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The Buddhist Review
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Features
Bonfire
Rick Bass reflects on a life devoted to wilderness, and to environmental activism, and discovers that the one needn't exclude the other.
Smiling Not Smiling
A Buddhist screenwriter talks about the Beats, the bodhisattva ideal, and his award-winning screenplay of Neal Cassady.
Personal ReflectionsMagazine | Feature
On Retreat in Burma
A Buddhist nun bites off more than she can chew.
Who’s Zoomin’ Who? The Commodification of Buddhism in the American Marketplace
Is consumerism the new American religion? Is the market itself determining not only the students, but the teachers of Buddhism?
Transmuting Blood and Guts: My Experiences in the Buddhist Military
Why did a conscientious objector choose to join a Buddhist military organization? Kidder Smith looks back on his time with the Vajra Guard.
Tibetan Buddhism in the West: Is It Working?
An interview with B. Alan Wallace
Departments
Cultivating Compassion
An interview with Tibetan scholar Jeffrey Hopkins and an excerpt from his new book.
MeditationMagazine | On Practice
On Lending Our Bodies
When we are caring for someone who is sick, we lend them our body. We use the strength of our arms to move them from the bed to the commode, and we can also lend them…
MeditationMagazine | On Practice
On What to Do When the Going Gets Rough
Caregiving from a Buddhist perspective is a recognition that this person’s suffering is also my suffering. When I see this, whether I’m the person in the bed or the person making the bed, I have to…
Metapsychosis
Jane Hirschfieldfrom Given Sugar, Given SaltHarperCollins: New York, 2001, 88pp.; $24 (cloth) Metapsychosis Some stories last many centuries,others only a moment.All alter over that lifetime like beach-glass,grow distant and more beautiful with salt. Yet even today,…
Personal ReflectionsMagazine | On Parenting
Family Practice
I’d been away on a silent retreat for several weeks. We’d engaged in a Dzogchen preliminary practice of self-inquiry in which one asks, “Who is meditating? Who, what is aware?” By retreat’s end, wondering how my…
MeditationMagazine | On Practice
On the Contagious Power of Presence
When you are grounded in practice you can radiate presence and composure to everyone around you, writes Judith Lief.
Books In Brief Summer 2001
Buddhist Symbolism in Tibetan ThangkasThe Story of Siddhartha and Other Buddhas Interpreted in Modern Nepalese Paintingby Ben MeulenbeldWeiser Books: Maine, 2001112 pp.; $19.95 (paper) This book is an introduction to the art of the Tibetan scroll…
On Silence
Those who are fond of retreats—writers, ecstatics, parents with young children—often comment on the silence such time away allows. Silence becomes something present, almost palpable. The task shifts from keeping the world at a safe decibel…
Personal ReflectionsMagazine | On Gardening
Timeless Spring
Spring washes over the garden; a torrent of sea-green buds swell with rainwater. Song sparrows and orange-crowned warblers begin their dawn chorus well before zazen, reminding cross-legged sitters in the ten directions that it is time…
‘Dakini’s Warm Breath’ by Judith Simmer-Brown
Dakini’s Warm Breath The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism Judith Simmer-Brown Shambhala Publications: Boston, 2001 352 pp.; $29.95 (cloth) If you took the Virgin Mary in all her apparitions—from the carpenter’s gentle wife through the radiant…
Letters to the Editor Summer 2001
Tricycle welcomes letters to the editor. Letters are subject to editing. Please send correspondence to: Tricycle: The Buddhist Review 92 Vandam Street New York, NY 10013 Fax: (212) 645-1493 editorial@tricycle.org Nazi’s Archives As an ethnic Jew…
TeachingsMagazine | On Practice
On Being a True Friend
A dying person most needs to be shown as unconditional a love as possible, released from all expectations. Don’t think you have to be an expert in any way. Be natural, be yourself, be a true…
TeachingsMagazine | On Practice
On the Blessings of Atmosphere
How then do we most sensitively help ordinary spiritual practitioners who are dying? All of us will need the love and care that comes with emotional and practical support, but for spiritual practitioners the atmosphere, instensity,…
MeditationMagazine | On Practice
Death As A Mirror
Caring For the Dying
Going Beyond Ethnic Dualism
Author Charles Johnson reviews two new books by African-American Buddhists.
Contemplating Corporate Culture
An interview with Mirabai Bush on bringing contemplation into the inner sanctum of American power, from Harvard University to Monsanto.
MeditationMagazine | On Practice
A Caregiver’s Story: Raja Hornstein
I’d been working as a hospice volunteer for about six years when my friend Nando fell ill. We had been lovers for many years and though we were separated, we were still close friends. And then…
A Caregiver’s Story: Kaz Suzuki
Around 1989, my partner Raymond, with whom I ended up living for eleven years, began to show some symptoms of HIV-related illness. Considering we were a Japanese and American couple, everyone thinks that I was the…
MeditationMagazine | On Practice
On Breathing Together
For you to be composed and concentrated will help the dying person continue with equanimity on their journey into the after-death state. It can be both calming and otherwise helpful to the dying patient for you…
Selling Water by the River
It’s not unusual for Tricycle to cover the enormous diversity of Buddhism, but in this particular issue, the spectrum is about as broad as it gets. At one end, we have the barbaric destruction of the…
Secret Tibet’ by Fosco Maraini
Secret TibetFosco MarainiThe Harvill Press: London, 2001425 pp.; $35 (cloth) There is something about traveling in Tibet that makes Westerners reach for their pens. But of the literally dozens of travelers who have described their Tibetan…
Contributors Summer 2001
Rob Schultheis, a journalist, painter, and adventurer, covers the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan. He lives in the mountain town of Telluride, Colorado, with his wife-an artist and tour guide whom he married at a…
MeditationMagazine | On Practice
On Beginning at the Beginning
In working with someone who is dying, there is a tremendous temptation to ignore our own relationship to death and immediately assume the role of the helper. But when we do so, we are losing our…
CultureMagazine | In The Footsteps Of The Buddha
City of Screams
The Buddhas of Bamiyan
MeditationMagazine | On Practice
A Caregiver’s Story: Deborah Jaymati Levy
At one point when I was sitting with my father, I said, “Dad, are you afraid of dying?” And he said, “I was, but not now.” He didn’t speak of death a lot. There wasn’t a…
Personal ReflectionsMagazine | On Practice
A Caregiver’s Story: Tony D.
Julia was no one’s beloved friend. Imagine that. Her family was in Oregon and they didn’t know that she had already spent most of her short life trying to kick drugs. And she didn’t want them…
Buddha by Karen Armstrong
BuddhaKaren ArmstrongViking: New York, 2001205 pp.; $19.95 (cloth) How do you write a biography of a Tathagata, one who has “disappeared”? Anyone who aspires to the task of writing the life of the Buddha has to…
Summer Reading 2001
A few recommendations from...
In the News Summer 2001
Fading Hope The Dalai Lama makes a much-anticipated return to the United Stares this May. During his monthlong stay he will visit the cities of Minneapolis, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Jose, and Salt Lake…
