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Home Is Here: Practicing Antiracism with the Engaged Eightfold Path
A guide to living the Engaged Four Noble antiracist practices for wholeness, healing, and collective liberation.
For readers of Be the Refuge , The Way of Tenderness , Love and Rage, and Radical Dharma.
Home is Here builds on foundational Buddhist teachings—the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path—offering an intersectional frame to help you embody antiracist practices and tend to your own healing under racism and oppression.
Grounded in practice, memoir, and mindful self-help skill-building, Rev. Liên Shutt’s Engaged Four Noble Truths illuminate a path toward healing and liberation. She shares her own experiences with anti-Asian hate—as a teen riding her bike, meditating in whitewashed monasteries—and asks, what does it mean to attend to our suffering in body, heart, and mind when racism can cause such intense hurt and pain? What does it look like to heal?
While written mainly for Asian American Buddhists and other BIPOC practitioners, Home is Here moves us all from knowing and contemplation to a place of action and wholeness.
In the doing is the realization, and in practicing antiracism, we build a home for all beings. This is reflected in Rev. Shutt’s choice to frame each step of the Engaged Eightfold Path not as “right” but as “skillful”—to convey both the knowing and the practices essential to healing harm. In this
An engaged reframing of core Buddhist spiritual principles, Home is Here connects foundational practices to urgent causes—and invites readers on a path home to wholeness.
For readers of Be the Refuge , The Way of Tenderness , Love and Rage, and Radical Dharma.
Home is Here builds on foundational Buddhist teachings—the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path—offering an intersectional frame to help you embody antiracist practices and tend to your own healing under racism and oppression.
Grounded in practice, memoir, and mindful self-help skill-building, Rev. Liên Shutt’s Engaged Four Noble Truths illuminate a path toward healing and liberation. She shares her own experiences with anti-Asian hate—as a teen riding her bike, meditating in whitewashed monasteries—and asks, what does it mean to attend to our suffering in body, heart, and mind when racism can cause such intense hurt and pain? What does it look like to heal?
While written mainly for Asian American Buddhists and other BIPOC practitioners, Home is Here moves us all from knowing and contemplation to a place of action and wholeness.
In the doing is the realization, and in practicing antiracism, we build a home for all beings. This is reflected in Rev. Shutt’s choice to frame each step of the Engaged Eightfold Path not as “right” but as “skillful”—to convey both the knowing and the practices essential to healing harm. In this
An engaged reframing of core Buddhist spiritual principles, Home is Here connects foundational practices to urgent causes—and invites readers on a path home to wholeness.
224 pages, Paperback
Published August 22, 2023
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July 10, 2023
Home is Here – a modern and accessible Anti-Racism teaching based on Soto Zen Buddhist principles. Set to be published on August 22nd, 2023. Much thanks to NetGalley for giving me an advanced reader copy.
What I love the most about Home is Here is its relevance to the contemporary life. Rev. Lien Shutt is a guiding teacher and Buddhist monk in the Insight & Zen tradition. In this book, she connects Buddhism to the struggles that we face today; such as social media, modern meditation, and the way we interact with others. The teaching here is more accessible, easier to understand, and was explained in greater context than most traditional Buddhist texts. I also enjoyed the practice pauses included. They’ve provided me with some great exercises in awareness and introspection.
There were a few things that I thought didn’t quite work for me. One, the incessant tirade on white supremacy. In fact, the term “white supremacy” was brought up so frequently, I felt like I saw it every other sentence! Two, every single example of racism that Rev. Shutt provided was about something that some white people did. News flash, people of color can be racist too! I would have loved to see more academic/educational statistics and information; as I thought the personal anecdotes in this book were fairly weak examples of racism. Two that I remember specifically:
- Rev. Shutt wrote about a story where she went grocery shopping with her white girlfriend; she handed the cashier her credit card, but after the cashier finished scanning all the items, he ran the card, and returned it to the white girlfriend (cue her upset about why the card wasn’t returned to her). This sounds 100% like an honest mistake from the cashier’s part; not a teaching moment about racism. I used to work as a cashier at a clothing store, and I can guarantee you that I don’t remember people’s faces even during the interaction sometimes! We’re there to ring your items, not memorize your face.
- Another story – somebody told the author that she’s not “truly Vietnamese” because she barely speaks any Vietnamese. I get that she might feel hurt by it, but languages are closely tied to culture and identity. I’m half Chinese but don’t speak a lick of Chinese, so I don’t get offended when people tell me I’m not Chinese!
Even though this wasn’t a perfect book for me, I’m still glad I had the opportunity to read Home is Here. It’s definitely a book to savor slowly and intentionally. I feel like I’m a more thoughtful and connected person from absorbing these lessons.
What I love the most about Home is Here is its relevance to the contemporary life. Rev. Lien Shutt is a guiding teacher and Buddhist monk in the Insight & Zen tradition. In this book, she connects Buddhism to the struggles that we face today; such as social media, modern meditation, and the way we interact with others. The teaching here is more accessible, easier to understand, and was explained in greater context than most traditional Buddhist texts. I also enjoyed the practice pauses included. They’ve provided me with some great exercises in awareness and introspection.
There were a few things that I thought didn’t quite work for me. One, the incessant tirade on white supremacy. In fact, the term “white supremacy” was brought up so frequently, I felt like I saw it every other sentence! Two, every single example of racism that Rev. Shutt provided was about something that some white people did. News flash, people of color can be racist too! I would have loved to see more academic/educational statistics and information; as I thought the personal anecdotes in this book were fairly weak examples of racism. Two that I remember specifically:
- Rev. Shutt wrote about a story where she went grocery shopping with her white girlfriend; she handed the cashier her credit card, but after the cashier finished scanning all the items, he ran the card, and returned it to the white girlfriend (cue her upset about why the card wasn’t returned to her). This sounds 100% like an honest mistake from the cashier’s part; not a teaching moment about racism. I used to work as a cashier at a clothing store, and I can guarantee you that I don’t remember people’s faces even during the interaction sometimes! We’re there to ring your items, not memorize your face.
- Another story – somebody told the author that she’s not “truly Vietnamese” because she barely speaks any Vietnamese. I get that she might feel hurt by it, but languages are closely tied to culture and identity. I’m half Chinese but don’t speak a lick of Chinese, so I don’t get offended when people tell me I’m not Chinese!
Even though this wasn’t a perfect book for me, I’m still glad I had the opportunity to read Home is Here. It’s definitely a book to savor slowly and intentionally. I feel like I’m a more thoughtful and connected person from absorbing these lessons.
September 3, 2023
Thich Nhat Hanh, of course, is considered the originator of the term engaged Buddhism, setting an example and making it a definitive part of Buddhist practice. Reading Sister Chan Khong’s autobiography, Learning True Love: Practicing in the Time of War (Parallax Press, 1993), on hers and his work developing engaged Buddhism with youths in Vietnam, opened me to the possibilities of the wholeness of Buddhism as practice not separate from social justice work.
Dare I say that my development of the Engaged Four Noble Truths as shared in this book is but a strand in this ongoing work to formulate ways in which the ancient teachings continue to be applicable in our current times. Just as when I practiced with both of them mindful walking and doing the Touching the Earth prostrations on the undulating hills of a retreat center in Northern California in the mid-1990s, I sense the reclamation of “home” reverberating in our practices and teachings.
As a book about racism and about Buddhism, it has a huge reach and a huge goal, which is accomplished magnificently. I appreciate so much about how the author approaches racism with a Buddhist lens, and I am so grateful for her unflinching honesty in how she has been harmed by racism and homophobia, and even being an Asian American in other Asian cultures. And still, still she creates this lucid and lyrical and practical book on ways we can all do anti-racism work. Amazing.
For me, the system of white supremacy culture and racism, as one of its results, has been the oppressive force that has been most painful, harming, and enduring. It classifies, stratifies, and enforces constructed racial categories. I have worked hard to learn about it and extricate myself from it through studies, activism, and work to address its impact. All these experiences of learning have been useful. However, Buddhism brought a framing to these issues in a way that has been freeing. After practicing and teaching Buddhism for over twenty-five years, I have come to realize how any single social location that I have been taught, internalized, experienced, and imputed on by others is not one that is solid nor enduring. There is a way to understand, be with, and then find empowerment and the agency to use our locations when useful or skillful and yet not be used by them. There are ways to reframe our understanding and experiences by freeing ourselves from constructs.
In many of the convert-based meditation groups I’ve taught at, I am thought to be “too religious,” especially as Buddhism-based practices have been appropriated into secularized popular “mindfulness” apps and health and self-care industries.
I noticed that in predominantly white convert Buddhist centers, people of color were often told that race was not part of practice because “there’s no self.” When I tried to address racist incidents, I was told that this was to reify “a false sense of self.” If antiracism work was acknowledged by white leaders, then it was “just a relative stepping stone” on the way to an “absolute.” By default, given the predominantly white and mostly male teachers within convert Buddhism in North America, this “absolute” felt patriarchal, white-defined, and white-centered.
My Engaged version of the Four Noble Truths: Investigate what harm and harming is present. Once we understand fully the causes and conditions for harm and harming, we abandon such unskillful thoughts and behaviors. In doing so, we realize individual and collective agency for ending harm is possible. The Eightfold Path empowers wholeness and thus needs to be developed.
Take a moment to connect to a sense of wholeness as if you were sitting* under that rose apple tree, or perhaps a tree from your childhood, or by a lake or the ocean, or somewhere in nature that brings you a sense of peace and wholeness. Rest and relax into this place. Let yourself fully be in this moment of stillness and rest, where there’s nothing for you to do. Just rest as-you-are in this moment as-it-is: whole and complete. As you focus on the feeling of wholeness, I invite you to connect it to a spot within your actual physical body, somewhere that’s very visceral: perhaps in the weight of your body at the sitting bones of your posture or the fullness of your belly at the end of an inhale. Let yourself rest there and know it fully.
In the summer of 2020, when the Black Lives Matter protests were going on all over the world, the reality that this was a structural issue could not be denied by dominant society any longer. Given this context, the Merriam-Webster dictionary changed its definition of racism to finally include systemic oppression after a young Black woman lobbied for it. While not a policy change, words reflect what’s important in a culture. The woman who lobbied for this new definition contributed to all of us being able to change how we describe ourselves and our view of the world we live in, helping us “abandon” or “let go” of old frameworks.
A person in Q&A asked a Black teacher how come quietness and stillness were so emphasized in Buddhism. That teacher’s go-to answer was essentially, “If it was a whole bunch of Black people who had gone to Asia to bring Buddhism back, you bet it would be a lot more singing and dancing!” To ignore the long history of Asian American heritage Buddhism in North America and simply adopt the white-centered convert Buddhist version and perspectives, and thus continuing to minimize, invisibilize, and erase Asian-heritage practitioners’ presence and contributions, is to collude in the system of white supremacy through appropriation.
To practice Skillful View is to learn to shift our perception so we can understand and be with harm and harming—our own, that of others, and the world’s—in service of healing and restoration. Skillful View can help us stop turning away from suffering because we’re overwhelmed, and instead learn ways to view or understand it more skillfully.
To help you investigate this, you can ask yourself, How am I part of the whole of life instead of an object being acted upon? In other words, How can I transform my view of life being done to me to how I am in life? Going even deeper, you can ask yourself, How can I know I have agency in the midst of oppressive systems of domination? How can I live with mindful agency instead of reactivity?
Begin by taking an easeful position. Close your eyes if it helps you to concentrate. Now bring up an event that bothers you just a little bit. (Really, make it small!) Next, notice a thought you’re having about the event and silently label it “thought.” Then label with one word the quality of the thought; for instance, “judgment” or “anxious.” Now, notice an emotion you’re having about it and silently label it “emotion.” Then do the same, labeling with one word the quality of that emotion; for example, if related to the example of judgment above, perhaps “shame,” or with anxiety, “dread.”
Now, do the same with a “sensation” quality. If relating to shame, perhaps “tightness” in the stomach or “squeezing” at the throat. Now go back to the event. What is the valence, or positive or negative affective quality, of the event now? The above meditation can help us begin focusing on different aspects of our experience. Hopefully it has given you more precise information about what’s going on with you in the moment already. With more information, we can more appropriately respond. For instance, when I find myself feeling a bit irritated or not quite satisfied, I pause and do this meditation. Oftentimes I find out that I’m experiencing the sensation of cold. When I don’t notice or attend to it, I find that irritation often arises. I then find something or someone to be irritated with instead of just attending to the sensation of coldness and putting on a sweater.
Practice Pause:
Mindful Writing Who Am I Right Now? Think of one thing you need to do today. How is this task associated with a certain role or identity you take on, be it at work, home, or anywhere else? Now think of how accomplishing the task you need to do today reifies this role. Now think of something that needs your attention which takes you away from accomplishing today’s task. What does this bring up? What are the emotions or thoughts that are associated? How many of these are related to whether, in accomplishing today’s task, you’ll get to “be good” at that one role? Does this bring more anxiety or ease? What happens if “being good” wasn’t dependent on whether you accomplish the task right now or today? Is your role, your identity, completely dependent on this one task being done?
I know someone who went through a six-month Buddhist training to work with white privilege and entitlement. They learned that saying, “I’m an ally,” isn’t useful because it implies that you’re “done” with race work, like you’ve reached a goal and so can say, “I’m not a racist; I’m an ally.” It’s not an identity or a place to reach. Instead, saying, “I’m acting as an ally,” with the emphasis on the verb, reflects that it’s an ongoing process and that one keeps reengaging with it.
Dare I say that my development of the Engaged Four Noble Truths as shared in this book is but a strand in this ongoing work to formulate ways in which the ancient teachings continue to be applicable in our current times. Just as when I practiced with both of them mindful walking and doing the Touching the Earth prostrations on the undulating hills of a retreat center in Northern California in the mid-1990s, I sense the reclamation of “home” reverberating in our practices and teachings.
As a book about racism and about Buddhism, it has a huge reach and a huge goal, which is accomplished magnificently. I appreciate so much about how the author approaches racism with a Buddhist lens, and I am so grateful for her unflinching honesty in how she has been harmed by racism and homophobia, and even being an Asian American in other Asian cultures. And still, still she creates this lucid and lyrical and practical book on ways we can all do anti-racism work. Amazing.
For me, the system of white supremacy culture and racism, as one of its results, has been the oppressive force that has been most painful, harming, and enduring. It classifies, stratifies, and enforces constructed racial categories. I have worked hard to learn about it and extricate myself from it through studies, activism, and work to address its impact. All these experiences of learning have been useful. However, Buddhism brought a framing to these issues in a way that has been freeing. After practicing and teaching Buddhism for over twenty-five years, I have come to realize how any single social location that I have been taught, internalized, experienced, and imputed on by others is not one that is solid nor enduring. There is a way to understand, be with, and then find empowerment and the agency to use our locations when useful or skillful and yet not be used by them. There are ways to reframe our understanding and experiences by freeing ourselves from constructs.
In many of the convert-based meditation groups I’ve taught at, I am thought to be “too religious,” especially as Buddhism-based practices have been appropriated into secularized popular “mindfulness” apps and health and self-care industries.
I noticed that in predominantly white convert Buddhist centers, people of color were often told that race was not part of practice because “there’s no self.” When I tried to address racist incidents, I was told that this was to reify “a false sense of self.” If antiracism work was acknowledged by white leaders, then it was “just a relative stepping stone” on the way to an “absolute.” By default, given the predominantly white and mostly male teachers within convert Buddhism in North America, this “absolute” felt patriarchal, white-defined, and white-centered.
My Engaged version of the Four Noble Truths: Investigate what harm and harming is present. Once we understand fully the causes and conditions for harm and harming, we abandon such unskillful thoughts and behaviors. In doing so, we realize individual and collective agency for ending harm is possible. The Eightfold Path empowers wholeness and thus needs to be developed.
Take a moment to connect to a sense of wholeness as if you were sitting* under that rose apple tree, or perhaps a tree from your childhood, or by a lake or the ocean, or somewhere in nature that brings you a sense of peace and wholeness. Rest and relax into this place. Let yourself fully be in this moment of stillness and rest, where there’s nothing for you to do. Just rest as-you-are in this moment as-it-is: whole and complete. As you focus on the feeling of wholeness, I invite you to connect it to a spot within your actual physical body, somewhere that’s very visceral: perhaps in the weight of your body at the sitting bones of your posture or the fullness of your belly at the end of an inhale. Let yourself rest there and know it fully.
In the summer of 2020, when the Black Lives Matter protests were going on all over the world, the reality that this was a structural issue could not be denied by dominant society any longer. Given this context, the Merriam-Webster dictionary changed its definition of racism to finally include systemic oppression after a young Black woman lobbied for it. While not a policy change, words reflect what’s important in a culture. The woman who lobbied for this new definition contributed to all of us being able to change how we describe ourselves and our view of the world we live in, helping us “abandon” or “let go” of old frameworks.
A person in Q&A asked a Black teacher how come quietness and stillness were so emphasized in Buddhism. That teacher’s go-to answer was essentially, “If it was a whole bunch of Black people who had gone to Asia to bring Buddhism back, you bet it would be a lot more singing and dancing!” To ignore the long history of Asian American heritage Buddhism in North America and simply adopt the white-centered convert Buddhist version and perspectives, and thus continuing to minimize, invisibilize, and erase Asian-heritage practitioners’ presence and contributions, is to collude in the system of white supremacy through appropriation.
To practice Skillful View is to learn to shift our perception so we can understand and be with harm and harming—our own, that of others, and the world’s—in service of healing and restoration. Skillful View can help us stop turning away from suffering because we’re overwhelmed, and instead learn ways to view or understand it more skillfully.
To help you investigate this, you can ask yourself, How am I part of the whole of life instead of an object being acted upon? In other words, How can I transform my view of life being done to me to how I am in life? Going even deeper, you can ask yourself, How can I know I have agency in the midst of oppressive systems of domination? How can I live with mindful agency instead of reactivity?
Begin by taking an easeful position. Close your eyes if it helps you to concentrate. Now bring up an event that bothers you just a little bit. (Really, make it small!) Next, notice a thought you’re having about the event and silently label it “thought.” Then label with one word the quality of the thought; for instance, “judgment” or “anxious.” Now, notice an emotion you’re having about it and silently label it “emotion.” Then do the same, labeling with one word the quality of that emotion; for example, if related to the example of judgment above, perhaps “shame,” or with anxiety, “dread.”
Now, do the same with a “sensation” quality. If relating to shame, perhaps “tightness” in the stomach or “squeezing” at the throat. Now go back to the event. What is the valence, or positive or negative affective quality, of the event now? The above meditation can help us begin focusing on different aspects of our experience. Hopefully it has given you more precise information about what’s going on with you in the moment already. With more information, we can more appropriately respond. For instance, when I find myself feeling a bit irritated or not quite satisfied, I pause and do this meditation. Oftentimes I find out that I’m experiencing the sensation of cold. When I don’t notice or attend to it, I find that irritation often arises. I then find something or someone to be irritated with instead of just attending to the sensation of coldness and putting on a sweater.
Practice Pause:
Mindful Writing Who Am I Right Now? Think of one thing you need to do today. How is this task associated with a certain role or identity you take on, be it at work, home, or anywhere else? Now think of how accomplishing the task you need to do today reifies this role. Now think of something that needs your attention which takes you away from accomplishing today’s task. What does this bring up? What are the emotions or thoughts that are associated? How many of these are related to whether, in accomplishing today’s task, you’ll get to “be good” at that one role? Does this bring more anxiety or ease? What happens if “being good” wasn’t dependent on whether you accomplish the task right now or today? Is your role, your identity, completely dependent on this one task being done?
I know someone who went through a six-month Buddhist training to work with white privilege and entitlement. They learned that saying, “I’m an ally,” isn’t useful because it implies that you’re “done” with race work, like you’ve reached a goal and so can say, “I’m not a racist; I’m an ally.” It’s not an identity or a place to reach. Instead, saying, “I’m acting as an ally,” with the emphasis on the verb, reflects that it’s an ongoing process and that one keeps reengaging with it.
January 13, 2024
Home is Here is a brilliant book. Rev. Liên Shutt is serious about inclusion for all people of color, and people who do not fit within the mainstream straight White culture. While reading, I came to recognize how gentle and kind she is.
While this book is not focused on teaching White people, it helped me feel more comfortable in my skin. It opened my eyes and mind to notice racism directed at Asian heritage folks, something I had not considered before in my efforts to understand racism and become anti-racist.
I am comfortable taking action when I witness racism, usually speaking Home is Here is a brilliant book. Rev. Liên Shutt is serious about inclusion for all people of color, and people who do not fit within the mainstream straight White culture. While reading, I came to recognize how gentle and kind she is.
While this book is not focused on teaching White people, it helped me feel more comfortable in my skin. It opened my eyes and mind to notice racism directed at Asian heritage folks, something I had not considered before in my efforts to understand racism and become anti-racist.
I am comfortable taking action when I witness racism, usually speaking gently with the White person who is perpetrating it. Being able to recognize racism towards Asians offers me further fopportunities to speak up, or act as a witness if that is what is called for. Gently, of course.
The “Practice Pause” sections throughout the book enlarged my thinking, increased my self-awareness and awareness of those around me. The “Pauses” helped me notice even small acts of exclusion in everyday life. This gave me a way to create a sense of inclusion in every situation, toward everyone. I have greater peace as I go about my day.
I have deep respect and gratitude for the author. Thank you, Rev. Liên Shutt, for writing about difficult experiences in a way that touches others and allows learning instead of defensiveness.with the White person who is perpetrating it. Being able to recognize racism towards Asians offers me further fopportunities to speak up, or act as a witness if that is what is called for. Gently, of course.
The “Practice Pause” sections throughout the book enlarged my thinking, increased my self-awareness, and awareness of those around me. The “Pauses” helped me notice even small acts of exclusion in everyday life. This gave me a way to create a sense of inclusion in every situation, toward everyone. I have greater peace as I go about my day.
I have deep respect and gratitude for the author. Thank you, Rev. Liên Shutt, for writing about difficult experiences in a way that touches others and allows learning instead of defensiveness.
While this book is not focused on teaching White people, it helped me feel more comfortable in my skin. It opened my eyes and mind to notice racism directed at Asian heritage folks, something I had not considered before in my efforts to understand racism and become anti-racist.
I am comfortable taking action when I witness racism, usually speaking Home is Here is a brilliant book. Rev. Liên Shutt is serious about inclusion for all people of color, and people who do not fit within the mainstream straight White culture. While reading, I came to recognize how gentle and kind she is.
While this book is not focused on teaching White people, it helped me feel more comfortable in my skin. It opened my eyes and mind to notice racism directed at Asian heritage folks, something I had not considered before in my efforts to understand racism and become anti-racist.
I am comfortable taking action when I witness racism, usually speaking gently with the White person who is perpetrating it. Being able to recognize racism towards Asians offers me further fopportunities to speak up, or act as a witness if that is what is called for. Gently, of course.
The “Practice Pause” sections throughout the book enlarged my thinking, increased my self-awareness and awareness of those around me. The “Pauses” helped me notice even small acts of exclusion in everyday life. This gave me a way to create a sense of inclusion in every situation, toward everyone. I have greater peace as I go about my day.
I have deep respect and gratitude for the author. Thank you, Rev. Liên Shutt, for writing about difficult experiences in a way that touches others and allows learning instead of defensiveness.with the White person who is perpetrating it. Being able to recognize racism towards Asians offers me further fopportunities to speak up, or act as a witness if that is what is called for. Gently, of course.
The “Practice Pause” sections throughout the book enlarged my thinking, increased my self-awareness, and awareness of those around me. The “Pauses” helped me notice even small acts of exclusion in everyday life. This gave me a way to create a sense of inclusion in every situation, toward everyone. I have greater peace as I go about my day.
I have deep respect and gratitude for the author. Thank you, Rev. Liên Shutt, for writing about difficult experiences in a way that touches others and allows learning instead of defensiveness.
June 19, 2025
A variation on the typical self-help book, Shutt's "Home is Here" contains some useful "homework" for those who possess a real interest in Buddhism as a personal practice for effecting social change. As the title states, Shutt focuses here on race-based oppression, with particular attention to her own experience as a Vietnamese Buddhist who mostly developed her faith and practice within spaces run by white (affluent) people. She unpacks some of her own difficulties of resolving the tensions related to her racialized presence in mostly European-descended colonist-constructed spaces while training to become a Buddhist nun, or something similar to that. (The official hierarchy of the Zen Buddhist organizations she has been part of is barely discussed here).
She makes clear that Buddhism did not originate in Europe, the United States, or any of the lands predominantly settled by people of European descent. As such, the heavy cultural influence of European colonial (what Shutt calls "white") norms and on the practice of Buddhism in English-language spaces in the United States is something that she brings attention to.
Of particular note is her recognition that non-white people attempting to fight against or work through feelings imprinted by racial oppression through purely mental processes inevitably fail at these because thinking, labeling, naming all constitute mental processes that evade the emotional core of emotional/spiritual trauma, which begins with the understanding that all beings suffer because losing something that one cares about or the deprivation of something is inevitable. Unfornately, she does not provide a thorough explanation for a major contradiction at the heart of her argument: the idea that racial oppression is specific to non-white people while Buddhist teaching is that all living beings are part of the same web of existence. Shutt attempts to answer this, but falls somewhat short by not devoting much time to unraveling this apparent paradox.
I believe it also worth mentioning that the exercises within "Home is Here" are all based on personal individual practice of breathing/meditation techniques. As racial oppression is a social, group phenomenon, the lack of group exercises for arriving at healing trauma or greater empathy on the subject of racial trauma is a major reason I cannot give this book more than 3 stars. As always, your mileage may vary.
She makes clear that Buddhism did not originate in Europe, the United States, or any of the lands predominantly settled by people of European descent. As such, the heavy cultural influence of European colonial (what Shutt calls "white") norms and on the practice of Buddhism in English-language spaces in the United States is something that she brings attention to.
Of particular note is her recognition that non-white people attempting to fight against or work through feelings imprinted by racial oppression through purely mental processes inevitably fail at these because thinking, labeling, naming all constitute mental processes that evade the emotional core of emotional/spiritual trauma, which begins with the understanding that all beings suffer because losing something that one cares about or the deprivation of something is inevitable. Unfornately, she does not provide a thorough explanation for a major contradiction at the heart of her argument: the idea that racial oppression is specific to non-white people while Buddhist teaching is that all living beings are part of the same web of existence. Shutt attempts to answer this, but falls somewhat short by not devoting much time to unraveling this apparent paradox.
I believe it also worth mentioning that the exercises within "Home is Here" are all based on personal individual practice of breathing/meditation techniques. As racial oppression is a social, group phenomenon, the lack of group exercises for arriving at healing trauma or greater empathy on the subject of racial trauma is a major reason I cannot give this book more than 3 stars. As always, your mileage may vary.
April 6, 2023
This is a very insightful and important book, especially for Buddhist practitioners of color. Lien Shutt has infused this very readable modern commentary on the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path with her own lived experience as a as a Soto Zen priest; as a Vietnamese immigrant, adopted by a white American couple; and as a lesbian.
Two of Buddhism's foundational tenets, the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, are explored deeply through an anti-racist lens. Throughout the book Rev. Shutt provides painful examples of both conscious and unconscious racism she has experienced in practice centers and on retreats in America and Japan. For example, there is a common belief among white American Buddhists that Buddhism only emerged in the US in the 1950s. In fact, Asian immigrants, Chinese immigrants in particular, introduced Buddhism into America in the 19th century. Not confronting this historical inaccuracy contributes to the invisibilization of Asian American lives and contributions.
Racism is a poison, based on delusion and exclusion. It is a source of suffering and therefore can be address using traditional Buddhist practices and concepts, as Rev. Shutt very skillfully shows. She offers very concrete practices (including using a mala, and many meditation guides) on the path to healing. This book is both a loving self-help book for people of color and a call to action for all Buddhists to confront the ignorance and suffering that is racism. This book also adds to the growing body of literature on engaged Buddhism, or how to apply ancient Buddhist insights to contemporary social issues, towards the goal of social justice.
It would be difficult to praise this book too highly. It offers both a practical approach and a deeply spiritual path to everyone interested in freeing themselves and living a more open, just and meaningful life.
Two of Buddhism's foundational tenets, the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, are explored deeply through an anti-racist lens. Throughout the book Rev. Shutt provides painful examples of both conscious and unconscious racism she has experienced in practice centers and on retreats in America and Japan. For example, there is a common belief among white American Buddhists that Buddhism only emerged in the US in the 1950s. In fact, Asian immigrants, Chinese immigrants in particular, introduced Buddhism into America in the 19th century. Not confronting this historical inaccuracy contributes to the invisibilization of Asian American lives and contributions.
Racism is a poison, based on delusion and exclusion. It is a source of suffering and therefore can be address using traditional Buddhist practices and concepts, as Rev. Shutt very skillfully shows. She offers very concrete practices (including using a mala, and many meditation guides) on the path to healing. This book is both a loving self-help book for people of color and a call to action for all Buddhists to confront the ignorance and suffering that is racism. This book also adds to the growing body of literature on engaged Buddhism, or how to apply ancient Buddhist insights to contemporary social issues, towards the goal of social justice.
It would be difficult to praise this book too highly. It offers both a practical approach and a deeply spiritual path to everyone interested in freeing themselves and living a more open, just and meaningful life.
November 5, 2023
A ground-breaking effort. There are, of course, other books on the Eightfold Path; this one promises to use that path to explore the experience of racism—presumably in the US (but I don’t recall whether the author places those limits.) so that’s a big task. It’s accomplished to some degree. The best parts of the book are the meditations and reflective practices, along with the author’s personal experiences. I don’t think it’s exceptionally well written, though. The first half seemed like a fleshed out outline. In the second half, I felt she went deeper, or maybe even I adjusted my expectations. Or maybe I wasn’t in a place to read it. I will hang on to it and use it as a reference in my practice.
February 10, 2024
This personalized account offers how faith can be healing despite reharms - particularly for those dealing with the impacts of inequities on their and others’ lives. Rev. Shutt’s own journey of outreach and reconciliation forms the basis of this practice book for teachers and students of Buddhism. Her reflections are thought-provoking and the vivid imagery will resonate beyond serving as a guide along this path.
June 5, 2024
I found a lot of good grounding here, although I recognize that I'm not the primary audience. The book Momma Zen by Karen Maezen Miller was extremely important to me postpartum and I could imagine returning to this as well.
August 30, 2023
Home is Here is a good book about dealing with different aspects of racism through Soto Zen Buddhist teaching. I really enjoyed learning more about it & I thought the book was well written.
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