Rather than living in fear, she decided to confront the woman. At age sixteen williams went to live with her paternal grandmother, just around the corner from the home of her abusive ex-babysitter. The Buddhist lessons she would one day teach were present throughout her life. “Sameness,” she says, “was never my gig.” Her sensibilities were strongly shaped by a place where racial and social differences were a given. In fairness, williams-who declines to give her birth name-has some good memories of growing up with her firefighter father in the culturally diverse LeFrak City housing development in Queens. At home, williams was a latchkey kid whose father and stepmother both worked, making her a vulnerable target for her building’s pedophile doorman. Her next stop, Brooklyn, was worse, as the neighborhood kids did not take kindly to her looks or bookish demeanor. Growing up in Queens, williams endured years of physical and emotional abuse by a babysitter. Suffering was my practice.” Had I not I experienced what I experienced, I wouldn’t be able to see the world the way that I see it. And that this Zen priest believes she may have an advantage over the real-life Buddha, because he had to leave his palace and go out into the world to learn that life is suffering. There is also the fact that this queer feminist, who writes in her 2016 book Radical Dharma about using love and Buddhist practice as a solution to injustice, also listens to classic hip-hop music, in spite of its often misogynistic lyrics. That the second Black woman to be ordained as a teacher in the Zen Peacemakers lineage owns a parrot named Mitra (“friend” in Sanskrit), whom she thinks of as a spiritual friend even though his most dharmic statement is “Do you want to go poo-poo?” That at one time williams owned a Brooklyn cybercafé bankrolled by filmmaker Spike Lee and singer Tracy Chapman. That, for example, she once did the books for Queen Latifah’s record label. But so much is unexpected about this maverick Zen teacher, a social visionary who has been described as “the most vocal and intriguing African American Buddhist in America.” That she sees this quality in herself may surprise anyone who encounters the engaging and confident forty-seven-year-old. “He was the most immersed in Eastern philosophy. “He was the most suspicious of power in humans and mutants,” says williams. Her favorite was the super-powered X-Men, and among this gang of mutants, she felt a particular affinity for the fierce misanthrope Wolverine. angel Kyodo williams was a lonely, bruised little girl living in New York City who would hide her face in a comic book as she walked home from school, avoiding eye contact with those who constantly bullied her.Ĭomic books allowed williams (who doesn’t capitalize her given or surnames) to escape from reality. She is a well-known author, activist, and one of American Buddhism’s most dynamic and provocative teachers.
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