Special Section
You Can’t Always Get What You Want
…and it may not be what you want, anyway.
By Ken McLeod
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The Buddhist Review
Back Issues
…and it may not be what you want, anyway.
By Ken McLeodThe love poems of the Sixth Dalai Lama celebrate and lament the pangs of desire.
By Tsangyang Gyatso
An Interview with Mark Epstein: A contemporary psychiatrist uses ancient Buddhist wisdom to make sense of desire in our everyday lives.
Interview with Mark Epstein by Mark Matousek
Three approaches from Tibetan Buddhism
By Matthieu Ricard
What it means when we fall in love with someone we don’t even know.
By Tara BrachThe eighth-century Buddhist master on desire’s trap
By Shantideva
A Zen monk embraces the red thread of passion
By Ikkyu
When does craving become addiction?
By Joan Duncan Oliver
There comes a moment in everyone’s practice when our fixed ideas of what is spiritual, and what’s not, collapse in a paradoxical heap before our very eyes. We’re troubled, mystified, frequently angered by these intrusions of too—messy life into the glass house of our idealized self; we’re left to wonder, very often, where desire parts […]
By Mark Matousek
Desire is fuel.
By Jane Hirshfield
A Buddhist take on good and evil.
By Stephen Batchelor
When I was five, I soaked a bucketful of pennies in blue starch. It was that kindergarten kind of starch, a magical substance. At night before I went to bed, I poured the pennies under my pillow. The plan was this: While I dreamt on top of them, God would take them for the poor […]
By Noelle Oxenhandler
Can a prime-time TV show take Buddhist sensibilities into the mainstream?
By Jeff Greenwald
From downward dog to the dharma
By Anne CushmanWhat happens when a lapsed-Catholic house painter from Glasgow suddenly takes up Buddhist meditation? For Jimmy McKenna—”Da” (Scottish for “Dad”) in Buddha Da, Anne Donovan’s acclaimed first novel, just published in the U.S.—it’s the undoing of his pleasant if predictable life with wife, Liz, and adolescent daughter, Anne Marie. The three chronicle the fallout from […]
By Anne DonovanAs remembered by Naropa’s first poetry student, Sam Kashner
By Sam KashnerPolitics of succession among the Karma Kagyu.
By Chrisine CoxMystery without mysticism
By Dan Zigmond“Respect simple, humble materials.” —Paul Kos What does ice sound like as it melts? It sounds absurd. But it’s not, as Paul Kos demonstrated in his 1970 installation “The Sound of Ice Melting,” based on the famous Zen koan “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” It’s just that any attempt to hear […]
By TricycleIn a season of constant change, the primeval magnolia offers reassurance.
By Wendy Johnson
Buddhism’s not such a raw deal.
By James BarazA visit to Kushinagar, where the Buddha took his last breath.
By Allan Hunt Badiner
How to survive a traffic jam—on the road, or in the heart.
By Michele McDonald
An unexpected trip to the site of the Buddha’s enlightenment.
By Mark Magill
Tricycle editor-at-large Joan Duncan Oliver mined her own compulsions for “Drink and a Man” (page 67), a first-person essay in the special section “The Riddle of Desire.” “I wish I’d read Mu Soeng’s new book, Trust in Mind, before I sat down to write,” she says, referring to the Buddhist scholar’s latest title (review in […]
By TricycleMany years ago I sat in a café reading a college textbook on Buddhism. An elderly woman at the next table had been eyeing me curiously and seemed to have something to say. I looked over at her several times, tacitly inviting her to speak, but she remained silent. Had she noticed the title of […]
By TricycleEternal Delight In her article on the First Hindrance [“On Practice,” Spring 2004], Geri Larkin offers advice to a reader who feels guilty about desiring someone other than her/his partner. In her response she quotes the Dhammapadaon the misfortunes arising from adultery. Prohibition of adultery is certainly central to Buddhist teachings on lay morality; however, […]
By Tricycle
Spalding Gray (1941-2004)In an interview with His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama in Tricycle’s premier issue, writer and performer Spalding Gray set the tone for issues to come with wit, humor, and what a few chagrined American Buddhists considered irreverence. Gray (and Tricycle) brought on the censure of some, but His Holiness didn’t seem to […]
By TricycleFilm as practice
By Nathaniel DorskyGlenn H. Mullin is curator of “Flying Mystics of Tibetan Buddhism,” an exhibit at the Oglethorpe University Museum, in Atlanta, Georgia, through August 8, 2004. He recently spoke to Tricycle about the curious phenomenon of airborne monks. “I wanted to do an exhibit about the flying mystics who are celebrated in Indo-Tibetan art and literature, […]
By TricycleAs she returns to lay life, a Buddhist nun finds the first precept the hardest to keep.
By Faith AdieleNavigating the threshold of attachment
By Dimitri EhrlichMonk stunts, mile-high meditation, and adventures in dharma dating
By Jeff WilsonCan you put a price on the dharma? In this parable, one student finds out the hard way.
By Richard ShrobeThe “ancient seat of Buddhist learning” may be your ergonomic chair.
By Caitlin Van DusenTibetan scholar and visionary Khenpo Jigme Phuntsog (1933-2004)
By Jane CapleWhat to do when inspiration strikes while sitting. Q & A with Gavin Harrison
By TricycleIn 1999, Michael Rothenberg became the caretaker for his teacher and mentor, Philip Whalen. The following poem is taken from his recent book, written as a eulogy to the late poet. Dharma transmission: “another maniac unleashed, alas!” Buddhism in America “The upper middle way” Old Hippie say someone gives you roses and […]
By Michael RothenbergMahamudra—direct examination of the mind—has a growing following in the West. Though an advanced teaching, it is well suited to Westerners, suggests Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, one of the foremost mahamudra teachers, and tutor to the 17th Karmapa. “It is peaceful and gentle, and there isn’t much danger of making terrible mistakes or creating a practice […]
By Joan Duncan Oliver
An interview with scholar Mu Soeng and an excerpt from his new book, Trust in Mind
By Tricycle
Gehlek Rimpoche: The “Renegade” Lama
By Jane Ratcliffe