Finding True Justice

Summary

We all value justice, but what happens when we don’t get it? When the harm is intense, what do repair and healing look like? 

My guest today, sujatha baliga, has spent her life trying to answer these questions. She was deeply influenced by a meeting with the Dalai Lama, who asked her if she’d been “angry long enough” about the harm she carried. She then devoted herself to developing ‘restorative justice,’ which looks for alternatives to the systems of punishment and blame that we often confuse for justice. I want to ask her about some of the histories I’ve been seeking justice for, including the Ku Klux Klan massacre that shaped my family’s life. 

sujatha baliga is a long-time restorative justice practitioner and meditation instructor, whose love for everybody and everything is owed to her Buddhist path. A former victim advocate and public defender, she's interested in restorative justice’s potential to address intimate partner and sexual violence, and Buddhist approaches to conflict transformation. sujatha was named a 2019 MacArthur Fellow, and is loving (almost) every minute of writing her first book, titled “Angry Long Enough: Towards Healing and Repair for Ourselves and The World,” (One World/Penguin Random House). www.sujathabaliga.com FB/Instagram: @sujathabaliga LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sujatha-baliga-9813184 

Ryan Lee Wong is author of the novel Which Side Are You On, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel. He’s trained in Buddhism for over a decade, and lived for two years at a Zen temple in upstate New York. He co-facilitates Roots and Refuge, an annual Asian American Buddhist writing retreat. He was born and raised in Los Angeles, the son of a fifth-generation Chinese American father and a Korean immigrant mother, and has organized several exhibitions on the 1970s Asian American Movement.

Find Ryan on Substack: https://ryanleewong.substack.com/ Instagram: @ryanlwong or his website: https://www.ryanleewong.com/  

Radical Buddhism is a production of Axis Mundi Media, and made possible by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, which seeks to deepen public knowledge of religion. Andrew Gill is the producer, with original music by Scott Okamoto and cover art by Eric Zwierzynski. The Barre Center for Buddhist Studies is our fiscal sponsor.

sujatha baliga’s website: more on sujatha’s Spiritual Fitness program and other upcoming events.  

Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Project: The video summary sujatha mentions about the TRC, how it came about, and its findings. Includes excerpts of testimony from some of the participants. Also see the TRC’s official website.  

CHAT Project: The Collective Healing and Transformation organization that sujatha helped found, which helps individuals, families, and communities find solutions to interpersonal harm and violence. 

Zehr Institute: More on the life and work of Howard Zehr, one of sujatha’s mentors.