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Facing Loss
An introduction to the special section
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The Buddhist Review
Back Issues
An introduction to the special section
Gehlek Rimpoche talks about loss, letting go, and moving on.
Leaving her lover behind, Barbara Hurd finds refuge in the vastness of the Indian desert.
Are grief and mourning the most precious proofs of love?
Letting go of what you love isn’t easy.
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.
Our sorrows provide us with the lessons we most need to learn.
A poem by Allen Ginsberg
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?
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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.
“Come as you are” to the last frontier of American Buddhism.
Dragonflies stitch together the visible and invisible realms
Walk in the Buddha’s footsteps in the ancient Indian city of Rajgir.
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.
A reader from Woodstock, New York, writes: “Is it possible to have a meaningful meditation practice in the absence of a living teacher?”
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 […]
How to wash and dress a Buddhist corpse
Jews for Jesus and the Buddhadharma
Experiments to unlock the wonder of everyday life
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 […]
Barbara Gates learns to use a jackhammer to uncover the neglected realms of the self.
Have you ever tried to catch a cloud?
Stirring a pot of chili, Prabu Vasan learns an unexpected lesson in what it means to feed the soul.
A poem by Andrew Schelling
Stephen Batchelor interviews Don Cupitt
Zen and Poetry
Should we take the Buddha at his word? Larry Rosenberg encourages us to put the teachings to the test.
Travel the river of the mind to the vast ocean.
The next generation of American Buddhism steps up—and looks back.
Gross National Suffering and the economics of awakening
Two new titles for the couch and the cushion
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 […]
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 […]