It was at Moscow State University in 2007 that Tolokno first became involved with performance art and activism, joining the art protest group Voina. It’s also where she met her husband Pyotr Verzilov. The two bonded over a discussion of Buddhism while Tolokno was helping her suite mates study for a religion exam. “Pyotr had lived for several years in Japan, so he knew something about Buddhism.” There was an immediate spark. “I just couldn’t help myself from talking to him the next day.” They began dating, and she says she knew it was real love when he gave her his books. “The thing that made me fall in love with him was when he gifted me his library which was precious,”she says. “It was all French philosophers, which I adored at that time.”

Tolokno relates how she had to learn English so she could read Judith Butler’s work because her books were not available in Russian. So what do postmodernism, continental philosophy and feminist punk rock have to do with Buddhism? According to Tolokno, everything:

As a veteren of political uprising, Tolokno has some advice—get weird. “My strange punk advice is to mix everything that you care about into one thing, because I’m tired of all these conversations about art and politics. Why do you have to separate them?” she asks. “Think about the three weirdest things that come into your mind and then combine the into one artwork. If you keep it minimalistic and don’t add a lot of obstructing details, believe me, it will be good.”

Art and politics and Buddhism—now that’s one weird mixture of the three things I care about most. Tolokno combined a strong interest in Buddhism and a fierce politics of pussy-in-your-face feminism, performance art and punk rock. When I saw that Tolokno could juxtapose these ideas in her art, I suddenly felt released. I felt like this is the end of ‘acting Buddhist’ for me.  This is what it means to be a ‘rebel Buddha’, or better yet, this is revolutionary Buddhism.

This is an outspoken Buddhism that can confront fascism, racism and sexism with style and conviction. This is a Buddhism that is not afraid to take a stand, get confrontational and make some noise. 

Western Buddhists, by contrast, have adopted a manner of practicing a pseudo-monastic Buddhism. One must be quiet, demure, “saintly”, never say anything harsh or loud, never espouse a strong opinion about anything, never speak out on political issues. This is Buddhism as a conformist religion, not Buddhism as a revolutionary force of cultural transformation.

In her first feminist political performance, in which she and a group of women artists kissed female police officers, Tolokno turned her politics into her art, but not into violence:

“The first thing you want to do when you see a police officer,” Tolokno explains, “is to punch him in the face. But because I believe in nonviolence, I don’t do that, because it will cause more violence. So it’s a gesture of goodwill: I wanted to kiss the police instead of punching them in the face.”

Tolokno and her troupe are not afraid to confront religion either. Pussy Riot’s most famous performance, ‘A Punk Prayer’,  was staged in 2012 at the Russian Orthodox  Cathedral in Moscow. (The troupe’s use of the balaclava and the anonymity it produces could be interpreted as an ironic twist on  ‘non-self’.) The performance, which only lasted two minutes before everyone was arrested, declared: “Mother of God, Chase Putin Away!” Pussy Riot attacked the Orthodox Church’s support for Putin during his election campaign. Pussy Riot members were charged with ‘hooliganism’, convicted and sentenced to prison.

Tolokno spent two years in prison for her political art in a women’s penal colony. She went on a hunger strike to protest the brutality toward prisoners and the use of prison slave labour; she is now also an anti-prison activist.

Tolokno and Pussy Riot released an album during the 2016 US Presidential election and a video of the single, “Make America Great Again”. It was a direct attack on Trump’s brand of  racist “pussy-grabbing” politics:

 As politically engaged people who practice Buddhist meditation and the dharma, we have to break out of the religious mold that has been handed down to us by Boomer Buddhists. There is no need for us to “act Buddhist” like sanctimonious characters in a religious film.  We don’t need to exhibit a caricature of ‘asian-ness’, which is a mixture of racist stereotyping and cultural misappropriation. Rather, we have to take back the cultures we grew up with and juxtapose Buddhism with western ethnicity, without diluting either one.

We have to improvise a revolutionary Buddhism that is non-conformist and outspoken. It’s time to get vocal and in-your-face with issues we are passionate about. Our art forms must go beyond koan poetry and bell-ringing. There is no form of art that is incompatible with Buddhism, except that which promotes harm to others. This becomes clear when we develop a critical Buddhism that embraces critical engagement with the world. Critical Buddhism, a movement within Japanese Soto Zen, is a method of using Buddhist philosophy to critically engage with the world, rather than focusing on “topics” of traditional dharma (impermanence, emptiness, etc.).

Why, it was asked, was Buddhism in Japan operating for the most part as a force for supporting and reinforcing the status quo rather than for disputing and attempting to reform social deficiencies? (Critical Buddhism: Engaging with Modern Japanese Buddhist Thought by James Mark Shields)

Any art that is critically engaged with the human experience is qua “Buddhist art.”

I am making a promise to myself to never ‘act Buddhist’ ever again—except when I feel like it, when I want to intentionally chill out. I resist any pressure from Buddhist media and institutions that expect me to conform to some cartoon version of what a Buddhist is supposed to look and act like. Done with that shit. Let’s get all the bad hombres together and make some revolutionary Buddhist art.