A Letter from South Africa

Dharma in American Internment Camps

The other day I picked up a world religions textbook my twin sons were using for their freshman high school history course. The chapter on Buddhism had a subdivision entitled “Western Buddhism,” and here you could…

Buddhist Views on Organ Donation

On the Set with Bertolucci

An interview with Philip Kapleau Roshi

MY DAUGHTER HAS BEEN LOST TO ME in a world I don’t understand. I have been lost to her in a world she came to scorn. In more than two years, I haven’t spoken with her.…

NO BARRIER: Unlocking the Zen Koan Thomas ClearyBantam Books: New York, 1993.224 pp., $9.95 (paperback). THOMAS CLEARY is a genius, the blurb on the back cover of my page proofs announces, as if this were not…

FOOD FOR THOUGHT Let us agree that Buddhism is not vegetarianism. It is not “virtue” either, or “peace,” or “gratitude,” or any other word or concept. To identify it with anything at all is to reduce…

THIS YEAR MARKS the centennial of the Parliament of World Religions; for the first time in America, clergy from non-theistic religions were invited to represent their traditions. Zen abbot Soyen Shaku (see “Ancestors”) addressed the assembly…

1. Wat Buddhawararam, Denver, Colorado, founded in 1976, a former church (Theravada). © Rachel Antell. 2. Chuang-yen, Carmel, New York, founded in 1975 (Chinese Tientai, Zen, and Pure Land Buddhism). © Wen-Jie Qin. 3. Seumi Sha…

To take the one seat is to discover that we are unshakable

Episode One

NOBEL CAUSE A group of Nobel laureates including the Dalai Lama, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mother Theresa, and Desmond Tutu convened in Bangkok early this year to protest the detainment of fellow laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, currently…

WHEN THE PARLIAMENT of World Religions opened in Chicago in September 1893, a replica of the Liberty Bell tolled ten times, once for each of the great religions represented. Charles Carroll Bonney, the President of the…

In a traditional Zen monastery, the position of tenzo, or head cook, is held by a monk who is considered to “have way-seeking mind, or by senior disciples with an aspiration for enlightenment.” Here, Japanese Zen…

THE PRAJNAPARAMITA SUTRA is considered the originating text of Mahayana Buddhism. Scholars agree that it began to emerge into prominence in India from about 100 B.C.E., about four hundred years after the final nirvana of Shakyamuni…

Once you sit, do not change the position again until the end of the time you determined at the beginning. Suppose you change your original position because it is uncomfortable, and assume another position. What happens…

  Elaine Waller-Rose Los Angeles, CaliforniaPsychotherapist and Social Worker“Before I became a Buddhist, I felt some sort of rebirth needed to occur in order to work out one’s difficulties and move to a higher sense of…

MY FATHER’S GURU: A Journey Through Spirituality and Disillusion Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson Addison Wesley: New York, 1993. 174 pp., $20.00 (hardback). IT WOULD BE A MISTAKE to dismiss Jeffrey Masson. The psychoanalytic community would like to…

CLOUDLESS SKY: The Mahamudra Path of the Tibetan Buddhist Kagyu School The Third Jamgon Kongtrul Edited and translated into German by Tina Drasczyk and Alex Drasczyk. English translation by Richard Gravel. Shambhala Publications: Boston, 1992. 135…

Only Companion: Japanese Poems of Love and Longing Translated by Sam Hamill, Shambhala Publications: Boston, 1992. 160 pp., $11.00 (paperback). In his preface to Only Companion, translator Sam Hamill points the way for us to follow,…

THE SNOW LION’S TURQUOISE MANE: Wisdom Tales from Tibet Surya Das, HarperSanFrancisco: San Francisco, 1992. 255 pp., $17.00 (paperback). A FEW YEARS AGO, Joseph Campbell’s conversations with Bill Moyers on public television captured the imagination of…

ENLIGHTENED COURAGE: An Explanation of Atisha’s Seven Point Mind Training Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche Padmakara Publications: Peyzac-le-Moustier, France, 1992. 120 pp., $20.00 (paperback). SHORTLY BEFORE HE DIED, Dilgo Khyentse, old man master of the Tibetan Nyingmas, taught…

THE FRUITFUL DARKNESS Joan Halifax Harper San Francisco: San Francisco, 1993. 240 pp., $18.00 (hardback). JOAN HALIFAX is a cultural anthropologist and author with a specialty in shamanism and some status as a leader of workshops,…

THE EIGHT GATES OF ZEN: Spiritual Training in an American Zen Monastery John Daido loori Dharma Communications: Mount Tremper; NY, 1992. 270 pp., $12.95 (paperback). “THERE IS NO TEACHER on the face of the earth who…

LORD OF THE DANCE: The Autobiography of a Tibetan Lama Chagdud TulkuPadma Publishing: Johnson City, CA, 1992.248 pp., $16.95 (paperback). THE GREAT VIRTUE of Lord of the Dance, Chagdud Tulku’s autobiography, is the utter straightforwardness with…