Please bear with me while I give a little context. I volunteer as a mentor for this organization, Youth Mentoring Connection (YMC). YMC receives funds from the City of Los Angeles for a Gang Reduction and Youth Development (GRYD) program in the Northeast area of LA, specifically Cypress Park. For those of you unfamiliar with this area, Cypress Park¹ is a primarily Latino (76%) neighborhood where youth are severely impacted by gangs either directly or indirectly.²

My mentee (I’ll call him Ruben here) is 14 years old. When you see him with his friends he’s rowdy, impulsive, and kind of a smart ass. He seems to constantly have some come back, some last remark he needs to get in. Though, when he and I hang out, he hardly says a word. The silence isn’t awkward. It’s relaxing—like we both finally have a chance to shut up and just be.

The mentoring program is set up so that once a month Ruben and I do something one-on-one, and once a month all the mentors and mentees get together for a group activity—community building they call it. Last month the group activity was “slang Pictionary” in which the mentees (the kids) grab a slang phrase from a bag of “old slang” and the mentors (the adults) draw from the bag of “new slang.” The fun is supposed to be in watching everyone struggle to cross a generation gap by drawing and guessing slang phrases like “Gag me with a spoon” and “Locs.”

So it’s the final word of the night. A mentor’s turn. He pulls from the bag and begins to draw a guy with baggy pants who is aiming a handgun at something. After two minutes, no one in a room of 50 people is able to guess the word. It’s the only word that is not able to be solved all night.

What is it? Everyone wants to know. The mentor writes the word on the board. CHOLO.

Fuck this! I’m outta here, Ruben says to me. He starts to get up and leave, but ends up shifting around and just hangs in there with his head down until the end, thankfully only a couple more minutes away.

I drive Ruben home, a mere two minute car ride. He’s silent as usual. He says thanks and bye and I tell him I’ll see him in two weeks.

Waiting for the red light to turn at the end of his street, it hits me. That was fucked up what happened in there! Agh! Why didn’t I say something to Ruben about it?

By the time I got home, the anger of the situation took a backseat to my regret that I overlooked an opportunity in the car to acknowledge to Ruben the fucked-up-ness of the situation. I was sad that I neglected to be there for him in the moment when he was faced with an offensive stereotype in a group of people. Ruben’s family hadn’t paid the phone bill this month so that acknowledgement was going to have to wait two weeks.

I give context here because without it it might be hard for some to understand the weight of the word “cholo.”³ It’s a room full of Latino kids in a Gang Reduction program in LA. Many of the kids there (including Ruben) had probably at some point been called a cholo, regardless of their gang affiliation, in some demeaning, derogatory way simply because they are Latino, from a certain hood and dress a certain way. How was one supposed to depict a cholo in Pictionary without reinforcing negative stereotypes?

I think of Ruben. It’s hard as hell to be fourteen no matter who you are. He lives in one of the most gang-ridden areas in LA. He has family members in gangs. He’s been picked up by the cops because they mistook him for some cholo. In Ruben’s reality, being called a cholo is not something he can take lightly. It has implications. Some of them are life threatening. During a follow-up discussion about the cholo Pictionary word (more on that later) one of the mentees told me: “I don’t want to be called a cholo. I’m not a cholo. You get people sent after you if you claim to be a cholo when you’re not. They’ll come after you even if others say you’re a cholo and you ain’t.”

For whatever reason, something kept me from responding skillfully to Ruben in the moment when he was struggling with something very difficult. One of my primary motivations for practice comes from a place of a genuine desire to be of service to others—to be able to hold my own shit in mindfulness so that I can be there for others in a very present and caring way. I am deeply committed to ensuring that others can be safe around me. By “safe” I mean that I want to be grounded enough, open enough, spacious enough to hold any experience that someone close to me might be having. It is a simple yet profound gift that I can give. And the moments in which I’ve been fortunate enough to receive this gift from others have been some of my most life-changing moments. There is a direct link between my practice and how well I am able to give this gift. Clearly I still have work to do.

So what is the role of a community when one or two individuals feel hurt by something that has occurred within their community? I don’t have the answer to this. But I do think it’s an important question for all communities to consider. How can we tap into what is true in the moment, acknowledge the suffering of separation, and respond from a place that is devoted to the cessation of suffering — the suffering of each individual and the community as a whole?

I did let the YMC leadership know that I was disappointed “cholo” had been a word in the game and more importantly, that Ruben was offended and hurt by this. At the next group meeting the YMC facilitators devoted the end of the group to discuss what had happened in the previous session. They made it clear that the purpose wasn’t whether to decide if “cholo” was a good word or bad word, or whether one should say it or not. Rather they wanted to express their strong commitment to creating a community that is safe for everyone. One person’s feeling of being threatened or offended by something that occurs within the community is important enough to involve the entire community in addressing this issue. It sends a very clear message that if one person hurts, the community responds. It’s a powerful message to receive.

What happens when we pay attention to things about which we were previously unconscious? Our lives change. Well, at least mine does. Waking up to the things that affect me but have been, for the most part, pretty much off my radar is empowering. It’s freeing.

Community/sangha can play such an important role in helping us gain awareness about the things to which we are usually blind. The YMC leadership gave their community an opportunity to respond to the cholo-Pictionary incident. They gave a group of “high-risk” kids and their mentors an opportunity to discuss what this word meant for them. The kid I quoted earlier initially stated he didn’t give a shit either way about “cholo.” However, pretty quickly he realized when you call someone a cholo it’s almost always derogatory. And more importantly he doesn’t want to be called a cholo because where he lives that can get you in trouble.

This tells me that the response of a community to individual pains does have an impact.

Truthfully, between the time the mentor wrote “cholo” on the board and Ruben was saying “Fuck this,” I had checked out. My practice has helped me learn enough about myself to know that when I get triggered I go unconscious, check out, dissociate. And this situation was likely as triggering for me as it was for Ruben, albeit in different ways. I’m privileged enough that I’ve never had to face every day wondering whether someone is going to accuse me of being in a gang. But I have been in situations where my safety was compromised simply because of my race.

I don’t think the specifics of how I did or did not respond to Ruben in the moment is really what’s important to me. (Ruben and I have since talked.) But what is important is that I learn to stay with things as they are happening, no matter how painful they might be.

So now I ask myself, how might the sangha I call home (Against the Stream) respond in a way that would skillfully address the suffering that some experience due to feeling excluded because of their race, culture, sexual orientation, or gender? I wonder about the “Rubens” of ATS. Who has walked out of the center to never return because they felt unsupported by the larger community?

I know on some level that ATS is committed to diversity. That’s what I’ve been told by the leadership there. And I believe that they believe that they are. (However my own thoughts are that “committed to diversity” could stand to be better defined). Although I have encountered some resistance from members of the ATS sangha in reaction to holding a POC group, the leadership at the center has been nothing but supportive of our efforts. The center gives us a space to practice together and helps get the word out through their website and email lists. Not small things. And I’ve been told that momentum is building to create an LGBTQ sangha. All of these actions signify and indicate that the center is acting on its mission “to create a welcoming place for people of all walks of life to meditate and to learn.”

However, I do not know how my sangha at ATS will respond when I, or another sangha member in the minority, feels hurt or wronged by others within our community. I don’t know whether or not my sangha will even care enough to discuss it. I know that many people in our culture have conditioned reactions to race and diversity that become heated and volatile very quickly. I’m AFRAID that without skill and care, those in the minority might be told: You’re the only one who feels this way. Maybe you should deal with this on your own.

One of the things that attracts me to Buddhist teachings is the non-dualistic and, at times, seemingly paradoxical approach to life’s conundrums. We learn how to change our lives while radically accepting each moment as it is. We learn to respect our differences while also honoring our sameness. We learn that ending suffering means turning towards it.

I would like to challenge those of us who call ourselves Buddhist, progressive, open-minded to deeply consider what it really means to be committed to diversity. If we (and I include myself here) say that we are committed to creating a safe space in a multicultural world, we need to back it up with specific definitions and explicit actions. I’d like to ask all of us to step up and show others and ourselves how we will ensure that people are safe and supported should something insensitive or dangerous enter our communal space.

We all need to be brave enough to step outside of what is familiar and comfortable to us. I care about Ruben and I care about the way I am able to be there for others in need. This is the inspiration that lends enough courage for me to venture into unfamiliar territories.

I’m guessing that some people at Against the Stream — and in sanghas throughout the world — are just completely unconscious to issues of diversity in their own lives and in the lives of their fellow sangha members. But perhaps there are people who feel the same way I did when I dropped Ruben off and didn’t say anything. Perhaps they too are looking for some inspiration that will lend them the courage to walk in discomfort and be an ally to someone who truly needs them.

Disclaimer: Against the Stream has many dear, wise, caring, compassionate teachers and students. I repeatedly say without hesitation that my life has changed for the better because of my connection to ATS. Please, dear reader, see my criticism as coming from a place of care. I can assure you that if I did not care, I would not have spent so much time trying to find these words.

Originally Posted March 16, 2010 on UrbanRefuge.org.