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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 […]
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.
Letting go of what you love isn’t easy.
We 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 […]
Are grief and mourning the most precious proofs of love?
I 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, […]
Our sorrows provide us with the lessons we most need to learn.
Leaving her lover behind, Barbara Hurd finds refuge in the vastness of the Indian desert.
Anne Cushman bears witness to a sangha fractured by its teacher’s flaws.
A new mother struggles with self-sacrifice.
The ancient Japanese mealtime art of oryoki reveals the patterns and sticking points of our minds.
In a world of transience, is conservation just another form of attachment?
Dragonflies stitch together the visible and invisible realms
Walk in the Buddha’s footsteps in the ancient Indian city of Rajgir.
Gross National Suffering and the economics of awakening
Monks and gangsters come together to receive the blessings of a spiritual prophylaxis: Buddhist tattoos.
Get the body of a bhikkhu—or your alms back.
Stephen Batchelor interviews Don Cupitt
How to wash and dress a Buddhist corpse
Jews for Jesus and the Buddhadharma
Inside 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 […]
Two new titles for the couch and the cushion
Give 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 […]
Author 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.
A reader from Woodstock, New York, writes: “Is it possible to have a meaningful meditation practice in the absence of a living teacher?”
Experiments to unlock the wonder of everyday life
Dana 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 […]
Philosopher 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 […]
Have you ever tried to catch a cloud?
Should we take the Buddha at his word? Larry Rosenberg encourages us to put the teachings to the test.
“Come as you are” to the last frontier of American Buddhism.
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 […]
Zen and Poetry
A poem by Andrew Schelling
Attachment 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 […]
Stirring a pot of chili, Prabu Vasan learns an unexpected lesson in what it means to feed the soul.
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 […]
Barbara Gates learns to use a jackhammer to uncover the neglected realms of the self.
The next generation of American Buddhism steps up—and looks back.
Travel the river of the mind to the vast ocean.