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Prior to their life in exile, many of the nuns in Tibet had demonstrated against Chinese rule. As a result, they were threatened, imprisoned, and tortured. Nuns who remained in Tibet held demonstrations in the late eighties and early nineties in Lhasa. Circumambulating the Jokhang Temple in Barkhor Square, nuns would shout, “Free Tibet!” “Chinese […]
I noticed the afternoon was getting hotter as I unloaded my family from the car at the Subang Jaya Buddha Vihara in a suburb of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. “It’s going to be great,” I convincingly reassured my two kids. “How often do you get to see someone ordain for real?” We had come to witness […]
Anne A. Simpkinson on the increasing numbers of dharma teachers who are also therapists. What happens when your teacher is your shrink?
In an open letter, William R. Lafleur, professor of Japanese Studies, criticizes the Roman Catholic Church for its stand against contraception and implores the pope to reconsider the Vatican’s position in light of Buddhist ethics.
Kenneth S. Cohen on what got China’s hackles up about the mysterious Qigong meditation movement. Is Falun Gong a turning of the dharma wheel or a new fundamentalism?
We had just opened our building in lower Manhattan when we saw smoke sliding out from under Rooster Vargas’s door. My then supervisor, a sultry woman in her mid-twenties who did not know what she was getting into (and who soon became conveniently pregnant and left), pounded on Rooster’s door. She got no response. She […]
“There are no dead people,” Bob Thurman says. “No one is going to become a dead person. There is no death.” He’s launching the third Art of Dying conference in New York City, cosponsored by Tibet House, of which he’s president, and the New York Open Center. He will talk for four hours, without a […]
Tricycle welcomes letters to the editor. Letters are subject to editing. Please send correspondence to: Tricycle: The Buddhist Review92 Vandam StreetNew York, NY 10013Fax: (212) 645-1493E-mail address: editorial@tricycle.com Spiritual Bypassing John Welwood’s article on “The Psychology of Awakening” was a wonderful overview of the difficulty people experience in integrating their intensely spiritual inner awakenings with their […]
In Thailand there is a law against impersonating monks. But designer Montri Toemsombat featured pop stars and models in suspiciously monklike robes for a fashion spread in a popular women’s magazine. Authorities were outraged. The Department of Religious Affairs is investigating. Shatoosh shawls are being policed. It takes at least three chiru, or Tibetan […]
Death is all around us, everywhere. For the most part—following the lead of our culture—we avoid it. But if we do open our hearts to death, it can be a great help to us.
When things are running smoothly, the refrigerator is very much like some people’s idea of the perfect Zen student. It is calm, cool, and quiet, and it possesses its own inner light. Actually, the refrigerator is quite a noble thing on its own merit. For many of us, it has a formidable presence. It offers […]
The Chinese government’s recent crackdown on China’s Falun Gong religious sect has had only limited effect. The biggest result is a temperature rise in the hothouse of Chinese religious politics. This and other recent events again highlight the severe contridictions in China’s “commitment to allowing religious freedom” and its need to suppress what it views […]
Winter was cut short again this year. Cherry trees on the Brown campus blossomed in December, and crocuses emerged at the start of March. The National Climate Data Center reported that the last three winters were the warmest on record. And this past winter was the warmest of those three. It is hard to deny […]
[Humphreys and his wife] ran the Buddhist Lodge from their flat . . . where they had made a hideaway with a bright fire, Persian rugs, incense, golden Buddhas, and a library of magical books which promised me the most arcane secrets of the universe. . . . He is a tall, slender, and limber […]
When speaking of world religions it’s become standard to turn up the volume on those aspects that are shared and, conversely, to turn it down on the differences. Ecumenical dialogues often sound stripped of authenticity by a tacit consent not to disagree. In the fractured delicacies of postmodern pluralism, there seems little interest in distinguishing […]
Some recommendations
Spring is bellowing out now in California, full-throated spring, and I can barely catch my breath amid her explosive arias and high-pitched scales that run from January through the end of April. Time in the garden is told by linked events, and I mark the rapid ascent of spring by the unfurling of one of […]
An excerpt from the book and an interview with Ani Pachen
Dreaming in the Lotus: Buddhist Dream Narrative, Imagery, & Practice By Serinity Young Wisdom Publications: Boston, 1999 296 pp.; $18.95 (paper) MARK EPSTEIN, M.D. Dreams play an uncelebrated but important role in the Indo-Tibetan tradition. From the time of the earliest Vedas, the very existence of the universe was linked to the dream. At the beginning […]
An Interview with Jack Kornfield
Lama Yeshe, the great sage of Kathmandu in the 1970’s, expounded Vajrayana Buddhism to the first wave of Westerners seeking wisdom in the Himalayas.
The Buddha from Brooklyn
TEMPLE AMNESIA Vice President Al Gore still isn’t out of the woods regarding his controversial visit to Hsi Lai Buddhist Temple in southern California in April 1996. He has said he thought the event was “community outreach,” not a fund-raiser, and that the $55,000 the visit netted was raised without his knowledge. In a press […]
