, have such an inner
vision, and you share your joy and love of that beauty with them.9
2. Loving the Breath and Cherishing Life
Think of your parents and cherish them, if they are alive. Think
of them in that form, loving the life energy within them. If they are
no longer alive, think of them in the form they used to have.10
 WHOLENESS AS OBJECT LIBERATION: THE EFFICACY OF BUDDHIST… 107

3. Breathing in Peace, Breathing Out Love

Now think of your parents, whether they are still alive or not.
Breathe out love and peace to them, filling them with all the peace
that you can find in yourself, and embrace them with all the love
that comes from your heart.11

Khema offered a variety of lovingkindness meditations based on the

Metta Sutta, to help heal the endopsychic fracturing that Fairbairn said
takes place when parents are experienced as intensely unsatisfactory. In
addition to healing the post-parenting traumas, Khema offered guided
meditations for lovingkindness toward one’s self, including:

See the night sky in your own heart with the beautiful moon and many
twinkling stars … Look at that inner vision of shining lights and be joyful
with that experience and let the warmth of your love embrace that beautiful
vision within, which is yours to create12… Now put your attention back on
yourself. And let the joyfulness and the love that is in your heart fill you from
head to toe, surround you, embrace you, and protect you.13

Lovingkindness meditation toward one’s self de-intensifies self-destructive

impulses by supporting the Noble Eightfold Path, specifically Right View
and Right Concentration. In the narratives I gathered about lovingkind-
ness meditation experiences, Deborah said:

I fell in love with a woman who was my third girlfriend and now my wife …
and she said let’s go to a metta [lovingkindness] retreat, through the Insight
tradition’s spreading lovingkindness from your core out to all beings and we
were definitely falling in love quickly so it was in the beginning that I said,
sure, it’s just a weekend you know, but I had never been on a retreat so my
introduction was actually a silent three-day retreat. … She wanted to intro-
duce me to it, it was a POC [People of Color] retreat also. … She had
already been practicing for two years before she met me, so I went on retreat
… it was great to go on a metta retreat and I was already in love so loving-
kindness was love in general.

Alicia said:

I feel like this realm is very dense, it feels very heavy, there’s a lot of suffer-
ing, there’s a lot of polarity here, it’s only one aspect of who we really are,
that we have the potential to be really connected to and what I really appre-
ciate about meditating is it trains the mind—it trains the mind to focus on
108 P. A. YETUNDE

consciousness on the inner realm as opposed to the outer and so it’s like
these realms, these existences are occurring simultaneously and in conjunc-
tion with one another—we only need to turn our attention toward them in
order to be aware and be awakened by them.

Mary said:

I lived in western Massachusetts which is a predominantly white, I mean

almost entirely white, very progressive, very great, and so I sat many times—
a number of retreats at Insight Meditation Society up in Barre … If I’m in a
place where I feel whole, there’s a way in which I feel at peace with all of the
different things about me that keep me disparate, it could be things that are
horrible, things that are good and I’m okay with all of it, that there’s a way
in which I’m able to move in the world that takes into account all the
­different things that are happening, all the different parts of me, living as an
integrated person in the world is conscious and it’s thoughtful and its full of
love … love is great, I mean for me that’s all there is really. Love, that’s all
there is and that’s the most important thing. It’s acting out of love and shar-
ing love … it was about 2002, I was in a retreat and this teacher suggested
I do metta for a year. And I did metta for a year. And it was transformational.
It was completely transformational. So, I do it pretty often in my practice
now but doing it for a year, it was my only practice for a year—was amazing
so loving-kindness practice is important to me.

Marcella said:

When I learned about yoga I learned about Hinduism, Buddhism and things
like that so I think spirituality is the way you connect to others—I do think
that we’re all one manifestation of the creator and when we’re not caught
up in just the world, but we can really cultivate a deep relationship with our
inner compass or inner being [referring to meditation] and our inner aware-
ness that’s our spirituality and you can tack on different names and practices
from all over the world. At the core of everything, you know that’s what
spirituality is. There’s deepness and wholeness in ourselves and extend that
awareness to others.

Lovingkindness meditation, according to research participants, has been

efficacious in cultivating self-acceptance and love, interconnectedness, for-
giveness, and the de-intensification of self-destruction. Unfortunate for
Fairbairn’s work, he was either unaware of Buddhist practices, or aware but
did not write about them. Nevertheless, Buddhist psychology and practices
 WHOLENESS AS OBJECT LIBERATION: THE EFFICACY OF BUDDHIST… 109

can be understood from a Fairbairnian Object Relations Theory perspec-

tive and in parallel with his thinking, beginning with his critique of Freud’s
dualism:

Closely associated with Freud’s theory of the mental constitution is the

dualistic theory of instincts which he formulated somewhat earlier. According
to this theory, human behavior is governed by the interplay of two groups
of instincts—(1) the life instincts or libido, and (2) the death-instincts, of
which the most obvious manifestation is aggression. The concept of the
death-instincts is one which has not commended itself to a majority of ana-
lysts; and, whereas Freud regarded aggression as an externalization of the
death-impulse, most analysts prefer to regard the death-impulse as an inter-
nalization of aggression.14

Fairbairn saw the operation of the mind as a holistic and wholistic processes:

According to the Associationist School, the content of the mind is made up

of a number of separate items or ideas, which are compounded together to
form more complex products, but which are in themselves simple and indi-
visible. This atomistic conception of mind-stuff is untrue to the facts of the
mind, just as an analogous idea would be untrue to the physical organism [a
critique of the recitation on body parts]. The organism functions as a whole,
and, while various aspects of its function may be distinguished and sepa-
rately describe, the organism does not consist in a collection of separate
functions, one of which may be subtracted without vitally affecting all the
others.15

Though Fairbairn understood the mind as holistic and wholistic pre-con-

tact with the dissatisfying object(s), it becomes fractured through many
dynamics including (though not exclusively): introjecting the unsatisfying
object that splits into exciting and rejecting aspects, the splitting results in
the creation of three objects (exciting, rejecting, and the nucleus/tolera-
ble/ideal), repression ensues, and:

1. A central ego is cathecting the ideal object as an acceptable internal

object, and two split-off and repressed ego structures each cathect-
ing a repressed internal object;
2. The terms “libidinal ego” and “antilibidinal ego” have been adopted
to describe respectively the repressed ego structure cathecting the
exciting object and that cathecting the rejecting object.
110 P. A. YETUNDE

3. Being a dynamic structure, the antilibidinal ego implements its hostil-

ity to the aims of the libidinal ego by subjecting the latter to a sus-
tained aggressive and persecutory attack which supports the repression
already exercised against it by the central ego, and which it thus seems
appropriate to describe as a process of “indirect repression.”16

In deeply concentrative lovingkindness meditation, the splitting processes

cease, as evidenced by what people say about their experiences after a lov-
ingkindness or metta meditation retreat. Fairbairn offered a holistic, ener-
getic, and dynamic endopsychic topography that was described initially as
whole and pristine, but rapidly and repeatedly undergoes splitting into a
multitude of egos and objects that seek survival—in other words, the spiri-
tual movement of self-preservation exists even if it begins as an uncon-
scious phenomena.
Contemporary, post-Fairbairn Object Relations Theory theorists think
of Fairbairn’s Internal Saboteur as the persecutory object. Stanley
A. Tsigounis and Jill Savege Schafff note that the persecutory object is

a part of the self that is imbued with a sense of harassment, suppression,

subjugation, tyranny, torture, vengeance, and self-hatred. The term persecu-
tory object refers both to the mothering person as actually being, or being
perceived to be, threatening (the external object) and to the trace of early
relationships inside the infant self (the internal object).17

Is there anything Buddhist psychology offers contemporary Western

Object Relations theorists, and does contemporary Object Relations
Theory offer anything to Buddhist psychology? Muzika believes the fun-
damental problem with Zen Buddhism is the lack of understanding of
how the identification process works and how people identify with objects.
Further, in his opinion, Buddhism does not answer the question about the
reality of “representational systems that comprise our idea of the external
world.”18 Though Muzika’s focus is on Zen Buddhism, his critiques are
relevant to Theravada and IMC Buddhisms too.
Due to Buddhism’s “abandonment anxiety,” Muzika believes most Zen
Buddhist teachers do not teach about emotional challenges or the actual
nature of the mind and the world .19 However, “the Buddhist emphasis on
abandonment anxiety suggests that the emotional development of early
Buddhists was not unlike that of people today, but perhaps emphasized
more of what Melanie Klein called the depressive position and what
 WHOLENESS AS OBJECT LIBERATION: THE EFFICACY OF BUDDHIST… 111

Fairbairn called the schizoid position.”20 The Buddhist belief that mind
objects are ultimately insubstantial leads to Muzika’s conclusion that a
basic conflict lies between Buddhism and Western psychotherapy—
Buddhist practice is the end of the self and psychotherapy attempts to
recover the self.21 The conflict is preceded by confusion about what the
words S/self (soul or spiritual core located in the body or the just the
material body itself) and no self (no soul nor spiritual core or no material
body-body as illusion) means.
If the Buddhist end of self (as in healthy ego functioning) is accom-
plished through meditation, then meditation, according to Muzika, is
dangerous if practiced before “fullness of self” is achieved. Meditation
before fullness of self can lead to regression and decompensation.22 Yet,
the only people who need to avoid meditation are people who are “schizo-
phrenic, schizotypal, and borderline personalities.”23 Meditation, as a
therapeutic modality, can be helpful in performing a detailed microanalysis
of the basic structures of the self from the inside.24
With respect to the discovery of abandonment anxiety or the arising of
rage associated with developing emotional closeness in interpersonal rela-
tionships while in meditation, it appears as if Muzika’s concern excludes the
meditation experiences of African-American same-sex loving women in the
Insight tradition, where no generalized abandonment anxiety or general-
ized rage associated with interpersonal relationships was noted. Like Muzika,
McDargh has concerns about people who are attracted to Buddhism, in
particular Theravada Buddhism. McDargh believes that people

find in the renunciative ideal of Buddhism permission to avoid crucial tasks

of identity formation—hence the particular appeal of meditation for persons
in late adolescence and persons undergoing mid-life transition. More serious
is the situation of others whom Engler hypothesizes may find in Buddhism
a certain “fit” with their own inner experience of emptiness and unworthi-
ness, the psychic inheritance of a serious disturbance in the process of
self-formation.25

Were the women in this study attempting to avoid the necessary steps in
identity formation? Fifty-six percent first visited a Buddhist group when
they were between the ages of 20 and 30, 12% between the ages of 31 and
40, and 16% between the ages of 41 and 50. It cannot be known from the
age of the first positive encounter with Buddhism that the renunciative
ideal was even known, let alone attractive, to the women in this study.
112 P. A. YETUNDE

Nothing in the quantitative analysis or the narratives suggests that these

women were attracted to the teachings on emptiness as lacking identity or
personality or abject loneliness or the avoidance of maturation. To the
contrary, 84% of the women stated that their practice gives their life mean-
ing and purpose, 48% stated that their practice is an important part of their
identity, 40% agree that their practice is often a deeply emotional experi-
ence, 88% believe they are a good and worthwhile person even when they
fall short of their spiritual ideals, and 92% disagree that a primary purpose
of meditation is to avoid personal tragedy.
Quoting Engler, McDargh writes that Buddhism attracts people with
borderline disorders because Buddhist thought affirms their sense of ego-
lessness or no selfness.26 In my experience, Buddhism attracts people with
and without borderline disorders.
I agree there is “attachment anxiety” within Buddhist teachings, but
these writers did not support, with evidence, their suggestions that most
Buddhist practitioners are anxious about their attachments any more or
less than anyone else. There was also the suggestion that Buddhism espe-
cially attracts people with borderline personalities. I have worked with
many people diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder who were
also involved in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy where mindfulness practice
is involved. It is possible that the efficacy of mindfulness practice attracts
people to learn more about Buddhism, not solely the teachings on
nonself.
Muzika, McDargh, and Engler together seem to say that Buddhism has
nothing to offer Object Relations Theory as it relates to what Fairbairn
would term “endopsychic” structural development, or situation, because of
the emphasis on no self and because of what Muzika has called “attachment
anxiety.” However, there is some agreement that meditation for those with
a full or healthy self can be utilized for deeper inquiry into the self as they
understand it. Interestingly, there was no reference in these articles to the
Abhidhammattha Sangaha, which systematizes consciousness, cognitive,
and object processes, and breaks them down into moments or movements
which, when understood, aid in the practice of mindfulness.
All of the women in this study had their first encounter with Buddhism
long after their minds endured the endopsychic situation. However, when-
ever lovingkindness meditation entered their bodies and minds, they
became better able to deal with the aftermath of splitting by de-intensify-
ing the persecutory object/Internal Saboteur.
 WHOLENESS AS OBJECT LIBERATION: THE EFFICACY OF BUDDHIST… 113

Mind objects, from a Buddhist psychology perspective, may be no dif-

ferent than a mind object in Fairbairnian Object Relations Theory. How
mind objects are created have similar causes. In Buddhism and Fairbairnian
Object Relations Theory, mind objects are created by encounters between
external “things” (objects) coming into contact with our body parts that
are sensate. Buddhism identifies mind and consciousness as sensating phe-
nomena, but Fairbairn does not, and therefore his view on what contrib-
utes to object formation is more limited. Buddhism delineates more
discreet processes called cittas, cetasikas, and sankhara to name a few.
Fairbairn focuses on the defenses, repression, and splitting phenomena
that create multiple objects and egos. Given Fairbairn’s critique of the
Helmoltzian conception of mind as atomistic, it is likely that his view is
consistent with Buddhism’s nondualism between the causes of object for-
mations and the objects themselves. Buddhist psychology states that one
who is liberated from objects has achieved the highest form of conscious-
ness and has experienced nibbana and nonself. Fairbairn, a Christian, once
wrote that he believed an exorcism is necessary to treat or exorcise the
Internal Saboteur or persecutory object. It is interesting that Buddhism
and Fairbairn, both supporting the notion that a return to one’s pristine
consciousness is the ideal, also support the notion that this return is the
highest spiritual state of mind. Lovingkindness meditation serves one to
return, at least temporarily, to this state of mind, and helps support the
womanist ideal of committing to the wholeness of entire communities and
loves herself, regardless.

Notes
1. Phillips, 19.
2. Khema, Be an Island, 45.
3. Ibid., 178.
4. Ibid., 18.
5. Khema, Who Is My Self?, 53.
6. Khema, Being Nobody, 133.
7. Ibid., 53.
8. Khema, Who Is My Self?
9. Ibid., 170.
10. Ibid., 171.
11. Ibid., 173.
12. Ibid., 169.
13. Ibid., 170.
114 P. A. YETUNDE

14. W.R.D. Fairbairn, “Psychoanalysis and Mental Health,” in From Instinct to

Self: Selected Papers of W.R.D. Fairbairn, Vol. I: Clinical and Theoretical
Papers, eds. David E. Scharff and Ellinor Birtles (Northvale, NJ: Jason
Aronson Inc., 1994), 64.
15. W.R.D. Fairbairn, “Dissociation and Repression,” in From Instinct to Self:
Selected Papers of W.R.D. Fairbairn, Vol. II: Applications and Early
Contributions, eds. Ellinor Birtles and David E. Scharff (Northvale, NJ:
Jason Aronson Inc., 1994), 33.
16. W.R.D. Fairbairn, “The Nature of Hysterical States,” in From Instinct to
Self: Selected Papers of W. R. D. Fairbairn, Vol. I: Critical and Theoretical
Papers, eds. Ellinor Birtles and David E. Scharff (Northvale, NJ: Jason
Aronson Inc., 1994), 15.
17. Stanley A. Tsigounis and Jill Savege Schaff, “Introduction to the
Persecutory Object,” in Self Hatred in Psychoanalysis, eds. Jill Savege Schaff
and Stanley A. Tsigounis (New York, NY: Routledge, 2003), 3.
18. Muzika, 60.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., 62.
21. Ibid., 64.
22. Ibid., 68.
23. Ibid., 69.
24. Muzkia, 73.
25. McDargh, 353.
26. Ibid.
 CHAPTER 8

Conclusions and Counseling

Recommendations

Abstract African-American same-sex loving women in the Insight Meditation

tradition are experiencing Remarkable Relational Resilience through mindful-
ness, regular meditation, meditation retreats, sangha leadership, and under-
standing no self as interdependence, yet some of these women may seek out
pastoral or spiritual or Buddhist counseling from a Buddhist teacher, pastoral
or spiritual counselor, psychotherapist or a Buddhist teacher who is also a
counselor or psychotherapist. The counselor should consider 12 points in
counseling these women including: not totalizing, sequence of identity for-
mation, joining through conscientization, practicing compassion, validation,
cultivating “beginner’s mind,” cultivating unconditional love, assessing self-
love, finding supportive communities, adopting a womanist attitude or pos-
ture, asking about challenges, and forming multiple conjoining identities.

Keywords Counseling • Spiritual movements • Rituals

• Persecutory object

At this moment, nothing has been written about African-American lesbi-

ans who practice Buddhism (AABLs) in the Insight Meditation tradition.
Though AABLs are exposed to and engage in the same practices and
teachings that other Insight members engage in and learn about including
the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, and the Brahma Viharas,

© The Author(s) 2018 115

P. A. Yetunde, Object Relations, Buddhism, and Relationality
in Womanist Practical Theology, Black Religion/Womanist Thought/
Social Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94454-8_8
116 P. A. YETUNDE

to name a few concepts, previous foundational teachings in Christianity,

growing up with same-sex attraction, a cultural norm toward interdepen-
dence, and for some, exposure, interest, and engagement in African spiri-
tuality, impact the psycho-spiritual experiences of these women.
In order to see how these women’s lives have been impacted by
Buddhism, I utilized a black lesbian Buddhist hermeneutic to better
understand Alice Walker’s 1979 short story “Coming Apart” and created
a womanist definition that I believe should be added to Walker’s 1983
four-part definition because it makes explicit Walker’s initial desire for
African-American heterosexual women to utilize wisdom from African-
American lesbians in the interest of the whole African-American commu-
nity. Afrocentric Christian womanist Delores S. Williams advocated for
black lesbians and straight women to be in dialogue about whether same-
sex loving women were being discriminated against by their African-
American heterosexual sisters, and also stated her concern that a
transformation of consciousness would be dangerous if it meant a depre-
ciation of black people and black culture. Since Walker coined “womanist”
and since Williams stated her concerns, several African-American Christian
same-sex loving womanist theologians have emerged to bring visibility to
black lesbian lives by engaging in womanist Christian theology. This
engagement and embrace is consistent with McCrary’s belief that interde-
pendence is a norm in the African-American community.
With the experience of growing up United Methodist, and having been
educated in a Catholic university, Presbyterian seminary and Insight
Meditation sanghas, I wanted to know how women similarly situated have
experienced what I have experienced. My scientific method included the
use of the Fetzer Spiritual Experience Index (SEI), though slightly modi-
fied for a Buddhist audience, along with additional demographic ques-
tions, and questions to explore spiritual narratives, including questions
about self and nonself. The use of these statements and questions, I learned
what spiritual practices produce particular spiritual experiences. I won-
dered how these women experienced the teachings on nonself or no self,
given that we live in a society where the black female lesbian Buddhist
person is generally not celebrated. If Fairbairn believed same-sex loving
men should be encamped and segregated from the rest of society, then
psychoanalyzed until they become heterosexual, what would he have
made of these women? There is still a movement on conversion “thera-
pists” who believe same-sex attraction should be and can be changed
through counseling.
 CONCLUSIONS AND COUNSELING RECOMMENDATIONS 117

When one reads Buddhist sacred texts from the Pali Canon, they will
not find much to support the notion that nonself or no self means inter-
dependence, yet the mixed methods SNTS produced findings suggesting
that these women are relational and resilient. In the American context
where there is privilege based on being male, white, Christian, and hetero-
sexual, and violence against those who are not, I deem this relational resil-
ience as surprising and remarkable, thus Remarkable Relational Resilience.
I wonder if Remarkable Relational Resilience explains, in part, the emer-
gence of African-American Buddhist same-sex loving women, including
Ruth King, Earthlyn Manuel, Jasmine Syedullah, and angel Kyodo wil-
liams? If meditation leads to the dissolution of mind objects, and medita-
tion is practiced in Insight, Zen, and other traditions, then those who
practice meditation and experience dissolving mind objects, including self-
persecutory mind objects, and it is not surprising that AABLs are cultivat-
ing relational resilience.
Object Relations Theory, in particular W.R.D. Fairbairn’s view, in dia-
logue with Buddhist mind object theories, dynamically offers an expanded
view of the mind, object and ego formation, and how the mind has the
capacity to de-intensify the Internal Saboteur, or persecutory objects that
undermine one’s well-being. To understand Fairbairn’s theory, one must
first understand how he understood his own sexual development. Since
Fairbairn’s time, several modern-day object relations theorists have
emerged and are also theorizing on what Buddhism means and how it is
applied. Those theories have not been very favorable. Buddhists have been
largely accused of avoiding others, even attempting to avoid their own
maturation processes. If Muzika, McDargh, Engler, Epstein, Metcalf, and
Aronson are correct, they would give much credence to Delores
S. Williams’ concerns about negative transformations of consciousness,
but perhaps through lovingkindness meditation and lovingkindness
meditation retreats and the de-intensification of persecutory objects, the
concerns they have can be allayed.
Lovingkindness meditation, as Mary, Deborah, Alicia, Norene, and
Marcella attested, does the opposite of what Muzika, McDargh, Engler,
Epstein, Metcalf, and Aronson posited. Buddhist nun Ayya Khema as well
as many other Buddhist teachers in the Insight Meditation tradition teach
lovingkindness meditation because it promotes the same kind of intrapsy-
chic wholeness Fairbairn hoped his particular psychoanalysis promoted,
but did not. So how are counselors to apply the knowledge gleaned from
this study? Is counseling even necessary if Buddhism promotes Remarkable
Relational Resilience?
118 P. A. YETUNDE

People bring what they bring to Buddhist practice and sangha. It is

important to note that some of the women said they have been challenged
by depression, and one challenged by suicidal ideation as the result of early
childhood sexual abuse. The presence of a Buddhist practice does not
mean a person will not have challenges. For example, nearly 8% of the
research participants stated that they often feel that they have little control
over what happens to them and that their practice does not give their life
meaning and purpose. Nearly 7%said that their practice does not help
them confront tragedy and suffering, and nearly 8%strongly disagree that
they are basically a good and worthwhile person when they fall short of
their spiritual ideals. Buddhism does not promote Remarkable Relational
Resilience for everyone who practices Buddhism. So, what can counselors
learn from this research?
The spiritual journey process is complex, rife with conflict, and requires
integration along the way in order to promote Remarkable Relational
Resilience. So where should counselors begin? Counselors do well for cli-
ents and do well for themselves when they can regulate anxious energy
within themselves. A course or practice in mindfulness can be helpful.
Pastoral theologian Joretta Marshall suggests that pastoral caregivers take
full advantage of opportunities to reflect, theologically, on their own lives
as it relates to their “sexuality, orientation, families, and relationships”
without expecting their clients to educate the pastoral caregiver about the
caregiver’s positions on sexuality, orientation, families, and relationships.1
A first counseling meeting with an African-American same-sex loving
Buddhist woman in the Insight tradition, for many pastoral counselors,
may bring many levels of difference—gender, race, sexuality, an under-
standing of the mind, contemplation, and religion to name a few. If the
counselor is aware of how differences contribute to separation yet seeks to
create relationship, therapist Jean Baker Miller suggests:

to facilitate movement in relationship, the therapist should know a lot about

the strategies of disconnection. They arise out of disconnecting experience.
We believe that the central desire of all people is to connect with others. But
when people have suffered hurt, danger, humiliation, and many other kinds
of disconnection, they continue to try to find whatever connections they can.2

Black Buddhist same-sex loving women who have lived in a society where
gender, race, sexuality, and religious discrimination and oppression have per-
sisted may have adopted strategies for disconnection in Buddhist practice itself
 CONCLUSIONS AND COUNSELING RECOMMENDATIONS 119

if the renunciation ideal is what attracted women to the practice and what
keeps them in fantasies about living a renunciate’s life. It will take additional
study of other Buddhists to know whether strategies of disconnection are
predominant in Buddhist householders or lay people. Miller notes five points
about authentic client-counselor relationships. Two of those points include:
relationship is the bearer of cultural shame,3 and a threat to authentic relation-
ship can be experienced as resistance to mutual impact.4
American society has generally shamed same-gender-loving women.
Some womanist Christian theologians have largely invisibilized these
women, including Audre Lorde and Luisah Teish, whose writings appeared
in Alice Walker’s 1979 short story, “Coming Apart.” Projective identifica-
tion and the resistance to mutual impact have been established in our cul-
ture. Pastoral counselors counseling black Buddhist same-sex loving women
should ask themselves whether they have benefitted from the power to
shame and determine whether they want to work it out in the counseling
relationship, or should instead refer the woman to another counselor. If
working together is the mutual decision, the counselor should also contem-
plate the considerations that follow.5 These considerations are inspired by
the interviews with Deborah, Norene, Alicia, Mary, and Marcella.

Consideration 1—Refrain from totalizing AABL clients. Each woman

who falls into this category is a unique human being.

It may be the case that an African-American woman who is a Buddhist

and sexually/romantically involved with a woman does not consider her-
self lesbian, gay, or same-gender-loving. She may consider herself as hav-
ing “slipped into something,” as one my former clients described her
relationship with her female partner of five years. It may be the case that
she doesn’t claim a Buddhist identity, even though she practices Buddhism,
and even though she practices Buddhism, that does not mean she does not
see herself as Christian, Yoruba, or something else or a combination of
identities.

Consideration 2—Understand that there may be a sequence in the coun-

selee’s identity formation. For example, these women are female before
they identify with their religion or religions, and their sexuality and
identity may be in formation after the encounter with Buddhism.
Consideration 3—Pastoral counselors should cultivate a desire to thera-
peutically join with their clients through conscientization.
120 P. A. YETUNDE

Pastoral counselors, especially in the Christian tradition, should be

mindful of the story of Jesus meeting the Canaanite woman. The moral of
the story is that Jesus’ prejudices and emotional posture against the poly-
theistic woman were abandoned in the face of her wisdom, and he rejoiced
in learning from her. The polytheistic woman conscientized Jesus and he
grew in love and compassion. Counselors should be willing to be consci-
entized by AABLs in large part because they are largely invisible in society
and because many therapists are privileged by, if not participate in, the
invisibilization of these women.

Consideration 4—A pastoral counselor/pastoral psychotherapist should

practice being compassionate in order to suffer with those who suffer.

A pastoral counselor need not be Buddhist to practice compassion and is

encouraged to find compassion practices within their own tradition that
leads them to join in the suffering of their clients.6 If no such practice exists,
a therapist might consider Buddhist meditation because belief in a supreme
being or a particular supreme being is not required. When working with
these women, using meditation practice (a phenomenological method) can
help therapists better understand their patients’ suffering and envision ways
of helping them work through the suffering. Meditation practice, in particu-
lar tonglen, helps cultivate the attunement muscle and can improve one’s
ability to empathize with others’ pain.7 Pastoral counselors should take the
position of listener, knowing that their African-American lesbian client has
been discriminated against in many ways and has perhaps taken many hits in
many places in her identity formation. Like the Canaanite woman seeking
healing, she also experiences some healing if listened to, and when wisdom
is heard, the pastoral counselor, like Jesus, should celebrate. This consider-
ation is consistent with my womanist definition of creating a safe space.

Consideration 5—Become good at timely validation.

Validation is a therapeutic technique often used in Dialectical Behavioral

Therapy with people diagnosed as having a Borderline Personality Disorder
(BPD). BPD is defined, generally, as “a pervasive pattern of instability of
interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsiv-
ity, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts.”8
This consideration is not meant to suggest that all black same-sex loving
 CONCLUSIONS AND COUNSELING RECOMMENDATIONS 121

Buddhist women experience BPD, but that validation is highly effective for
people who are repeatedly invalidated by society in several ways. For exam-
ple, in the American context, there is not one high profile African-American
lesbian or gay male couple. Even when African-American gay people are
prominent, attempts are made to invisibilize them. A recent example of this
was played out in the public displays of aggression against singer Frank
Ocean by singer Chris Brown. Society makes space for heterosexual cou-
ples and white same-sex couples to be visible, and with marriage equality,
we can expect greater visibility for African-American lesbian couples.

Consideration 6—Cultivate “beginner’s mind” or the Buddhist attitude

of open-mindedness, willingness to revisit old material, and renuncia-
tion of certainty about the truth.9

P.S. Fry, G. Kropf, and K.J. Coe found that white and black counselor
trainees used fewer attending skills (asking open- and closed-ended ques-
tions, paraphrasing, and reflecting feelings) and more expressive or active
counseling skills (e.g., being directive and offering interpretations) with
black clients than with white clients.10 To avoid the error tendency of
“summing up” and thereby “shutting up” counselees, counselors should
cultivate what Buddhist call “Beginner’s Mind.” In Beginner’s Mind, we
acknowledge that we really do not know what we think we know. Either
there is more to know, nothing else to know that can be known about
ultimate reality, or both paradoxically. Knowing that we do not know
helps make space for curiosity.

Consideration 7—Learn to love unconditionally.11

Curiosity without love for the other is information gathering, not relat-
ing. Pastoral counselors, investing themselves in clinical proficiency, should
also invest in love. Buddhist practitioners are not neutral about compas-
sion and love. Buddhist practitioners seek to become a loving presence in
the lives of all others. One of the central suttas in the Insight Meditation
Buddhist tradition is the Metta (lovingkindness) Sutta. A client who has
engaged in this practice may want their counselor to treat them as a mother
would treat their only child.

Consideration 8—Evaluate the ability of a client to love herself.

122 P. A. YETUNDE

Pay attention to evidence of an active self-persecutory impulse within

the client and ask her about her ways of expressing self-love. On the topic
of self-love, Welwood writes:

The parent-child relationship provides our first experience of the confusing

ways in which conditional and unconditional love become mixed up.
Although most parents originally feel a vast, choiceless love for their new-
born child, they eventually place overt or covert conditions on their love,
using it as a way of controlling the child, turning it into a reward for desired
behaviors. The result is that as children we rarely grow up feeling loved for
ourselves, just as we are. We internalized the conditions our parents put on
their love, and this internalized parent (the “superego” or “inner critic”)
[Internal Saboteur or persecutory object] often rules our lives. We keep try-
ing to placate this inner voice, which continually judges as never good
enough.12

If she has no particular ways of self-love, help her discover ways she can
express self-love and acceptance of herself, as is. To love herself, regardless,
as a womanist might say. Loving oneself regardless, from a Buddhist mind-
fulness meditation perspective, according to Kornfield, can look like this:

Painful or threatening experiencea

Unhealthy reaction Healthy response

Aversion: Non-contention:
All forms of resisting experience Freedom and clarity with experience
Anger Mindfulness
Hatred Connectedness
Aggression Compassion
Fear Concern
Judgment Strength
Blame Fearlessness

Kornfield, 210
a

Epstein agrees:
Using meditation or therapy to try to shut down parts of our experi-
ence is ultimately counterproductive. We do not have to be afraid of enter-
ing unfamiliar territory once we have learned how to meet experience with
the gentleness of our own minds. Learning to transform obstacles into
objects of meditation provides a much-needed bridge between the still-
ness of the concentrated mind and the movement of real life … we must
learn to respond rather than react.13
 CONCLUSIONS AND COUNSELING RECOMMENDATIONS 123

Consideration 9—Teach counselees how to critique society, culture, the

Bible, and the Buddhist suttas.

Black Buddhists women who are same-sex loving, in order to survive

the multitude of societal messages telling them they are “less than” others
due to racism, homophobia, and Christian supremacy, and also that they
do not exist, from a strict Buddhist interpretation of nonself, need to
know how to critique society, culture, and religious texts in order to exter-
nalize negativity toward herself, and allow her libidinal energy to grow
unobstructed by the persecutory object, without guilt and shame.

Consideration 10—Help your client find a supportive community or com-

munities that recognize and honor their multiple identities.

It may be no coincidence that each woman I interviewed was affiliated

with Shared Meditation Center or involved in People of Color and
LGBTQ sanghas. Recall Alicia stating that she is in multiple sanghas to get
multiple identity needs met.

Consideration 11—Adopt a womanist (keeping in mind my definition

based on Walker’s 1979 “Coming Apart”) pastoral counseling attitude
that privileges the woman’s voice, encourages the externalization of
desire for respect, the affirmation of their lovingkindness practices, the
renunciation of intentional harm and dualism, and advocacy for whole-
ness within the black community.

If pastoral counselors, pastoral psychotherapists, spiritual counselors,

spiritual psychotherapists, Buddhologists, and Buddhist theologians are
working with black lesbian Buddhists, they may be in conversation with
these women (especially where there are still traces of Christian identity
and where there may be the presence of African spiritualties) about Delores
S. Williams’ Vertical Encounter and Transformations of Consciousness. In
the Pali Canon, the Buddha had a Vertical Encounter with Brahma, the
God of Creation in the Vedic tradition. Just as the Buddha was about to
retreat from society after his realization, it was Brahma who encouraged
the Buddha to remain in relationship with others, out of compassion for
human suffering, to teach humans how to suffer less. A Delores S. Williams’
Afrocentric womanist attitude, in a counseling context, may explore with
a client whether vertical encounters that transform consciousness are actu-
ally liberating and if so, liberating from what?
124 P. A. YETUNDE

Consideration 12—Ask client about specific challenges to forming multi-

ple conjoining identities (keeping Audre Lorde and Fairbairn in mind)
and ask whether strengthening any or all and integrating any or all of her
identities is a goal for therapy if there are conflicting identities. (The
women who provided narratives did not indicate conflicting identities.)

This list of considerations is long, but not exhaustive. The list includes
advice on how the pastoral counselor might change the way they think
about AABLs, about themselves, and how to utilize Buddhism, Object
Relations Theory, and womanist pastoral theories.

Buddhism and the Mind

The women in this study tend to be interested in the workings of the
mind. Those who have sat on long meditation retreats have dedicated
themselves to this exploration. I believe this self-exploration qualifies
them for a counselor who is analytically minded, not in the classical
Freudian sense, but in an Object Relations-Buddhist psychology sense
where mindfulness of thoughts and mental formations are practiced,
where lovingkindness meditation practice is encouraged, and where
meditation retreat experiences are balanced with relational activity in
and outside the counseling room. Kornfield, a psychologist, Buddhist,
and co-founder of Spirit Rock says:

The fact that aggression, anger, and aversion are built into our universal
heritage is only the starting point in Buddhist psychology. After we learn
how to face them directly, to see how they arise and function in our life, we
must take a revolutionary step. Through profound practice of insight,
through nonidentification and compassion, we reach below the very syn-
apses and cells and free ourselves from the grasp of these instinctive forces.
With dedication, we discover it is possible to do so.14

Kornfield recommends, as a psycho-spiritual practice, learning how to be

aware, through mindfulness, of how these feelings and drives are operat-
ing in the body, know the difference between reaction and response, and
imagine how one might honestly claim their emotions rather than blame
others.15 This would be a practice also done outside the counseling room,
so homework is involved for the Buddhist Object Relations–oriented pas-
toral counselor working with these counselees.
 CONCLUSIONS AND COUNSELING RECOMMENDATIONS 125

A Particular Black Christian–Black Buddhist

Lesbian Relational History of Which to Be Mindful
The emphasis on knowing reactions and responses is critical in relation-
oriented counseling modalities and “techniques” because, I suspect, many
African-American lesbians (be they Buddhist or not) have experienced sig-
nificant relational breaks that might lead to reactivity when relational chal-
lenges are presented by the counselor. Griffin writes:

African Americans have spent their years of freedom seeking to gain respect-
ability by the mainstream as sexually moral beings and overcome the histori-
cal labeling as a sexually perverse people. In an effort to receive acceptance
from a homophobic society, blacks strongly condemn and deny homosexu-
ality within black communities and churches. While black church leaders
and congregants tolerate a gay presence in choirs, congregations, and even
the pulpit as long as gays cooperate and stay “in their closeted place,” gays
quickly experience the limits of this tolerance if they request the same recog-
nition as their heterosexual counterparts.16

In my experience, the lack of tolerance is not limited to visibility and the

demand for respect within in church, the intolerance can be experienced
within the family itself. Black Christian churches that preach a literal
adherence to the Bible, and black families associated with those churches
that act as church code re-enforcers, may contribute to the internalization
of homophobia in counselees before they situate themselves in the Insight
tradition. Being situated in the Insight tradition does not automatically
erase internalized homophobia. Given the possibility that a Theravadin
monastic or an Insight dharma teacher will not be prepared to help a
woman re-examine the Bible, pastoral counselors, according to Marshall,
should not ignore Biblical passages used to condemn same-gender-loving
people. She recommends an examination and re-examination of Genesis
19/Judges 19, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, Romans 1:18–32, 1 Corinthians
6:9–11; and 1 Timothy 1:8–11.17 If an African-American Buddhist
woman, who probably grew up in church, fears punishment in absolute
reality, she may have some residual inclination toward the literal biblical
interpretations against same-gender-loving people. I agree with Marshall.
After an 11-year-old boy hanged himself after being teased for being gay,
I wrote a booklet re-examining and reinterpreting the Sodom and
Gomorrah story.18 I shared this reinterpretation with clients struggling to
accept their sexuality and it provided a helpful reframing away from shame.
126 P. A. YETUNDE

In Search of Refuge
Black sexual morality shaped in part by fear of racial oppression can result
in the black straight on black LGBTQ discrimination, leading some
African-American lesbians to leave their churches in search of a safer spiri-
tual home. Whether women left church looking for a safer spiritual home
on the basis of sexual oppression (which many of the research participants
did not), they have found a place of relative “gay safety,” but not necessar-
ily “black safety,” in the IMC.
Returning to the Fetzer SEI, there were indications that one women
feared punishment in absolute reality and three women were neutral. Is
the fear or ambivalence based on their beliefs about being same-gender-
loving? There is no way to know this from the SEI or the interview tran-
scripts, however, given that these women grew up in church and in black
families that attended church, a pastoral counselor might attune herself to
her client’s spiritual journey for answers.

Spiritual Movements from Christianity to Buddhism

On the spiritual journey from being solely Christian identified to wholly or
partially Buddhist identified, several moments in a woman’s life may have
taken place and are likely to continue taking place. I call these nonlinear
movements self-preservation, rejection, migration, longing, exploration,
positive encounter-relocation, integration, re-evaluation, transformation
and longing again, letting go, and for some, deity exchange. I coined
these movements based on my spiritual journey from United Methodist
to Buddhism; Lorde’s spiritual journey from Catholicism to I Ching to
African spiritualties, to anthroposophy and secularized Buddhism and
qigong; and the spiritual journey narratives of Alicia, Deborah, Marcella,
Mary, and Norene. A pastoral counselor interested in their counselee’s
spiritual journey may be better able to locate the cause(s) of any internal-
ized oppression and help guard against it even if she belongs to a spiri-
tual community that does not speak about that subject. Silence can be
interpreted negatively. Returning to the SEI, there were indications that
one woman feared punishment in absolute reality and three women were
neutral. Taking a look again at the significant and positive correlations
between this fear and other variables, we also found some agreement with
these statements:
 CONCLUSIONS AND COUNSELING RECOMMENDATIONS 127

One should not marry someone of a different faith.

It is important that I follow the religious beliefs of my parents.
Obedience to religious doctrine is the most important aspect of my practice.
There is usually only one right solution to any moral dilemma.

A pastoral counselor should listen carefully for evidence of strict adher-

ence to rules and family dynamics as a source of information and under-
standing about the fear of punishment in absolute reality. Fear can be
exacerbated by a variety of situations.
Cadge concluded incorrectly that lesbian, gay, and bisexual people are
comfortable in all kinds of Buddhist organizations founded by white peo-
ple across the country. Black lesbians still have to contend with racism
within Buddhist communities and pastoral counselors counseling these
women would do well to be curious about how their clients’ experience
their spiritual communities and where there is invalidation or invisibiliza-
tion, encourage their client to consider joining a friendlier sangha or start
one similar to the East Bay Meditation Center or Insight Meditation
Community of Washington.
Sanghas, whether they were founded on inclusivity and diversity prin-
ciples, can be places were black lesbians participate in life-enhancing ritu-
als. Chiara Manodori interviewed six lesbians, one Buddhist, about
commitment ceremony and children-related rituals in their spiritual com-
munities and in the counseling room. She found that some of her inter-
viewees were challenged in balancing the suffering caused by homophobia
with the “pride and excitement” of coming out.19 From an object relations
perspective, Manodori writes:

Object relationships theorists have placed a great deal of emphasis on how

an individual develops the ability to tolerate ambivalence. An individual’s
ability to “take the bad with the good and … tolerate both in the same per-
son” is believed to be a sign of healthy development.20

Practices in equanimity helps Buddhists tolerate ambivalence. The ability

to take the bad with the good is a value Insight Meditation practitioner’s
share as evidenced by suttas on accepting the vicissitudes (gain and loss,
fame and disrepute, praise and blame, and pleasure and pain) without
clinging, meditation practice, and the privileging of equanimity (along
128 P. A. YETUNDE

with compassion, lovingkindness, and sympathetic joy) as a Brahma

Vihara.21 On the other hand, Buddhists in the Insight Meditation tradi-
tion tend to possess their own ambivalences about rituals.

Rituals
Certain rituals and the meaning placed on those rituals can be considered
fetters, or obstacles to enlightenment and nibbana. The ten fetters in the
Abhidhamma include “(1) sensual lust, (2) attachment to existence, (3)
aversion, (4) conceit, (5) wrong views, (6) adherence to rites and ceremo-
nies, (7) doubt, (8) envy, (9) avarice, and (10) ignorance.”22 This ambiva-
lence stems from Theravadin teachings on self as jiva and atman, or soul
and spirit, and the Buddha proclaiming no self or no soul at the core of
being human. In this context, rituals are considered hindrances:

Among the fetters (samyojana) that bind to existence, theism is particularly

subject to those of personality-belief, attachment to rites and rituals, and
desire for fine-material existence or for a “heaven of the sense sphere,” as the
case may be.23

As long as it is understood in the community that the rituals affirming

lesbian identity and child naming are not meant to be construed as believ-
ing in the jiva-atman self, or in the perpetuation of everlasting life, the
ritual should not be terribly problematic and can be supported as an effort
to bring compassion and healing to women who suffer oppression. A
dharma teacher and/or pastoral counselor may ask women what rituals are
meaningful to them. Rituals can be created or co-created to help cultivate
equanimity.

Fairbairn’s Relevance?
Given Fairbairn’s negative pseudoscience as it relates to the depravity of
same-sex loving people, does he have anything to offer today’s conversa-
tions on object relations, counseling, and psychotherapy? According to
Fairbairn:

It is an accepted article of the psychoanalytical technique that the analyst

should be usually self-effacing. As we know, there are very good reasons for
the adoption of such an attitude on his part; but it inevitably has the effect
of rendering the object-relationship between patient and analyst somewhat
 CONCLUSIONS AND COUNSELING RECOMMENDATIONS 129

one-sided from the patient’s point of view and thus contributing to resis-
tance. A certain one-sidedness in the relationship between patient and ana-
lyst is, of course, inherent in the analytical situation; but it would appear
that, when the self-effacing attitude of the analyst is combined with a mode
of interpretation based upon a psychology of impulse, a considerable strain
is imposed upon the patient’s capacity for establishing satisfactory object-
relationships (a capacity which must be regarded as already compromised in
virtue of the fact that the patient is a patient at all).24

I agree. It is reasonable to adopt the view that a psychoanalytic self-effac-

ing attitude will not be conducive to a working relationship between a
counselor and a black Buddhist lesbian when the psychoanalysis is based
on impulse interpretation. Fairbairn’s recommendation is to

1) enable the patient [counselee or client] to release from his [or hers or
their] unconscious “buried” bad objects which have been internalized; 2)
promote a dissolution of the libidinal bonds whereby the patient is attached
to indispensable bad objects; 3) situations should be interpreted not in
terms of gratification but in terms of object-relationships; 4) libidinal striv-
ings should be represented as ultimately dictated by object-love and there-
fore is good; 5) libidinal badness should be related to the cathexis of bad
objects; 6) guilt situations should be related by interpretation to bad object
situations; 7) caution should be exercised over interpretations in terms of
aggression except perhaps in the case of depressives.25

Again, I agree. In terms of psychological health, I am making the determina-

tion from a “reformed” Fairbairnian Object Relations Theory and Buddhist
psychology. From a reformed Fairbairnian Object Relations Theory, I am
suggesting that Fairbairn was correct in theorizing that people tend to be
healthier when they are more relational. African-American Buddhist lesbians
have demonstrated their concern for others, an openness for difference, and
the ability to individuate themselves from others without becoming separat-
ists. His belief that same-gender-loving people are not innately relational has
been proved incorrect, not only by me and the women in this study, but by
countless same-sex loving people throughout generations and across the
world, and by researchers in many disciplines over time. It is reasonable to
conclude that most of these women have experienced psycho-spiritual well-
being despite living in a society that has elements and different levels of
devaluation, discrimination, oppression, and invisibilization. In order to
understand how Buddhist practice has helped them experience psycho-spir-
itual well-being, I attempted, through quantitative analysis, to correlate
130 P. A. YETUNDE

questions from the Fetzer SEI related to spiritual practice, with the SEI
questions related to spiritual experience. Given my experiences in meditating
and leading meditation groups, as well as the narratives of those who,
through lovingkindness meditation, have worked through various levels of
hatred, including self-hatred, I support lovingkindness meditation as a con-
temporary (though ancient) intervention for detoxifying the persecutory
object. Lovingkindness meditation does not require much up-front money
for instruction, may not require dependency on another individual (though
the presence of a loving guiding teacher that the meditator can be benefi-
cial), and presents other benefits, like managing stress and de-intensifying
ego energies that can lead to an overactive persecutory object.

Detoxifying the Persecutory Object

The women I interviewed agree that their practice helps them be resilient
in the presence of numerous and life-long narcissistic woundings that
would cause others to seek “schizoid shelter” in isolated, long-term medi-
tation practices. These long-term meditation practices are usually led by
monastics and white dharma teachers who have not yet espoused a theol-
ogy or Buddhology of black liberation.
I anticipate that a continuing dialogue between Buddhists and Christians
on the wilderness and deep wilderness experiences of transformation of
consciousness, as Delores S. Williams envisioned the wilderness and posi-
tive transformations of consciousness, would be rich. If group identity
leads to liberation, why would Buddhists not support the creation and
participation in People of Color and LGBTQ sanghas that help cohere
group identity? Conversely, if giving up black consciousness and identify-
ing with “alien” and “destructive” forms of consciousness is what is hap-
pening to African-American lesbians in Buddhist communities, why are
they not destroyed but instead strengthened by their Buddhist practice?
The wilderness and deep wilderness experiences, and the wildernesses of
these unanswered questions, provides a motivation for journeying, discov-
ering, and awakening for those interested in Buddhist-Christian dialogue.

Notes
1. Marshall, 155.
2. Jean Baker Miller, et al., Therapists’ Authenticity, the Complexity of
Connection: Writings from the Stone Center’s Jean Baker Miller Training
Institute (New York: The Guilford Press, 2004), 65.
 CONCLUSIONS AND COUNSELING RECOMMENDATIONS 131

3. Ibid., 79.
4. Miller, et al., 80.
5. Pamela Ayo Yetunde, “Identity Development in African-American
Christian Lesbians and Culturally—Appropriate Treatment Considerations,”
final paper for Developing Intercultural Competency in Pastoral
Counseling, Columbia Theological Seminary, 2013. This list of consider-
ations is adapted from that paper.
6. As a Buddhist practitioner, I dedicate my practice and work to understand-
ing suffering and the way through suffering. This understanding comes
from meditation practice, reading Buddhist scriptures (The Pali Canon),
and from sangha (Buddhist church). It is said that there are three jewels in
Buddhism: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. Through the
Buddha we learn about privilege, delusion, anxiety, renunciation, wisdom
and teaching/learning. Through the dharma we learn how to observe phe-
nomena, determine truths, and experiment with healing. The dharma
jewel is like strengthening one’s phenomenological muscles of ascertaining
reality. Through the sangha we learn how to be in spiritual community.
7. Tonglen meditation is a Tibetan Buddhist practice of visualizing one who
is suffering, breathing in as you image how they suffer, and breathing out
as you envision how you might help that person suffer less. Tonglen is a
practice in leaning toward others rather than away from others.
8. American Psychiatric Association, DSM V, 325.
9. “Shosin, Access to Insight” (accessed January, 13, 2016), https://en.wiki-
pedia.org/wiki/Shoshin.
10. Robert T. Carter, The Influence of Race and Racial Identity in Psychotherapy
(New York: Wiley & Sons, 1995), 51.
11. Pamela Cooper-White, Many Voices: Pastoral Psychotherapy in Relational
and Theological Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 244. I
agree with pastoral psychotherapist Cooper-White. By learning to love
unconditionally that love should not be sentimental or the attachment to a
pattern of nice behavior but nonpossessive and compassionate.
12. Ibid., 254.
13. Epstein, Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart, 130.
14. Kornfield, 209.
15. Ibid., 220.
16. Griffin, 21.
17. Unless otherwise noted, all scriptural passages are from the Thompson
Chain-Reference Study Bible, New King James Version, compiled and
edited by Frank Charles Thompson, published by B.B. Kirkbridge Bible
Co., Inc., Indianapolis, IN.
18. Pamela Yetunde, The Healing of Sodom and Gomorrah: A Path to
Compassion and Liberation for All (Atlanta, GA: Marabella Press, 2010).
132 P. A. YETUNDE

19. Chiara Manodori, “This Powerful Opening of the Heart,” Journal of

Homosexuality 36, no. 2 (1998): 54.
20. Ibid.
21. Thera and Bodhi, 198.
22. Bodhi, Abhidhammattha Sangaha, 269.
23. “Buddhism and the God-Idea, Access to Insight,” http://www.accessto-
insight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/godidea.html (accessed January,
13, 2016).
24. Fairbairn, “Endopsychic Structure Considered in Terms of Object-
Relationships,” 87.
25. Ibid.
 Index1

A C
Abhidhamma, 4, 16, Cetasika, 79, 88, 113
77–97, 128 Christianity, 3, 21, 26, 29, 33, 43,
Anxiety, 8, 33, 51, 53, 54, 65, 54–66, 74, 81, 97, 116, 126–128
66, 81, 89–93, 104, Citta, 78, 79, 88, 113
110–112, 131n6 Counseling, 3, 4, 102, 115–130
Aronson, Harvey B., 4, 95, 99n73,
99n75, 99n76, 117
E
Engler, Jack, 4, 92, 95, 99n61, 99n62,
B 111, 112, 117
Brahma Viharas, 3, 13–16, 20, 21, 39, Epstein, Mark, 4, 93, 94, 99n64,
95, 101, 115 99n66, 117, 122, 131n13
Buddhism, 1–16, 19–21, 26, 29,
35n17, 39, 40, 42–44, 51,
53–68, 70, 72–74, 78, 85, 86, F
88–93, 96, 97, 98n33, 99n48, Fairbairn, W. R. D., 4, 50, 51, 75n22,
105, 108, 110–113, 116–119, 101, 102, 107, 109–113, 116,
124, 126–128, 131n6 117, 124, 128–130

1
Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

© The Author(s) 2018 133

P. A. Yetunde, Object Relations, Buddhism, and Relationality
in Womanist Practical Theology, Black Religion/Womanist Thought/
Social Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94454-8
134 INDEX

Fetzer Spiritual Experience Index M

(SEI), 3, 51, 55, 65, 116, Manuel, Zenju Earthlyn, 4, 67, 68,
126, 130 72–74, 75n17, 75n19, 78,
Four Noble Truths, 3, 8–10, 15, 20, 89, 117
39, 49, 115 McCrary, Carolyn Akua, 21, 27, 28,
Freud, Sigmund, 81, 82, 89, 94, 109 34n3, 35n23, 73, 74, 75n23, 116
Fronsdal, Gil, 17n9 Meditation, 2, 4, 5, 8, 11–16, 18n17,
20, 36n40, 41, 43, 47, 48, 58,
62, 71, 72, 78, 87–96, 98n33,
G 102, 103, 105, 107, 108,
Griffin, Horace, 125, 131n16 110–112, 117, 120, 122, 124,
127, 130, 131n6, 131n7
Metcalf, Franz Aubrey, 4, 94, 95,
I 99n67, 99n69, 99n72, 117
Insight Meditation, 2–5, 9–11, Mindfulness, 2, 8, 10, 12–15, 20, 28,
15, 16, 16n4, 17n7, 18n17, 30–31, 35n26, 36n40, 42, 54,
18n18, 28, 78, 89, 93, 55, 78, 97n21, 106, 112, 118,
115–117, 121, 122, 124
127, 128 Muzika, Edward G., 4, 53, 65, 89–92,
Interdependence, 19–33, 45, 54, 65, 98n47, 99n49, 99n50, 99n54,
70, 73, 74, 116, 117 99n58, 99n60, 110–112,
Internal saboteur, 4, 81, 83, 84, 114n18, 117
98n34, 101, 102, 110, 112, 113,
117, 122
N
Noble Eightfold Path, 3, 8, 10–13,
K 20, 43, 49, 107, 115
Khema, Ayya, 4, 98n46, 105–107, No self, 3, 4, 7, 15, 16, 17n7, 20, 39,
113n2, 113n5, 113n6, 42, 50, 53–74, 77–97, 106, 111,
113n8, 117 112, 116, 117, 128
Kornfield, Jack, 4, 16n4, 122, 124,
131n14
O
Object relations, 2, 4, 50, 77–97, 101,
L 117, 124, 127–129
Lorde, Audre, 3, 22, 23, 26, 27, 29,
31, 34n8, 34n11, 35n32, 36n33,
36n34, 36n36, 36n40, P
36n43–45, 47, 59, 61, 102, 119, Pali Canon, 2, 16, 17n16, 18n20, 42,
124, 126 44, 92, 96, 101, 117, 123, 131n6
Lovingkindness meditation, 4, 14, 43, Persecutory object, 4, 44, 50, 81, 85,
44, 65, 89, 91, 92, 95, 101–113, 89, 101, 110, 112, 113, 117,
117, 124, 130 122, 123, 130
 INDEX
   135

R W
Remarkable Relational Resilience, 2, 4, Walker, Alice, 3, 16, 19,
29, 45, 96, 105, 117, 118 20, 22–33, 34n11, 35n17,
Rituals, 7, 8, 127, 128 35n29, 36n35, 86, 102, 116,
119, 123
Welwood, John, 122
S Wholeness, 4, 11, 13,
Sangha, 5, 6, 40, 42, 48–50, 63, 116, 24, 32, 101–113,
118, 123, 127, 130, 131n6 117, 123
Self, 3, 4, 7, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, Williams, angel Kyodo, 4, 67–69, 71,
18n23, 20, 25, 31, 39, 42, 44, 73, 74, 74n7, 74n11, 75n21,
48, 53–74, 77–97, 103, 105–107, 78, 117
110–112, 116, 128 Williams, Delores S., 3,
Spiritual movements, 43, 54–66, 25–28, 31, 34n13,
75n27, 75n28, 110, 126–128 35n16–18, 40, 77,
Syedullah, Jasmine, 4, 67, 72–74, 91, 96, 97n1, 97n2,
75n20, 75n21, 78, 89, 117 116, 117, 123, 130
Willis, Jan, 4, 67, 68, 70,
71, 73, 74, 74n13,
T 74n15, 78
Theology, 2, 3, 16, 19–21, 24–28, 30, Womanism, 3, 4, 16, 19–33, 65,
32, 33, 35n17, 73, 116, 130 86, 102