Angry Asian Buddhist on American Buddhism

Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Angry Asian Buddhist; CC Liu, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Zendesk appropriates Budai for business.

Buddhist Peace Fellowship Board Member Funie Hsu hopped on the phone with Arun Likhati (Aaron Lee), cultural critic and creator of the Angry Asian Buddhist blog phenomenon, to ask him about Orientalism, racism, representation, and other causes and conditions for all the anger.

Asian Buddhist writers are three times less likely than white Buddhists to appear in major Western Buddhist publications.

On having “angry” in the title

Arun (Aaron J. Lee) on Twitter

There's a stereotype, not just about Buddhists, but about Asians in particular, that we are passive. We don’t really act up, and we sit on fluffy meditation cushions and gaze at our navels, and smile, and do something focused, and we’re not angry.

Just having “Angry Asian Buddhist” as the title challenges readers to think about what it means to be Asian and Buddhist. I think that’s important, having some sort of icon to counter stereotypes. “Making our way without Asians”?

On reactions to race commentary

Simply by bringing up the topic of race, some people assume that what’s being talked about is racism. And in modern Western society, that’s evil, EVIL. It’s uncomfortable, it’s taboo, but race exists. Race exists in the way people are treated. More