Retrieving "Asian Spirituality" in North American Contexts: An Interfaith Proposal

Abstract

Zen meditation, t'ai chi, and yoga have become popular practices in North America today. People who practice such disciplines come from many religious, cultural, and socio-economic backgrounds. Some of them immerse themselves deeply in practice, following a particular guru or lineage. this phenomenon raises interesting questions about the development of religious traditions cross-culturally, my concern here is with a larger, more disturbing trend in North American practices of Asian religious traditions. This trend splits Asian spiritualities off from their wider religio-cultural networks of community and belief. People then dabble in these practices, knowing little of their complex histories, or how they relate to contemporary Asian and Asian American communities, where such practices continue to develop and have life. In cases of dabbling, the practice of meditation or yoga is often done without critical or careful reflection. Certainly, people all over the world practice unreflectively and uncritically; but the implications of such dabbling are ominous. Catherine Cornille hints at this in her treatment of the phenomenon of multiple religious belonging, when she says that, While the recognition of possibility of belong- ing to more than one tradition may thus arise from a position of humility, it may also result from a posture of superiority. Rituals and beliefs of other religions may be regarded as harmless, if not superfluous, from the perspective of the higher truth and efficacy that is offered in that particular religion. 1 The same can be said of unreflective or naive dabbling. Moreover, Christian North American engagement in non-Christian Asian practices is inherently mired in the historical realities of European imperialism, American economic and mili- tary co-optation, and Christian involvement in these colonizing processes. Such problems do not disappear when Christian Asian North Americans practice non-Christian Asian spiritual traditions. Such practices often emerge organically from our histories, families, and communities; and indeed, implic- itly recognizing the entanglement of religion and culture, we sometimes do so with the explicit intention of celebrating our cultures and connecting to our root communities. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore Christian North Atlan- tic colonizing impulses and how we as Christians and Asian North Americans