New York Insight

During the 1960s and ‘70s, Western seekers of all backgrounds journeyed to the birthplace of Buddhism in search of awakening. Among these were Jan Willis, acclaimed Baptist-Buddhist author and teacher whose work resounds with me, as well as many others who in large part are responsible for the development of Buddhism in the West. For many years, I wanted to take this journey too until I realized that the hybridity is already alive in my present experience. Wherever I go (especially in New York), it seems there is no avoiding the grand convergence of ideas and traditions. Stepping into this confluence of signals, I make no resistance to the intertextual tide.

From a young age, Jan Willis was driven by a visceral interest to understand how people survive trauma with their humanity intact. This interest was perhaps spawned by growing up in the Jim Crow South in proximity to and in fear of the Ku Klux Klan; marching daily with Martin Luther King Jr. in the spring of 1963, when she was in 10th grade and he brought the civil rights campaign to Birmingham (and where she learned to practice non-violence as a pre-requisite to marching); and witnessing a cross-burning on her front lawn two years later in response to her receiving scholarships to northern colleges.