Are Buddhists Racist and Sexist?

Our preferred answer is probably 'no', but the honest answer is that Buddhists have been as prone to discriminatory ideation as anybody else.

This may all be stating the obvious, but it seems at the present time of ideological degeneracy in the political and social discourse of the western world that we maybe should be stating and restating some obvious things on an ongoing basis.

The main mental or conceptual component to discrimination against any group is often what's called 'generalisation'. That's where we, in our own heads with our own mental processes, ascribe negative qualities to a whole group of people based on one or two incidents chosen selectively, or on other unsustainable evidence - so a whole group, in our thinking, becomes less intelligent, lazy, dangerous, prone to criminality... and so this conditions how we see that whole group.

It need hardly be said that this is clearly a form of mental/emotional delusion.

In Buddhist practice we 'drop off body and mind', including any such generalising ideation, and thereby allow all things, including people, to come forward as they are, free of our ideation. We see that people and things, and we ourselves, are quite free of our thinking, discriminatory and otherwise.

This is easily done when it alligns with our anti-discriminatory values around groups and people we want to support, but this also includes racists, and so we have the challenge of how to deal with people whom are not fundamentally bad but are acting out of delusional, discriminatory views of others... Realising their own racist and/or other discriminatory ideation is, of course, primarily their own responsibility however.

Has this always worked out in practice? No, Zen Buddhism is a very white middle class affair in the west, which reflects social class and race barriers in western culture, and there have been numerous cases of male 'masters' (what have they 'mastered' if not themselves?) abusing female practitioners in power dynamics that fundamentally assert that women are inferior to men, and/or are objects for male gratification.

It's relatively easy to 'drop off' discriminatory ideation in zazen practice, but manifesting an end to discriminatory practice in life and society off the cushion takes big work beyond our own ideas, and requires that we challenge current social and political structures and powers, even our 'masters' where they are entertaining delusional views and behaviours.