Buddha Black - Black, Gay & Awake

It is said that gatekeepers are so dedicated to the awesome responsibility of caring not just for themselves but for the world that they would sooner die at work tending their gate than leave it unattended and thus close a door to the otherworld. This type of awareness and acceptance is reminiscent of Buddhism. The compassion and resolve to give your life for others is a very common Medicine Buddha pratice, the master of healing. 

Interesting is the blue body of the medicine buddha, that gives him his most distinct characteristic. Blue with gold flecks, lapis lazuli. Having met the Baisajiah Guru thru Dagara cosmology I saw beyond simply and saw water, the Buddha of healing was the color of water. How appropriate that his message would be one of the peace and reconciliation required first in the mind in order for healing to occur. But in Dagara cosmology water is not only blue but black.

Black for the darker parts of our emotions, the deeper pain and anguish that is down in the deep part of our souls. The Yoruba call him Olokun, the spirits of the Africans that line the bottom of the ocean, the deep, deep grief and death. African-American gay and lesbian folk in particular but humanity as a whole must find the courage to dig down into the darkest parts of our grief and shame if we are to find healing. We must be dedicated enough to sit at our gate lest another door close on the world.

Why hasn't buddha been black? The original images of Buddha are very similar to Africans. I mean, Africa is on the other end of the Silk Road. Buddhism was a gift to me from my fathers mother who still at 92 and in the journey toward transition can escape the sufferings of this world in quiet meditation. Her lessons of giving, acceptance and detachment have been beacons for everyone who's met her, even the nuns she meditates with. Her life is an example of the power of diversity. 

One day, while in seminary struggling with my desire to succeed she called me. I was sitting at my desk at work and was as far from a conversation with my grandmother as one might imagine. It wasn't even 9am and she sounded alarmed. "I had a dream about you last night," she started, and it was a wrap from there.

"The leak is coming from inside." she would go on to tell me. That was the message from the very elaborate dream she witnessed. The dream in it's fullness is a private matter between my Grandmother and I but I thanked her and began the journey inside to find the leak. 

I am something queer. I feel as if I have stumbled upon a gift yet I was the one who left it and better yet, I was the one who created it. I asked for Spirit to show me and there, in my grandmothers dream Buddha went from blue to black. 

I had struggled with Buddhism in seminary, it seemed so passive. I felt as if I had been forced to detach myself from the suffering of the world as a result of the abuses I've endured but those lessons were there to teach me other things. The leak my grandmother spoke of is one that only I can conquer, no one can push me or force me into it. I had a lot to learn about Buddhism that reading was not going to give me.

Some 25 years earlier I had gone to visit my grandmother in her apartment in Brooklyn. When I arrived and made the usual rounds of hellos and greetings to the elders present I went looking for my grandmother. She looked like she was sleeping when I tried to tip out of her room and not wake her. She wasn't sleeping, she was meditating. She explained to me that the doctors had told her she had some sort of illness and being the RN in the family she knew how serious it was.

Her response was to go within. She was a devout Catholic woman and was known for giving away more than she seemed to have. She never complained and never fussed. She worked hard and gave herself fully. She was living a good life but realized that she needed to look further and choose Buddhism. I knew enough to not be lost in the conversation but I also knew that she was on a journey and I was watching the train pass through the station...or so I thought. I was already on the train, just sleeping.

So here I am, now trying to discover what being me means and I'm listening to my grandmother in one ear tell me about leaks coming from inside and in the other a trusted friend talking about men who are much like me sitting in service, just like my grandmother did, selfless. I saw a parallel.....

Perhaps the next Buddha is black and gay and living by the thousands in the Diaspora?