White spiritualists and the cult of positivity.
White practitioners of Eastern spirituality are obsessed with keeping things positive and non-confrontational. Whatever awakes a sense of discomfort is associated with negativity, including social justice activism. It's all illusory! Transcend it! Don't engage with it! But by framing racism, sexism, and other -isms as mere illusions of the ego, white spiritualists absolve themselves of a social responsibility, and thus, become part of the problem.
Eastern spirituality, particularly Buddhism, is popular among Westerners, but I see the tradition getting retooled as some sort of therapy where ascetic practices are translated into orientalist self-help practices designed to ease the anxieties of the white middle class. This repackaged Buddhism is marketed as a pathway to happiness and inner peace with the message to eliminate suffering (i.e. anything that stands in the way of "good vibes). In practice, any form of discomfort is turned into a spiritual failure. You know what causes discomfort too? Being confronted with racism and other forms of social injustice, especially being accused of it. In the latter case, the messenger is pointed out as the problem while the critique of injustice (so not than the injustice itself!) is labaled as spiritually irresponsible.
The "spiritual" rhetoric of "love, peace, happiness" actually conceals insidious forms of whiteness (including white innocence, white fragility, and white privilege). In the book Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation authors angel Kyodo williams, Lama Rod Owens, and Jasmine Syedullah describe how white sanghas use Buddhist ideals to avoid reckoning with matters of race, hence perpetuating socials injustices. They argue that a dharma stripped of social consciousness is not really liberation, but a form of evasion.
At the core of such orientalist distortion of eastern spiritualities lies Western individualism. Through this cultural lens, spirituality is reduced to a private refuge cut away from collective struggle. In conversations I have had with self-described “spiritual” people, the same mantras come up:
By focussing on the problem (social injustice), the problem becomes real (racism is a self-fulfilling prophecy)
Antiracism is negativity, and negativity achieves nothing.
Racism and sexism are worldly illusions.
Oppressors are fed by the efforts of social justice advocates, but should simply be ignored.
Each position reflects privilege. It is easy to ignore injustice when it does not shape your daily life. Declaring oppression an illusion is possible only from a protected vantage point. This selective appropriation extracts fragments of Buddhist thought that only preserve individual comfort while its ethical demands are discarded. As Radical Dharma insists, such moves expose a failure to grasp Buddhism’s radical potential to be liberated through a deep engagement with reality, rather than trying to transcend it.
Returning to the Noble Eightfold Path disrupts these evasions. The Path is not a guide for personal growth, but an integrated spiritual framework. Its eight dimensions (Right Understanding, Intent, Speech, Action, Livelihood, Effort, Mindfulness, and Concentration) mutually reinforce one another. Taken seriously, they demand social awareness.
Right Understanding requires seeing reality clearly, including systemic injustice, not dismissing it as illusion.
Right Intent calls for compassion directed beyond the self.
Right Speech means naming racism and sexism, not silencing them in the name of harmony.
Right Action demands ethical resistance to harm, including structural oppression.
Right Livelihood forbids profiting from exploitation.
Right Effort insists that positivity must be joined with persistent struggle.
Right Mindfulness cultivates awareness of privilege and bias in the present moment.
Right Concentration ultimately points to liberation from ego, but that liberation is meaningless if it bypasses material reality.
This framework undercuts the Western dualism that deems spirituality and politics as opposite worlds. Radical Dharma calls for “radical honesty”: a confrontation with suffering (including racism). True liberation, in this vision, is inseparable from justice.
Yes, race is a social construct, but so is the atomized individual who imagines they can float above social structure and the world. To deconstruct race without also interrogating individualism is impossible. The Eightfold Path reminds us that awakening is a collective transformation and not a solitary spiritual escape.