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Born in Lhasa, Tibet in 1939, Gehlek Rimpoche was recognized as an incarnate lama at the age of four. Prior to fleeing Tibet during the Chinese invasion in 1959, he was one of the last lamas to be fully educated in the legendary Drepung Monastery, Tibet’s largest monastic institution. At the age of twenty-five, Gehlek […]
By Tricycle
When her unborn son is diagnosed with Down’s syndrome, Martha Beck learns that when we have everything to lose, we also have everything to gain.
By Martha Beck
Letting go of what you love isn’t easy.
By Noelle OxenhandlerWe all know what it is like to lose something: love, friendships, identity, opportunity, pets, homes, our hair. And although we know that impermanence is a fact of life, each loss still hits us afresh, almost as if we had never lost anything before. We feel empty, angry, desperate, uncertain—and lost ourselves. It’s easy enough […]
By Tricycle
Are grief and mourning the most precious proofs of love?
By Mark MatousekI noticed the grass, I noticed the hills, I noticed the highways, I noticed the dirt road, I noticed car rows in the parking lot I noticed ticket takers, I noticed the cash and checks & credit cards, I noticed buses, noticed mourners, I noticed their children in red dresses, I noticed the entrance sign, […]
By Allen Ginsberg
Our sorrows provide us with the lessons we most need to learn.
By Lama Surya Das
Leaving her lover behind, Barbara Hurd finds refuge in the vastness of the Indian desert.
By Barbara Hurd
Anne Cushman bears witness to a sangha fractured by its teacher’s flaws.
By Anne Cushman
A new mother struggles with self-sacrifice.
By Kate Brandt
The ancient Japanese mealtime art of oryoki reveals the patterns and sticking points of our minds.
By John KainIn a world of transience, is conservation just another form of attachment?
By John ElderDragonflies stitch together the visible and invisible realms
By Wendy JohnsonWalk in the Buddha’s footsteps in the ancient Indian city of Rajgir.
By Allan Hunt Badiner
Gross National Suffering and the economics of awakening
By Kenneth KraftMonks and gangsters come together to receive the blessings of a spiritual prophylaxis: Buddhist tattoos.
By Terisa GreenGet the body of a bhikkhu—or your alms back.
By Clark Strand
Stephen Batchelor interviews Don Cupitt
By TricycleHow to wash and dress a Buddhist corpse
By Shinmon AokiJews for Jesus and the Buddhadharma
By TricycleInside a prison and on a footbridge, in grassy parks and under tarps, 2003 marked the most successful Change Your Mind Day ever. On the afternoon of June 7, residents of thirty-eight cities (including, this year, Wellington, New Zealand) gathered for the tenth annual Change Your Mind Day (CYMD), an afternoon of free outdoor meditation […]
By Tricycle
Two new titles for the couch and the cushion
By John HouseGive me a Brake!According to Tom and Ray Magliozzi (also known as “Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers”) of NPR’s Car Talk, winter visitors to the Insight Meditation Center in Barre, Massachusetts should not set their emergency brakes before going on retreat. A caller to the show complained that while he was on a three-month […]
By Jeff WilsonAuthor Aldous Huxley played an early and instrumental role in popularizing buddhism in the west. but what was his view of buddhism? and what does it offer buddhists today? Dana Sawyer reports.
By Dana Sawyer
A reader from Woodstock, New York, writes: “Is it possible to have a meaningful meditation practice in the absence of a living teacher?”
By Steve HagenExperiments to unlock the wonder of everyday life
By Roger-Pol DroitDana Sawyer writes on author Aldous Huxley’s Buddhist proclivities in “Aldous Huxley’s Truth Beyond Tradition”. Sawyer tells us: “I first became interested in Buddhism and Hinduism in 1969, after a philosophy professor recommended that I read Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy. Recently, while writing a spiritual biography of Huxley, I was struck by how much of […]
By TricyclePhilosopher and trenchant social critic Aldous Huxley is best known for his ground breaking novel Brave New World. He is far less known for the extent to which he was influenced by the teachings of the Buddha, although the influence can be found throughout his work. “Desirelessness is the condition of deliverance and illumination,” wrote […]
By James ShaheenHave you ever tried to catch a cloud?
By John Grady
Should we take the Buddha at his word? Larry Rosenberg encourages us to put the teachings to the test.
By Larry Rosenberg“Come as you are” to the last frontier of American Buddhism.
By Jeff Wilson
In these uncertain times, there is a call for teachings that are grounded in tradition yet relevant to daily life. Happily, a number of experienced teachers are responding. The Path of the Human Being: Zen Teachings on the Bodhisattva Way (Shambhala, August, $21.95, cloth) is a deftly edited collection of dharma talks by Zen master […]
By Joan Duncan OliverZen and Poetry
By TricycleA poem by Andrew Schelling
By Andrew SchellingAttachment to PeaceThank you for the concise interviews in “Peace: How Realistic Is It?” [Summer 2003]. Unfortunately, like most interviews about peace in the Buddhist press, they were steeped in shopworn antiwar rhetoric. However hard you and the interviewees tried, you failed to find a Middle Way. I will focus on the interview with Zarko […]
By TricycleStirring a pot of chili, Prabu Vasan learns an unexpected lesson in what it means to feed the soul.
By Prabu Vasan
Approaching year’s end,east of the riverthe weather turns cold. At the wilderness temple,dusk spreadsto river and sky. No wine I knowcan meltthis night. I follow a monk,who shutsthe gate early. Lamplit wallsholdstunted shadows. Roof tilesbearing snowcreak constantly. Drifting about in the world,I still havea thousand li to travel; but just now,I want to lose myself […]
By Jen FanBarbara Gates learns to use a jackhammer to uncover the neglected realms of the self.
By Barbara GatesThe next generation of American Buddhism steps up—and looks back.
By Marcia Nelson
Travel the river of the mind to the vast ocean.
By Ogyen Trinley Dorje