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FEATURES | EASTERN HORIZON 41

BUDDHIST GROUPS

INCREASINGLY TAKING ROOT

IN LATINX COMMUNITIES

By Caitlin Yoshiko Kandil

Caitlin is a graduate of Northwestern University and Harvard
Divinity School and a former U.S. Fulbright scholar to Sri Lanka.
She has previously written for newspapers and magazines in
Boston, Washington, DC, and Northern California. In 2011,
she won a National Health Journalism Fellowship from the
University of Southern California, and in 2014 was awarded
an Emerging Journalist Fellowship by the Journalism and

Women Symposium.

More and more Buddhist groups are offering programs in Spanish and doing outreach in Latinx communities.
That means stronger community for everyone, reports Caitlin Yoshiko Kandil.

When Ven. Dhammadipa Konin Cardenas started
teaching Buddhism after her ordination more than a
decade ago, she realized an important contribution she
could make: She could teach in Spanish.

“I had experienced the dhamma because of people who
spoke other languages who turned it into English,” she
said of translators of Pali, Sanskrit, and Japanese texts.
“So turning that to what I could offer, I thought, ‘I speak
Spanish reasonably well enough, and I could probably
offer the Dhamma in Spanish.’ So that’s what I started
Bhikkhu Sanathavihari (left foreground), a Mexican doing.”
American monk who teaches in Spanish, on alms rounds
outside Los Angeles Buddhist Vihara in Pasadena. Photo After leading zazen instruction and book groups in
by Moran Perera. Spanish, Cardenas, who is Colombian American, has just
finished teaching the San Francisco Zen Center’s first
online dharma class in Spanish, Imágenes del Ser, or
Images of the Self.