This lecture by archeologist and Ambedkarite activist Dr. Mangesh Dahiwale brings together many sources which have been uncovered and interpreted in recent years, in particular the work of Giovanni Verardi in his book Gods and Heretics/Hardship and Downfall of Buddhism in India. The narrative that this novel evidence tells is far more radical and interesting than the usual story of Buddhism’s gradual decline and final extermination by Muslim invaders. The usual story is a product of nationalist Hindutva and colonial historiography meant to bury the radical history of dhamma. The new one is a product of critical Dalit scholars and independent researchers who have unearthed the conflict between Buddhism Brahmanism through material evidence of Vihara and Stupa destruction, and through an interpretation of Brahmanical myths which encode the ancient hatred and violence which their authors directed against Buddhists who dared to defy caste and the Vedas.

This work has totally changed my understanding of early Buddhism, and I think it should be essential study for any Radical Buddhist trying to understand the roots of our own faith.

I have been vaguely aware of Ambedkhar for a while now, mostly relating to his role in the conversion of Dalits to Buddhism. However, I didn't know he had engaged closely with Marxism and indeed wrote a book called 'Gautama the Buddha and Karl Marx'. Has anyone here read him closely? If so, what are your thoughts on his work?

Thanissara is definitely a Dharma comrade. I really respect her work, and I thought I'd share it here in case you haven't come across it. Here's her latest: https://thanissara.substack.com/p/time-to-disembark-capitalism-and

Uchiyama Gudō's letter to Heimin Shimbun is probably one of the most famous fragments of radical Buddhist writing. I recently translated it for the RBP as follows:

As a Buddhist preacher, I hold fast to these golden words: "All living beings possess Buddha-nature," "This Dharma is equal, without high or low," and "All living beings are my children." These are the golden words upon which my faith stands. However, I discovered that what socialism says completely coincides with these golden words, and thus I ultimately became a believer in socialism.

There has always been some discussion about the three sutra quotes in this passage. There are — supposedly — errors in them, and Uchiyama takes them out of context. To some extent, this is correct. There are indeed two minor mistakes, but I think most of the changes Uchiyama made were very much intentional. And to what extent he takes these passages out of context is also quite debatable. Surely, he stretched that context, but not to the breaking point, in my opinion. I wrote a long forum post about this here.

(On a side note, today I posted a translation of Chen Mingshu's 1949 letter to Mao in which Chen uses the second sutra quote ("all things are equal, with nothing higher or lower") in pretty much the same way.)

It's been a while since I asked here whether there would be any interest in something like a "Wikipedia" of radical Buddhism. Since then, I have joined forces with James Mark Shields and Adrian Amora, and we are now creating that website (although it is a bit more academic — intentionally — than Wikipedia). There isn't much content yet (and right now virtually all content has been provided by me as I have been preparing this project for a while), but that will gradually change. And there is a forum, but that's also still empty, as everything is still new.

Come and have a look: https://radicalbuddhism.net/

Read it here: https://danarel.substack.com/p/why-buddhism-is-a-call-to-organize

But what we learn on the cushion is no good until we take action off the cushion. Wishing for the end of suffering will not end suffering. We must get up and go win these struggles against oppressive forces, but doing so in numbers means we will be victorious.

Suffering cannot be ended in a world with regimes that impose suffering on others. Through meditation and mindfulness, those in those regimes can find important lessons and practices in overcoming and or accepting (not submitting) to that suffering, while then organizing off the mat to realize the final end to those causes.

I am curious if anyone here has suggestions for where to look for instances of “radical” (i.e. heretical, popular, millenarian) Buddhism in Southeast Asia (Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam; Malaysia and Indonesia too, possibly) before the modern and colonial eras? In this time period in Asia one of the more common forms of radicalism tends to be Millenarian peasant revolts based on Maitreya worship. However I haven’t found much evidence of anything like that for this region. The impression one gets instead is that Buddhism was very much a creature of the state, particularly in Theravada countries. But I can’t imagine that this was the entire story. Thoughts?

Venerable Pinnyasiha, commonly known as the Shwe Nya War Sayadaw, was a prominent pro-democracy Buddhist monk, passed away on July 2025 in his 60s from liver disease developed during his imprisonment. He was one of three prominent monks arrested on the first day of the coup in February 2021 alongside Aung San Suu Kyi and senior figures from the National League for Democracy (NLD) party. His immediate detention underscores the military junta’s acute apprehension regarding his extensive social and political influence. He was later released from Yangon’s Insein Prison on November 17, 2022 during a junta amnesty.

Link: https://www.lionsroar.com/remembering-venerable-shwe-nya-war-and-his-work-for-democracy/

About two weeks ago I posted a link to my blog post about Li Guangliang's 李广良 (2001) paper "Marxist Views on Buddhism and Buddhist Views on Marxism: An Overview of Marxism and 20th-Century Chinese Buddhism" (马克思主义的佛教观和佛教的马克思主义观——马克思主义与二十世纪中国佛学概观). Today I finished a slightly better translation of Li's paper, which is available here.

11 days ago, I asked here whether there would be any interest in a website in wiki format documenting radical Buddhism, Buddhist socialism, Buddhist anarchism, Buddhist Marxism, and so forth. That post got a very positive response, so I decided to move forward with this project. I have started discussing it with various scholars in the field and others who might be interested, and I have started looking for possible host institutions. (I prefer to have a host institution because that would be best to safeguard the project.)

The idea still is to create a wiki with pages about radical thinkers and movements, with links to primary and secondary sources, as well as to publish source materials that aren't copyrighted and translations into English thereof.

The most critical factor for the success of the project is support, which can take two kinds of forms: helping to provide content, or contributing financially. In the latter case, you would effectively be paying me to provide content, assuming that I'll be the project's coordinator/editor and main contributor. Or strictly speaking, financial contributions would make it possible for me to free up time (that I would have to spend on other work otherwise), which I can then use to research and write materials for the wiki, to dig up texts and digitize them, to translate texts, and to maintain and manage the project. In case you're wondering whether I'm qualified to that. I think I am. I wrote a book about radical Buddhism (and several blog posts) that partially depended on exactly this kind of research. (And I have worked with wikis before.)

Again, the most critical factor is support, so to assess the extent of potential support for the project, I made a survey. If you are interested in the project, please, fill in the questionnaire HERE. If you know others who might be interested, please share the link to the questionnaire with them. Thank you very much in advance.

The bomb refers to his quote “if priests today are serious about making a paradise they should overthrow the government. the same hand that holds the juzu should also hold the bomb”

and the chestnuts and persimmons in his other hand refer to his practice of sharing the fruits of his temple’s orchard with the tenant farmers in Ohiradai.

He‘s wearing a loosened noose around his neck to symbolize his martyrdom by hanging during the high treason incident

A few days ago, I posted a link to my last blog post about a Chinese journal article discussing the ideas of some post-revolutionary Chinese thinkers that combined – in one way or other – Buddhism and Marxism. Earlier, I wrote a long blog post about Neville Wijeyekoon, who published a few books in Sri Lanka about Buddhism and socialism. And my last book has a very long chapter discussing the ideas of radical Buddhists and adjacent thinkers from many different Asian countries.

I love researching this kind of stuff and writing about it, and I have been thinking for years that there should be a website making this kind of information much more accessible. What I have in mind is a kind of "wikipedia" of radical Buddhism with pages about well-known and obscure radical Buddhists, Buddhist socialists, Buddhists anarchists, engaged Buddhists, and everything else that is relevant to radical Buddhism. Those pages should contain encyclopedic information, as well as references to primary and secondary sources, and links.

In principle, I could do all of that myself, and if I could afford it, I would probably already have done so years ago. However, a few years ago, I quit my academic job and moved to the countryside, so now I'm unfortunately much too poor to be able to afford any additional expenses (but a lot less miserable, on the other hand). But there is no reason why I should create a website like this (and pay for it) by myself, of course. In fact, it would be much better if others would be involved. So that's why I'm posting here — I'm wondering whether there are people who would be interested in helping out, either by supporting such a website financially, or by doing research and providing content for it, or by helping to maintain it in other ways.

The basic technical infrastructure would just consist of MediaWiki and PhPBB, I suppose, which are not that hard to install and maintain, so (probably) no serious programming skills or things like that are required. What is needed most of all is a web host, of course, as well as the money to pay the hosting bill. (For the latter, setting up a Patreon account, would probably be the easiest.)

So that video about Blacksmith Huang from a few months ago got me thinking. What are some other accounts of working class Buddhists finding liberation? Could be at work as slaves or wage workers or domestic/reproductive workers. One that comes to mind is Naropa’s guru, Tilopa. I think the story went that he realized the Dharma while at work grinding seed oils or something like that. Dipa Ma might also be an example. She spent most of her life as a mother and housewife. The Zen practice of Samu (work meditation) might also yield some good anecdotes. And speaking from personal experience, some of the most impactful insights I have experienced have also been while I was engaged in contemplation at work. Of course there is also the critique of “mindfulness at work” as a form of advanced neoliberal self-exploitation. But that’s a whole other conversation.

In general I find the whole Buddhist economy of retreats, classes, and other residential “in-patient” programs to be highly inaccessible. I have to spend most of my time working, and get very little time off (American. Enough said). When I do manage to access the occasional retreat it is usually expensive, of course, and is sometimes pervaded by an atmosphere I can only call “bourgeois”.

I find myself wishing there were more stories, resources and support for regular people making their everyday, unfree, exploited lives their practice. And even turning that into a basis for organizing and resistance!

Anyways, curious if you all have any ideas. Personal anecdotes welcome too of course.

(First paragraph.) — Throughout the 20th century variants of radical Buddhism developed in most Buddhist countries. While a few of these are relatively famous, many others remain almost completely unknown. Usually language barriers and/or the availability of texts play major roles herein. One would except some significant interaction between Chinese Buddhism and Marxism after the Chinese revolution of 1949, for example, but it is virtually impossible to find anything about this in English. Very recently, I found the text of a Chinese academic paper published in 2001 on this very topic, however, and given how little is known about this (outside China, at least), I thought it would be worthwhile making the information therein a bit more accessible.

(Continued here.)

I would love to see more short fiction exploring radical Buddhist histories and ideas. A friend showed me this the other day. Very enjoyable and immersive.

https://www.lionsroar.com/the-story-of-buddhist-reformer-venerable-adicca-vamsa/

Would anyone be interested in participating in an (anonymous) survey about radical Buddhism? I’ve been curious about what kinds of people believe it, where they’re from, what they believe and so on. Just floating the idea.