PERSONAL WEBSITE
Bhikshuni Kelsang – http://kchitta.tripod.com
Bhikshuni Kelsang is one of the first Black American women to be ordained as a nun in the Tibetan tradition and is the first Black American woman to be ordained as a Bhikshuni in the Tibetan Gelugpa school.
COMMUNITY WEBSITES
Proud Black Buddhist – http://www.proudblackbuddhist.org
The purpose of our Website is to motivate, inspire, inform, and encourage others to practice Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism. We offer the African and African/American insight into the Buddhism of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni and into the Buddhism of Nichiren Daishonin.
Rainbow Dharma – http://www.rainbowdharma.com/
Lama Rangdrol is the only African-American teacher of Buddhism recognized by the First Conference of Tibetan Buddhist Centers in North and South America, convened by the Office of Tibet and attended by the Dalai Lama. The purpose of RainbowDharma is to stimulate openness in the Buddhist community, and to provide transcendent teachings to the global community of peace seekers.
Urban Peace – http://www.urbanpeace.org
Dubbed “the most vocal and most intriguing African-American Buddhist in America,” by Library Journal, Angel Kyodo Williams is a spiritual teacher, activist, artist and founder of urbanPEACE. She is the author of Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace. Kyodoshi, as she is affectionately known, serves as guiding teacher of New Dharma Community and spiritual director of the Meditation Center for Urban Peace in Oakland, CA, a training center for engaging individual, community and social transformation as spiritual practice.
ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS
American Buddhism: What does it mean for people of color? – http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma/rainbow.html
Experience for yourself whether your local Dharma center or organization represents the diversity of America. If a particular racial group is dominant at the center or organization ask yourself, “What would be the experience of someone not represented by this group, if they were to come here?”, “What would someone not from the majority group have to do to fit in?”.
“Something Has To Change” – Blacks In American Buddhism – http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=60,1157,0,0,1,0
For Willis and the handful of African-American Buddhist teachers now beginning to speak out, Buddhism in America has been a homogeneous world inhabited largely by upper-middle-class whites. “There are a lot of black Buddhists who are in the closet. They just don’t feel comfortable being part of the great white sangha,” says Insight Meditation teacher Ralph Steele. “One of the most common phrases I hear from young black Buddhists when they do step out into the white Buddhist sangha is that they feel uncomfortable.”
Black on Black – An Interview with Lawrence Ellis – http://www.manzanitavillage.org/articles/lawrence_interview.html
Lawrence Ellis practices in the Vietnamese Zen tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. As a practitioner of Engaged Buddhism, or meditative social activism, Lawrence stays involved in campaigns to transform structural aspects of society that perpetuate suffering on a systemic level. As a gay man of African American and Native American descent with a disability, Lawrence is acutely aware of the many ways we often create and maintain separation from others.
