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The Buddhist Review
Back Issues
Many of us who came of age in the 1960s convinced ourselves that getting high was the quickest—if not the best—way to begin the long, strange trip toward higher consciousness. Aldous Huxley, the man who wrote The Doors of Perception and turned Timothy Leary on to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, seemed to be […]
By Don Lattin
The 5th Zen Precept
By Roshi Nancy Mujo Baker
On the road with Thich Nhat Hanh in the early 1980s.
By Andrew Cooper
A novelist explains the relationship between meditative practice and the creative journey.
By Anne Cushman
I am convinced that an accurate, nonsectarian study of Buddhist history can be of great benefit to dharma practitioners. As a scholar and practitioner, I have for many years worked to bring the findings of historical scholarship into dharma centers in Zen, Vipassana, and Tibetan lineages. While many students deeply appreciate this opportunity, others find […]
By Rita M. Gross
How Jeff Bridges works with anxiety and maintaining a joyful mind.
By Katy Butler
On the eve of the release of his new book, the French monk Matthieu Ricard spoke with Tricycle about science, meditation, and his title as “the happiest man in the world.”
By Tricycle, Photographs by Matthieu Ricard
The BP oil spill and the undersea realm of impenetrable darkness
By Wendy Johnson
Lin Jensen is hard to disagree with. If his previous book, Pavement, in which he chronicles his search for peace on city streets, was an ode to activism, Deep Down Things: The Earth in Celebration and Dismay(Wisdom Publications, 2010, $15.95 paper, 176 pp.), his latest, is a tribute to what is buried underneath those streets, […]
By Sam MoweDespite some of the best animal protection laws in the world and a renowned heritage of reverence for life, modern India is a country where millions of animals suffer severe neglect or abuse. Help Animals India (HAI) is an all-volunteer USA nonprofit charity dedicated to supporting efficient and effective animal protection organizations in India. HAI’s […]
[Anna, Bernhard] , [Monty, McKeever] and [Sam, Mowe] Monty McKeeverWisdom: From Philosophy to NeuroscienceStephen S. HallAlfred A. Knopf, 2010333 pp., $27.95 cloth Half a century ago science, measuring our behavior with its languages of experimental cause and effect, might typically draw objections if not outcries that we are not automatons, will-less and without free choice. We are way beyond that now, and fascinatingly so […]
By Joseph McElroyHow a French scholar introduced the Lotus Sutra to the West
By Donald S. Lopez, Jr.First, seventy-two labors brought us this food; We should know how it comes to us. —Zen meal gatha (verse) We’ve all heard by now about the industrial feedlots that figure into the “farm-to-fork” commercial food chain. We’ve also heard about meat and produce being tainted with E. coli and salmonella. But for how long can we […]
By Wil CrutchleyIt’s said that no man is a hero to his butler. But it is with the butler’s view that we get a more complete picture of heroic figures in their full humanity. For those who like their heroes pure, the butler’s unvarnished view may well be unwelcome. But it’s precisely his perspective that throws into […]
By James ShaheenThe Mishap Lineage:Transforming Confusion into WisdomChögyam TrungpaEdited by Carolyn Rose Gimian,Shambhala Publications, 200905160 pp., $21.95 paper I almost met Chögyam Trungpa. When I arrived at the steps of the New York Historical Society, just off Central Park, there was a notice posted on the massive wooden doors: Trungpa Rinpoche’s talk had been canceled for health […]
By Stuart SmithersI was a bit off balance in the Spring, 2010 issue. The new front section was a challenge for me to take in, but when I entered the feature section on stinginess, I was hooked. Yes, hooked. So hooked that when I accidentally left my issue on a plane, I was a bit panicky. How […]
By TricycleAs I was taught, the fifth precept includes being intoxicated by one’s own ideas—not just the ingestion of intoxicants. Just recall what it feels like to be completely intoxicated with one’s own ideas, views, opinions, etc., including the bodily and emotional sensations, the mental ideas of being right, others being wrong—not a far place from […]
By TricycleBrian Victoria responds to a critique of his work by Nelson Foster and Gary Snyder in the Summer 2010 issue, and to Kemmyo Taira Sato’s critique in The Eastern Buddhist. Victoria has written extensively on the Zen establishment’s complicity in Japan’s war effort. Foster, Snyder, and Sato assert that Victoria’s scholarship with regard to D. […]
By Tricycle
I’ve a fat-happy Buddha bellynot to be confusedwith Buddha mind, which is arrow-slim and quickas the knife of Ting the Cookslicing fresh ham. I do not claim to know the joysand sorrows of the koi in the pond.But I know the pleasures of feeding them. The fruit on the tree of loveis an appleI have […]
By Sam Hamill
How to whip up a recipe for a hot cup of chai masala
By Noa JonesDear Abbey Dharma, I recently took my refuge vows and have found the Buddhist path to be vast and wide. My struggle is, where to begin? I find death and dying, intentions, karma, and many more subjects compelling. Where does one begin other than the meditation cushion? —Where to Begin Dear Where to Begin, I […]
By Sylvia Boorstein
Interview with Tim Olmsted
By Helen TworkovConfession of a Buddhist AtheistStephen BatchelorNew York: Spiegel & Grau2010, 320 pp., $26.00, cloth What do Buddhist teachings about impermanence and conditionality imply for Buddhism itself? As Buddhism spread throughout Asia, its encounters with different cultures led to radical transformations. In China, for example, the interaction between Mahayana and established cultural forms, especially Daoism, produced […]
By David Loy
In the ’70s, when we wandered up the hill to Kopan Monastery in Nepal in various states of drug- and alcohol-induced intoxication, we would ask Lama Yeshe, “What do you think about drugs, alcohol, and meditation? They make us more relaxed so it’s easier to watch our breath, and our visualizations are so much more […]
By TricycleKazuaki Tanahashi, born in Japan in 1933 and working in the United States since 1977, is an artist, writer, worker for peace and an environmental advocate. Kaz’s one-stroke paintings, multicolor Zen circles, and calligraphy have appeared in solo exhibitions throughout the world. His publications includeBrush Mind, Penetrating Laughter: Hakuin’s Zen and Art;and Lotus. Since 1960 […]
By Tricyclethe Buddha, translated from the Pali by Bhikkhu Bodhi
By Tricycle
Try to sit stable like a mountain and vast like the ocean. Listen to the sounds as they occur. Do not imagine, name, or analyze the sounds. Just listen with wide-open awareness. Let the sounds come to you and touch your eardrums. Go inside the sounds and notice their fluid nature. If there are no […]
By Martine Batchelor
On suffering and why the Buddha left home
By Andrew Olendzki
Overcome blind reactivity to develop a skillful mind with Buddhist anger-management techniques.
By Steve Armstrong
The following was excerpted from Martine Batchelor’s Tricycle Online Retreat “Break Your Addictive Patterns.”
By Martine BatchelorTeacher, translator, and calligrapher
Kazuaki Tanahashi, Photographs by H. Seano Whitecloud
Why a question can be a more powerful tool for practice than its answer
By Elizabeth Mattis NamgyelWhen there is understanding and a set of values that encourage sharing, then the limitations, the needs, and the lacks of any given life can be acknowledged and effort can be put into using material supports with compassion. This is also true in cases of deprivation; surely a major contributor to this is the greed […]
By Ajahn Sucitto
I was in Hawaii, working on a story about whales—a big story, about big animals and the people who are drawn to them, a story that’s going to take months to write—and while out on the boat one windless day, heat-struck amid the shimmering blue, with whales singing and groaning far below, I was seized […]
By Rick Bass
Profession: studentAge: 32Location: Dharamsala, India Where are you from? New York, but I grew up in Panama. How did you get into Buddhism? When I was in college in Kentucky I met some Tibetan exchange students. We got to be friends, and I started helping out with their Free Tibet stuff. We went on a […]
By TricycleWhenever Daido [John Daido Loori Roshi] was traipsing around in the mountains, he always had a camera with him. His scientific background in chemistry gave him a strong technical understanding of photographic processes. But it was his training with Minor White that initiated his lifelong exploration of “making love with light.” Gazing at water, seeing […]
By Stephanie Kaza