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TeachingsMagazine | Special Section
What Do Buddhists Mean When They Talk About Emptiness?
Emptiness is a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience. It adds nothing to, and takes nothing away from, the raw data of physical and mental events. You look at events in the mind…
Who Are You?
Who are you? My name is Peter. If you went to Nicaragua, you’d be called Pedro. Are Pedro and Peter one person or two? One, because I am only who I am. Are you a name?…
TeachingsMagazine | Special Section
What Is Enlightenment?
SHUNRYU SUZUKI ROSHI (1904-1971), founder of Zen Center San Francisco and author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, was known to discourage questions about enlightenment. Once, when pressed on the subject, he replied, What do you want…
TeachingsMagazine | Special Section
If There Is No Self, Who Is Born, Who Dies, Who Meditates?
One of the most puzzling aspects of the Buddha’s teachings is the idea of no self. If there’s no self, who gets angry, who falls in love, who makes effort, who has memories or gets reborn?…
MeditationMagazine | Special Section
How Important is Faith?
How faith opens us to what is beyond our usual, limited, self-centered concerns.
Where To Study?
AS INTEREST IN BUDDHISM continues to grow in America, many people are choosing to deepen their understanding of this tradition through graduate level study. If you are contemplating this route, one of the first things to…
IdeasMagazine | Special Section
Who was Buddha?
Siddhartha Gautama was born around 567 B.C.E., in a small kingdom just below the Himalayan foothills. His father was a chief of the Shakya clan. It is said that twelve years before his birth the brahmins…
TeachingsMagazine | Special Section
The Fourth Noble Truth
The Buddha to his companions at the Deer Park: “The fourth truth is the path which leads to the cessation of suffering. It is the Noble Eightfold Path of right understanding, right thought, right speech, right…
MeditationMagazine | Special Section
Where is Buddha?
IN MY OFFICE THERE IS A SCROLL with Japanese calligraphy and a painting of Zen master Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma is a fat, grumpy-looking man with bushy eyebrows. He looks as if he has indigestion. The calligraphy reads,…
MeditationMagazine | Special Section
I’ve Been Meditating for Ten Years, and I’m Still Angry. What’s the Matter with Me?
If you've been practicing for years and you're still angry, meditation can be used to hold anger skilfully, rather than as a way to escape.
TeachingsMagazine | Special Section
The First Teachings
What are the Four Noble Truths?
TeachingsMagazine | Special Section
What Is Karma?
Ven. Thubten Chodron answers.
MeditationMagazine | Special Section
Is Meditation Enough?
Is meditation enough? The Buddha didn't teach meditation in a vacuum but in the context of view, meditation, and action.
TeachingsMagazine | Special Section
Do Thoughts Ever Stop?
The Buddha advised his bhikkhus (ordained followers), “Bhikkhus, when you have assembled together you should do one of two things—have dhamma discussions or observe noble silence.” Noble silence is the state of mind where there are…
Dharma 101
Dharma 101 is a sampling of the questions that commonly arise in the course of practice. In some cases, Buddhist teachers themselves identified the questions they most frequently hear from students. To those, we brought experiences…
MeditationMagazine | Special Section
Why Do We Bow?
Many people have this question the minute they walk into the zendo and are told to make full prostrations to the Buddha image on the altar. They come with an idea that Zen is beyond words…
TeachingsMagazine | Special Section
Etymology: The Three Jewels
BUDDHA. From the Sanskrit root budh, literally “to wake, wake up, be awake.” Sanskrit was the elite language of the Aryan tribes whomigrated to South Asia sometime in the second millennium B.C.E. Various forms of this…
Features
Personal ReflectionsMagazine | Feature
ZenX: A Prescription for Despair
A roundtable with twentysomethings from the Rochester Zen Center
Buddhism Without Beliefs
Stephen Batchelor's new book proposes a profound and passionate agnosticism as an authentic approach to dharma.
Tulkus in Training
A Photo Essay by Martine Franck
Personal ReflectionsMagazine | Feature
Bearing Witness: Notes from Auschwitz
A New York photographer on retreat at the Nazi concentration camp.
Alice in Enlightenedland
Suppose Alice had been reading a book on American Buddhism before drifting off to sleep on that fateful afternoon. Her exchange with the Cheshire Cat might have gone something like this: ALICE CAME TO A FORK…
Departments
CultureMagazine | Book Reviews
The Tale Of The Incomparable Prince
The Tale of the Incomparable Prince Mdo Mkhar Tshe Ring Dbang Rgyal Translated by Beth Newman HarperPerennial: New York, 1997 319 pp., $13.00 (paperback). It’s not surprising that The Tale of the Incomparable Prince—which its publisher…
Letters to the Editor Spring 1997
Lama Drama It was with relief and recognition that I read the interview with June Campbell in your Winter 1996 issue. For the first time, I have read of someone who acknowledged similar experiences to my…
ObituariesMagazine | In Transition
Houn Jiyu-Kennet Roshi
January 1, 1924—November 6, 1996
Yungchen Llamo
Melodies from the Meditative State
CultureMagazine | Book Reviews
Manchu Palaces
Machu PalacesJeanne LarsenHenry Holt and Company,Inc.:New York,1996342 pp., $25.00 (hardcover) In China during the Qing dynasty, when hard-riding warriors from Manchuria ruled the vast lands “between the passes,” Beijing’s new gentry altered the rules of architecture.…
Slow and Sincere
from "Wake Up and Cook"
Digesting The Dharma
In my last column, I provided a brief history of the attempt to anthologize Buddhist texts, to reduce the teachings of Buddhism to a single volume. The organization of these anthologies was often telling, revealing the…
The Good Heart: A Buddhist Perspective On The Teachings Of Jesus
The Good Heart: A Buddhist Perspective on the Teachings of JesusHis Holiness the Dalai Lama Wisdom Publications: Boston, 1996.207 pp., $24.00 (hardcover). In 1994, His Holiness the Dalai Lama took part in the john Main…
In the News Spring 1997
PAGODA SIEGE Vietnam’s communist government intensified its crackdown on the Unified Buddhist Church (UBC) when more than 200 armed security forces raided a 400-year-old pagoda in Hue and arrested two prominent monks there in November. The…
The Hermit Who Owned His Mountain
A Profile of W.Y. Evans Wentz
CultureMagazine | Book Reviews
Mountains And Rivers Without End
Mountains And Rivers Without EndGary SnyderCounterpoint: Washington, D.C., 1996 165 pp., $20.00 (hardcover) Wet and covered with pine needles, Gary Snyder’s new book arrived at my door on a rare rainy day in Los Angeles. Perhaps…
Back to Basics
Dharma 101, this issue’s special section (p. 40), includes some very basic questions, but that doesn’t limit it to beginners. There’s nothing elementary in asking about karma, enlightenment, emptiness, or in asking, “if there is no…
Personal ReflectionsMagazine | On Gardening
Daughters of the Wind
EVERY YEAR around the spring equinox, the prevailing westerly winds begin to gust, battering the California coast just a scant half-mile from Green Gulch Farm. These westerlies are a swollen river of air moving across the…
Columns
Personal ReflectionsMagazine | Column
What Does Being A Buddhist Mean To You? Spring 1997
RE: Beginner's mind