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The Buddhist Review
Back Issues
…and it may not be what you want, anyway.
The love poems of the Sixth Dalai Lama celebrate and lament the pangs of desire.
An Interview with Mark Epstein: A contemporary psychiatrist uses ancient Buddhist wisdom to make sense of desire in our everyday lives.
Three approaches from Tibetan Buddhism
What it means when we fall in love with someone we don’t even know.
The eighth-century Buddhist master on desire’s trap
A Zen monk embraces the red thread of passion
When does craving become addiction?
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 […]
Desire is fuel.
A Buddhist take on good and evil.
It turns out money’s not so bad after all.
Can a prime-time TV show take Buddhist sensibilities into the mainstream?
From downward dog to the dharma
What 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 […]
As remembered by Naropa’s first poetry student, Sam Kashner
Politics of succession among the Karma Kagyu.
Mystery without mysticism
“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 […]
In a season of constant change, the primeval magnolia offers reassurance.
Buddhism’s not such a raw deal.
A visit to Kushinagar, where the Buddha took his last breath.
How to survive a traffic jam—on the road, or in the heart.
An unexpected trip to the site of the Buddha’s enlightenment.
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 […]
Many 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 […]
Eternal 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, […]
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 […]
Film as practice
Glenn 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, […]
As she returns to lay life, a Buddhist nun finds the first precept the hardest to keep.
Navigating the threshold of attachment
Monk stunts, mile-high meditation, and adventures in dharma dating
Can you put a price on the dharma? In this parable, one student finds out the hard way.
The “ancient seat of Buddhist learning” may be your ergonomic chair.
Tibetan scholar and visionary Khenpo Jigme Phuntsog (1933-2004)
What to do when inspiration strikes while sitting. Q & A with Gavin Harrison
In 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 […]
Mahamudra—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 […]
An interview with scholar Mu Soeng and an excerpt from his new book, Trust in Mind
Gehlek Rimpoche: The “Renegade” Lama