In the half-century since Buddhism re-entered American pop culture via the Beats (having first enjoyed a passing vogue during the 1890s), more and more black females–children of the civil rights movement, champions of black nationalism, feminist iconoclasts, and intellectuals–have been finding their way to Buddhist practice. Quietly, without much visibility or commercial fanfare, these women meditate daily, then take the insights they receive “on the cushion” into their lives as mothers, mates, social activists, and career women. From Tina Turner’s autobiographical hat-tip to Nichiren Shoshu to bell hooks’s describing her personal synthesis of Buddhist meditation, Christian prayer, and Sufi mysticism in 1999’s Remembered Rapture to Alice Walker’s outing of herself as a practitioner last year in The New York Times, black women have unwittingly become the world’s most spontaneous lay Buddhist preachers. Continue reading “Guess Who’s Coming to Dharma: Black Women Embrace Western Buddhism”