Tricycle’s Top Articles of 2025

One of the many reasons that people come to a spiritual practice is to find community, and yet, while that reason is quite universal, the types of communities that people may seek can differ drastically. All across our favorite articles of the year, there are elements of being in community—whether that takes the shape of community care for the sick and elderly or finding community in diaspora, in like-minded spiritual seekers of a certain gender identity or expression, or in those seeking new ways of seeing.

Even beyond our daily Web articles and quarterly print issues, this year Tricycle has been emphasizing community across our entire organization, from hosting online weekly morning meditation groups to our member events and partnerships. In fact, this need for community was one of main reasons Tricycle just launched our newly minted Substack. Consider subscribing for even more from our diverse array of offerings.

So no matter if you are a new Buddhism-curious reader or a lifelong practitioner and Tricycle advocate, take a look at some of our favorite magazine and Web pieces from the past year and consider all of the many ways your spiritual practice might put you in community with the world around you.

• Replanting the Garden
  A monk is diagnosed with a brain tumor, and a junior monastic volunteers to care for him. “Replanting the Garden” by Hokyu JL Aronson is a straightforward story simply told, but powerful emotions are revealed through the quiet prose. The life of the monastery swirls around the dying monk in his quiet room—retreats, gardening sessions, visits from laypeople—but his attendant sits beside him, bearing witness to the great matters of old age, sickness, and death. In a society where the old are often left alone, where dying is hidden away and medicalized, the monastic model shows how all communities used to care for the sick and dying, with compassion, attention, and a steady gaze.
• Kosen Ohtsubo’s ‘Flower Planet’
  For close to five decades, Kosen Ohtsubo has been the veritable enfant terrible of ikebana, the traditional Japanese art of flower arranging. Over the course of a year, Tricycle Web editor Mike Sheffield spoke with Kosen as well as his daughter, Keiko, and young protégé Christian Kōun Alborz Oldham about his avant-garde life and unorthodox approach to the form. Covering topics including the New York Earth Room, cave hopping, and the expressionistic sax wailing of Albert Ayler, Kosen discusses the Buddhist origins of ikebana, the role of satire in expressing the ineffable, and why it is always eventually necessary to break free from tradition.
• Sangha Across Time
  “To simply call Michael Dillon a Tibetan Buddhist convert obscures the teachings contained in his meandering path,” says writer Cyrus Dunham. As both white transgender men and Western students and practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism, Dunham felt a calling toward Dillon, going on pilgrimage to Dillon’s stomping ground in the town of Folkestone, England, to see for himself what Dillon saw, looking for answers into his own path toward the dharma. In a personal reflection, Dunham recounts the life and legacy of this early transgender forerunner and explores what questions are still left in his wake.
• The Doubting Disease
  Bernat Font’s article on obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) struck a chord with Tricycle readers, and no wonder—an estimated one in forty US adults have OCD. The piece opens with Font struggling to choose a package of cookies at the grocery store: “Choosing a package of cookies felt like facing an existential fork where my future split in two: the life I would have if I bought these cookies versus the life I would have if I got the other ones.” Font’s efforts garnered many letters of appreciation from readers grateful to see their struggles put into words. But he is careful to note that while meditation alone is no cure for OCD, it—along with medication and therapy—helped untangle the narratives that pulled him into obsessive-compulsive spirals. 
• Acceptance and the Tibetan Diaspora On-Screen
  Last September, Tricycle’s editorial assistant, Kami Nguyen, spoke with the Tibetan Canadian filmmaker, Kunsang Kyirong, about her debut feature film, 100 Sunset. The film follows an introverted young woman named Kunsel who lives within a Tibetan community in western Toronto. Occupying herself by committing petty thefts and spying on her neighbors (as one does), one day she finds a confidante in Passang, another young woman who has recently arrived with her much older husband—leading both of their lives into unexpected territories. True to life, Kyirong notes how she used many nonactors in the film, adding, “as for the Buddhist items and altars that are shown, these were owned by the actual Tibetan households and locations that we filmed in.”
• Opening Up to Grief
  As a child growing up in the midcentury, Bonnie O’Brien Jonsson faced a devastating situation feared by millions of Americans: Her father, a pilot, was missing in action during the Korean War. In the years that follow, Bonnie, her sister, and her mother grapple with the aftermath of a loved one’s inexplicable disappearance. “Opening Up to Grief” explores how Bonnie wrapped her heartbreak, loss, and unanswered questions into a box and pushed it out of reach for much of her life. But an encounter with the dharma allows her to reopen it, paving the way for a rich Buddhist path involving Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher certification and leading a number of community groups for maranasati, or mindfulness of death. Most importantly, Bonnie’s healing journey with the dharma coincides with a life-changing encounter that provides information about what really happened to her father. As one of the most powerful articles of the year, it is fitting that “Opening Up to Grief” also features one of Tricycle’s favorite illustrations of the year. London-based artist Ben Jones created the emotional collage accompanying the piece using Bonnie’s real family photos, perfectly capturing the essence of her box of pain.
• Shiro Tsujimura’s Exploded Forms
  Contemporary ceramist and former monk Shiro Tsujimura aspires to bring out the mu of each vessel he creates. Entirely self-taught, Tsujimura is considered one of the most prominent contemporary ceramic artists in Japan, combining traditional Japanese styles of pottery with avant-garde sensibilities, embracing the imperfections of the clay and the unpredictability of the firing process. Last year, following an exhibition at Axel Vervoordt Gallery in Antwerp, Flammarion published the most comprehensive monograph on the artist to date, Shiro Tsujimura: An Art of Living. In a piece for the website, Tricycle’s audio editor, Sarah Fleming, traces Tsujimura’s training as a monk and its influence on his approach to ceramics.
• The Circle of Your Influence
  This past summer, the Western Buddhist world lost two of their most beloved and engaged elders: Joanna Macy and Larry Ward. Early this year, Ward—a Plum Village dharma teacher and cofounder of the Lotus Institute—had participated in Tricycle’s annual Buddhism and Ecology Summit, offering a talk on the importance of intimately connecting with our surroundings and cultivating a nondualistic relationship with nature. In “The Circle of Your Influence,” Ward reflects on the lives of the woodpeckers and insects that inhabit his environment in Saunderstown, Rhode Island, encouraging us to make an effort to more closely observe the natural world. A prolific author and teacher, Ward also left us with a powerful dharma talk and an equally precious book of poetry, which were both published posthumously. 
• The Thunderous Resonance of Bodhisattva True Great Sound
  In a touching memorial, Buddhist mental health therapist, clinical educator, researcher, and author Dr. Kamilah Majied and Lotus Institute cofounder Peggy Rowe Ward gather tributes from friends, students, and colleagues of Larry Ward, offering reflections on his legacy as a community leader who strove to resolve America’s racial karma and weave together the Baptist lineage of Martin Luther King, Jr. with the socially engaged Buddhism of Thich Nhat Hanh. The tribute ends with a timeless note from Ward, left shortly before his passing: “If you want to do something with your life, be a real human being. If you want to do something for your children, your grandchildren, be a real human being. If you want to do something for America, be a real human being. In everything you need to be a real human being. And it’s already inside of us; it’s in every cell of our body. However, we have to be trained to develop it, cultivate it, and to apply it.”
• How Realistic Is the Buddhism of ‘The White Lotus’?
  When Tricycle’s editorial staff learned that season three of The White Lotus was to be set in Thailand, we were eager to see how much Buddhism made its way into the hit show’s complex storylines. Sure enough, Mike White, The White Lotus’s creator and a Buddhist himself, ensured that Thai Buddhism was featured prominently, both as a set of beliefs that inform character decisions and as a general backdrop for the luxury resort. As each episode dropped, we noticed some Buddhism-heavy moments that felt realistic at best and misinformed at worst. So we tasked some experts in the field with a brief reflection on the show’s wins and pitfalls. This fun roundup piece combines the voices of scholars, teachers, and former monks to provide a more fleshed-out view of Buddhism in Thailand, and a deeper dive into one of the most popular series of 2025.
• Things as They Can Be
  Upon visiting Metta Forest Monastery for retreat last February, Tricycle’s Mike Sheffield was surprised when he was handed a printed-out teaching from the temple’s abbot, Thai forest monk and prolific author Thānissaro Bhikkhu. In the piece, which was subsequently published on Tricycle’s website, Thānissaro expounds on the role that the four noble truths and the three perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not-self play in leading to awakening. Rather than simply dismissing all things as dukkha, anicca, and anatta, Thānissaro makes the case to use these perceptions as tools when they are of use and then putting them aside when they’ve done their work. As the abbot notes, “Some inconstant things have the potential to lead you to something you’ve never experienced before: a permanent dimension.”
• The Impasse
  After years of devotion and study, Tricycle associate editor Zim Pickens found himself unable to bow. What followed was not rejection but a reckoning with faith, belonging, and what it means to practice as a cultural outsider. What began as a moment of hesitation in a shrine hall unfolded into a deeper understanding of authenticity. In “The Impasse,” he states, “Believing there was a right way to be Buddhist, I spent many years trying to match my experience to an ideal or to Rinpoche’s inspiring example. This approach took me a long way, but in the end, it led to the ironic—and somewhat unsettling—realization that it had been my own journey all along.”
• Mohsen Mahdawi, the Buddhist
  When ICE first seized Buddhist Palestinian peace activist Mohsen Mahdawi and took him into custody, the initial coverage made only passing mention of his Buddhist identity. But this is no minor detail in the story of who he is. Meditation teacher and former monastic Michael Santi Keezing writes how we “need to understand Mohsen’s dharma path if we are to understand what they are trying to do to him and to all of us now.” Through personal testimony as well as words from others who know Mahdawi, Keezing’s piece provides an inside look at who he is and a framework for understanding and responding to student censorship and injustice. For more on Mahdawi, consider checking out Tricycle Web editor Mike Sheffield’s follow-up interview, which was published last fall.
• Music as an Offering
  Jefre Cantu-Ledesma is a multi-instrumentalist and composer, Zen priest, and hospice chaplain based in the Hudson Valley. Since his first foray into experimental music in the 1990s, he has been a pillar of the American music underground. Often labeled experimental or ambient, Cantu-Ledesma himself describes his craft as personal liturgy. Last July, Tricycle contributor and zensounds blogger Stephan Kunze talked with Cantu-Ledesma about his antivocational artistry, ordaining as a Zen priest, and his Shaker-inspired album, Gift Songs. Read the full article, and then check out more with Cantu-Ledesma on a recent episode of Tricycle Talks.
• Meditation Is Not Required
  Settling the mind doesn’t always mean to stop excess thinking. Zen priest Zenju Earthlyn Manuel encourages us to expand the walls of meditation beyond typical instruction in order to view it as less of a chore. In a Dzogchen-inspired teaching that pulls from 14th-century Tibetan scholar-yogi Longchenpa, Earthlyn Manuel suggests the liberating alternative of seeing thoughts and allowing them to release themselves without attachment or aversion. Earthlyn Manuel asks, “What would happen if you . . . considered the thoughts as if they were the sun or moon on the waves of the ocean of your mind?”
• Safety Resources for Discordant Times
  While we may experience fear as a response to an unstable world, the emotion is often rooted in early childhood experiences and the body’s ancient methods for keeping us safe. In an October piece for the website, Dharma Punx NYC guiding teacher Josh Korda and somatic therapist Kathy Cherry offer concrete techniques for managing fear in the moment using Buddhist teachings and lessons from contemporary neuroscience. By bringing care and attention to our physical sensations, the teachers suggest, we can uncover a space of safety from which we can act in a grounded and nonreactive way.
• What Is the Shape of My Life?
  In a touching personal reflection, longtime Zen practitioner Noelle Oxenhandler considers the koan-like question: “What is the shape of my life?” As we get older, our hopes and dreams about what our futures might hold are eclipsed by the reality of the present moment. The future inevitably becomes the present, which inevitably becomes the past. But if we can let go of past fantasies, perhaps we can better appreciate the life we do have. Living life, as Noelle writes, is like “moving forward through clouds of unknowing. . . . And yet, once we have moved through these clouds, is there any reason not to pause for a moment and appreciate the fact that now there is a panoramic view?”
• Buddhism for This World
  The Chinese Buddhist monk Taixu (1890–1947) was an activist and reformer whose legacy helped shape modern Buddhism in Asia and across the world. These short teachings—which are from “The Great Reformer: Taixu” by Justin Ritzinger in Buddhist Masters of Modern China, a recent volume edited by Benjamin Brose—offer a glimpse into Taixu’s style of adapting traditional Buddhist ideas and practices to meet the evolving needs of society. In his writing and teaching, Taixu consistently emphasized that Buddhist practices should be applied in everyday life, as this would lead to individual and collective well-being. Although Taixu’s efforts at institutional reform largely failed due to his death at a relatively young age, his ideas inspired a generation of engaged East Asian Buddhists.