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Looking at Thailand
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The Buddhist Review
Back Issues
Looking at Thailand
The Emergence of Three AIDS Hospices
Photos by Robert Rauscenberg
Taking Both Sides
Speaks with Barbara Meier
The Search for Selflessness
Monks from the East Meet Death in the West
An Interview with His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
A Mother’s Death
Buddhist Perseverance in Russia
The Lion-Dog of Buddhist AsiaBy Elsie P. Mitchell Fugaisha: New York, 1991. 191 pp. 57 plates. $50 (hardcover) / $27.50 (paperback). Distributor: Charles E. Tuttle Company Anyone born in the Year of the Dog (1910, 1922, 1934, 1946, 1958, 1970, or 1982) will want to own a copy of Elsie Mitchell’s The Lion-Dog of Buddhist Asia, a book that […]
Cultivating the Empty Field: The Silent Dlumination of Zen Master HongzhiTranslated by Taigen Daniel Leighton with Yi Wu. North Point Press: San Francisco, 1991.91 pp. $11.95 (paperback). Silent Illumination, known to Western students primarily as “just sitting,” is usually associated with the Soto branch of Zen. But Eihei Dogen (1200-1253), credited with founding the Soto school in […]
When I traveled through Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, and Nepal, I spent many hours in tea shops. To order in any of these countries, I needed to know only one word: chai. Few other words are shared in languages as diverse as Turkish, Urdu, Parsi, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Tamil, Hindi, Newari, and Nepali. On a typical day […]
FIRST PRIZE When Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest in Rangoon for the past two years, was named the latest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, the news triggered massive protests against the repressive regime in Burma. Universities were shut down when students demonstrated for Aung San Suu Kyi’s release and, in a plea for […]
“Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.This was not a very encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I hardly know, sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”“What do you mean by that?” […]
Photographer Duane Michals lives in New York; his books include Now Becoming Then (Twelvetrees Press).
This episode of the life of Shakyamuni Buddha, as retold by Nikkyo Niwano, starts in Bodh-gaya following the Buddha’s enlightenment under the Bodhi tree. The decision to turn the dharma wheel initiates a teaching mission that lasted over forty years and took the Great Sage back and forth across the breadth of northern India. Concerning […]
Perhaps because of both its profundity and its brevity, the Heart Sutra is the most familiar of all the original teachings of the Buddha. (The Sino-Japanese version comprises a mere 262 characters.) Recited daily by Buddhists in China, Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Tibet, Mongolia, Bhutan, Nepal, the Heart Sutra is now also recited by many Buddhists […]
ROHN PARSONSFree-lance generalist in the process of moving back to Japan with his family Charlotte, North Carolina “Some friends and I were discussing Tricycle, Buddhism, etc. I was asked, ‘What does being a Buddhist mean to you?’ Here are some of our contributions. ‘Not staking a claim of being a Buddhist […]
Looking at Thailand
Did a Buddhist Monk “Discover” the New World?
FUNNYBONE DHARMA Not only is the visual design of the Winter 1991 issue of Tricycle very pleasing, but the subject matter is diverse and provocative, a veritable feast of paradox. We are told by Khyentse Rinpoche on page 41 that “To cut through the mind’s clinging, it is important to understand that all appearances are […]
There was a time when the Heart Sutra evoked associations with Asian monastic rituals, and not Florida hospitals; and when “the great matter of life and death,” as the Zen tradition puts it, did not apply to theAmerican abortion debate; and when running an AIDS hospice may have been considered too secular for Buddhist priests; […]
Debate in Tibetan Buddhism By Daniel Perdue. Snow Lion: Ithaca, 1992.1,025 pp. $45.00 (hardcover). Debate is the investigative technique used in Tibetan monastic education to lead students through the intricacies of Buddhist philosophy, to sharpen minds, and to develop analytical capacities. This volume is based on a foundational text on debate composed by Pur-bu-jok Jam-ba-gya-tso […]
Asceticism and Healing in Ancient India: Medicine in the Buddhist Monastery.By Kenneth G. Zysk. Oxford University Press: New York, 1991.200 pp. $35.00 (hardcover). The Buddhist tales about the legendary Indian physician, Jivaka, recount examples of his odd and effective cures, such as how he restored the protruding eyeball of a wrestler by pulling the tendons of his […]
New Mahayana: Buddhism for a Post-Modern World By Akizuki Ryomin. Translated by James W. Heisig and Paul L. Swanson. Asian Humanities Press: Berkeley, 1990. 193 pp. $12.00. Akizuki Ryomin’s reputation as a radical reformer of Buddhism in Japan first reached American shores in a 1959 issue of Newsweek. “I want to help revive the real spirit of Zen,” […]
Freedom from Fear and Other WritingsAung San Suu Kyi Edited by Michael Aris Penguin: New York, 1991.368 pp. $12.00 (paperback) July 20 is Martyrs’ Day in Burma, and to most Burmese it is a time to honor the memory of one man in particular, Aung San, the slight, brooding idealist who guided his country to independence […]
Beneath a Single Moon: Buddhism in Contemporary American PoetryEdited by Kent Johnson and Craig Paulenich.Shambhala Publications: Boston, 1991.400 pp. $22.50 (paperback). During the last four decades a stream of Buddhist awareness has been flowing in an underground and almost silent fashion through the arts in America. Yet, almost paradoxically, although Buddhism has had its strongest influence […]
Wisdom and Compassion: The Sacred Art of Tibet By Marylin M. Rhie and Robert A. F. Thurman.Photographs by John Bigelow Taylor.Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and Tibet House, New York, in association with Harry N. Abrams Inc., New York, 1991.406 pp. $65.00 (hardcover)/$45.00 (paperback). This volume is probably destined to be the locus classicus on Tibetan sacred […]
