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Shakyamuni Buddha: A Life Retold
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The Buddhist Review
Back Issues
Shakyamuni Buddha: A Life Retold
Re: Voting
What truly is liberation? According to Smithers, it’s not just a matter of outer freedoms.
An interview with bell hooks
By the People, For the People
An interview with Robert A.F. Thurman
Buddhism and Virtual Reality
Mid-afternoon, twenty-four hours into a three-day vipassana retreat, I entered the teacher’s cottage for my interview. Although I had attended many meditation retreats with lay teachers, this was my first interview with an Asian monk. Hesitant, bowing, unsure of etiquette, I walked in, sat on the floor, and waited for him to speak. He waited for […]
Diary of an American Zen Failure in Japan
Monday, June 1 Flying to Rio de Janeiro from New York, we pass over Freshkill Landfill, the largest man-made object in the world. It reminds me that we Americans throwaway twice our body weight in garbage every day. In Miami Airport’s red-carpet lounge a journalist calls in his “angle” on his way down to […]
In 1254 the Franciscan friar William of Rubruck, a missionary in Mongolia, became the first Westerner to describe a reincarnate Buddhist teacher. In the report of his mission to King Louis IX of France he recounted the following episode: A boy was brought from Cataia [China], who to judge by his physical size was not […]
By Eido T. Shimano
By Ram Dass & Mirabai Bush
If we believe that mind is continuous, our love for others becomes continuous.
Jack Kerouac’s interest in Buddhism began after he spent some time with Neal Cassady, who had taken on an interest in the local California variety of New Age spiritualism, particularly the work of Edgar Cayce. Kerouac mocked Cassady as a sort of homemade American “Billy Sunday with a suit” for praising Cayce, who went into […]
Edited by Steven C. Rockefeller and John C. Elder
MERTON NUTT From Spalding Gray’s interview with the Dalai Lama to Philip Glass and Khyentse Rinpoche, I have come to eagerly anticipate Tricycle‘s excellent interviews. But Harold Talbott on Thomas Merton is the very best yet! As something of a Merton nut, I am familiar enough with the growing body of material on Merton to […]
As we go to press with our first anniversary issue, our late-night efforts have been interspersed with televised reports from the Democratic Convention at Madison Square Garden, just ten blocks from our office. The last four-day event at the same location that vied for our attention in the midst of a deadline was the Kalachakra, the […]
Edited by José Ignacio Cabezón
MAD. AVE. STRIKES AGAIN How many Tibetan monks does it take to advertise PowerBook, the new laptop from Apple Computer, Inc.? According to a recent blitz of two-page ads, the correct answer is four—that’s not counting the cross-dresser in the center, a Caucasian in monastic robes with long white hair pulled back, holding an open […]
A review of three documentaries on His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama
In one of his final teachings the Buddha introduced the idea of tathagatagarbha, the buddha essence within every sentient being. The teachings make it very clear that tathagatagarbha pervades all beings equally in quantity as well as quality. This primordial essence is never defiled, but it becomes obscured when an individual engages in negative activity […]
Mary Farkas (1911-1992) Mary Farkas, director of the First Zen Institute of America, died on June 7th in New York City. She was eighty-one years old and her long life embodied the transmission of Zen from Japan to the United States. A pioneer of American Zen, Mrs. Farkas’ studies predated the Zen boom sparked by […]
Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche was recognized as an incarnation of the previous Jamgon Kongtrul of the Kagyu lineage.
Brice Marden’s Cold Mountain Paintings
PRACTICING FAITH I have no qualms about Mr. Batchelor’s agnosticism regarding reincarnation. His beliefs are quite reasonable. However, when he states that “an agnostic position toward death seems more compatible with an authentic spiritual attitude,” I wonder where he acquired the copyright to the “authentic spiritual attitude.” Science requires proof; religion and philosophy are as yet […]
Burton Watson, John Strong, and the I Ching
By Heinrich Dumoulin
By Michael Murphy