Buddhist Collective: An Origin Story

Written by Nathan Sheppard

Dharmacharini Upayadhi (MDiv ’21, STM ’22) and Eric Manigian (MDiv ‘22), two of the Buddhist Alumni Collective co-chairs

In the Fall of 2017, Union Theological Seminary began offering a Master of Divinity in Buddhism and Interreligious Engagement. The early cohorts in this new degree program were small, made up largely of white American Zen practitioners. In 2020, UTS moved their course offerings online in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which complicated any attempts at community building in the burgeoning program.

The new students for the 2021-22 school year marked a turning point in the BIE program. Exploding to the largest cohort yet, this group solidified the program’s place as a large and integral portion of the overall student body. During the first week of the fall semester, the BIE community gathered for an in-person day of practice. At the end of this day of practice, students stayed to have a conversation with Professor Kosen Greg Snyder about the future of the program. In light of Union’s social justice priorities, students were curious about how to increase diversity (both racial and intra-religious) and access within the BIE program. In the course of this discussion, it was brought up that there had never been an organized way for Buddhist students at Union to make their voices heard by the administration or student body.

With unfailing energy and an indomitable spirit, Dharmacharini Upayadhi (MDiv ’21, STM ’22), a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order, immediately began crafting a vision for a Buddhist student organization within UTS. Joined by Alex Sarkissian (MDiv ’24) and Nathan Sheppard (MDiv ’24), Upayadhi spearheaded efforts to create a caucus within the Student Senate to represent all BIE and Buddhist-identifying students. At the next meeting of the Student Senate, this new caucus was unanimously voted into existence. Eschewing the traditional caucus terminology, this student group elected to be called the Buddhist Student Collective, emphasizing a desire to bring voices together.

The main priorities expressed by the members of this group centered around building academic capacity, increasing diversity in the BIE program, and fostering cross-generational community between both current students and alumni.  To this end, the newly minted co-chairs met with members of the UTS administration, eventually submitting a letter from the Collective in support of the administration’s plan to redefine the history curriculum which better reflected the interreligious makeup of the student body.

Not to be deterred by something as small as graduation, in the spring of 2022 Upayadhi called on fellow graduates Eric Manigian (MDiv ’22) and Charlie Schneider (MDiv ’21) to continue the work of supporting Union and the BIE program by forming the Buddhist Alumni Collective. While the Student Collective primarily works to support the needs of current students, the Alumni Collective is hard at work supporting and expanding the BIE program’s impact both within and outside the walls of Union.

As it continues to grow and evolve, the Buddhist Student Collective has welcomed as successive co-chairs Emma Markham (MDiv ’24), Greg Smith (MDiv ’23), Anna Sardar (MDiv ’24), and Nobuko Hori (MDiv ’25), supporting the most diverse group in the BIE program’s history as they learn, practice, engage, and create community.