Introducing Radical Buddhism: A New Podcast with Ryan Lee Wong

I grew up in a family of political organizers, and I came to Buddhism seeking something totally different. I’d become frustrated with the political era that marked my young adulthood: Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter leveled powerful critiques against inequality and racism, but the limited and often hostile response showed me how entrenched those systems were. I began to feel rage at the violence we witnessed, and despair at the slow pace of change.

I turned to meditation hoping it would lessen my anger. I soon learned that meditation was only part of the Buddha’s teachings. I learned that waking up relied not just on will but ethical conduct and community building. I learned that embodied rituals and chants changed the way I moved through the world.

The longer I spent in Buddhist training, the more I saw it wasn’t an escape from politics at all—I was learning to engage the world with less anger and more love, less despair and more clarity.

I’m launching a new podcast, Radical Buddhism: Claiming Asian America’s Revolutionary Vision, to explore this intersection between spiritual practice and political change.

Each episode starts with a political problem I’ve been facing, then interviews someone whose example paved the way for me, like my mother, an organizer who turned to Buddhism as an adult; the writer and community builder Chenxing Han, with whom I co-lead the annual Roots and Refuge retreat at BCBS; and the restorative justice leader sujatha baliga.

“Radical” means “roots,” and the answers I sought lay not in escaping my roots, but understanding them. The Asian American and the leftist movements of my parents’ generation were also, I realized, efforts to wake up, to build community based on values. I’ve come to believe we need both political change and spiritual growth: one to struggle and one to heal, one to envision what could be and one to enjoy what already is.

You can listen to Radical Buddhism on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. In this time of great crises and great hope, I hope my questions about Buddhism and social change resonate with your own. I hope they open up even more questions, and that they point us, in a small way, toward the liberation we all seek.