Feature
A New Place, A New Time
An interview with Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche about the leadership of Shambhala, the legacy of his father, Trungpa Rinpoche, and the future of Buddhism in the West.
The Buddhist Review
Back IssuesAn interview with Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche about the leadership of Shambhala, the legacy of his father, Trungpa Rinpoche, and the future of Buddhism in the West.
A Meeting of Images
Lawrence Shainberg interviews Robert Jay Lifton on Aum Shinrikyo
Screenwriter Melissa Mathison speaks with the Dalai Lama about getting the script of Kundun right
In 1928, Julius Goldwater took Buddhist vows. During World War II, he was priest to thousands of interned Japanese. Today, Goldwater—perhaps the oldest living Western convert to Buddhism—continues to expound and explore his American dharma. Julius Goldwater wasn’t the only boy in Los Angeles in the Roaring Twenties who swooned over Aimée Semple McPherson. A […]
The legacy of Lost Horizon
Orville Schell interviews Becky Johnston, screenwriter of Seven Years in Tibet
By Les Kaye
The Masters of Meditation and Miracles: The Longchen Nyingthig Lineage of Tibetan BuddhismTulku ThondupEdited by Harold TalbottShambhala Publications: Boston, 1996.383 pp., $35 (cloth). The Longchen Nyingthig lineage of Tibetan Buddhism is said to have originated with the primordial Buddha Samantabhadra. But the first master of these teachings was Garab Dorje. Born in the Swat Valley […]
Death Matters In the article “What Is Death?” by Robert Thurman, published in your Fall 1997 issue, Mr. Thurman criticizes materialists for a view that no modern, educated materialist would ever hold: i.e., that consciousness is a thing of some kind (an “energy reality,” as Thurman calls it) that becomes nothingness at death. He seems […]
By Sandy Boucher
By Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn
By Gretel Ehrlich
My infant daughter Jordan doesn’t let me sit zazen. All day, she conspires with her older sister Erin so that when the toddler naps, the infant is awake and when the infant naps, the toddler is awake. The day is a blur of diapers and drool, tears and laughter, and when at last night comes […]
The movies Kundun and Seven Years in Tibet will introduce millions of Westerners to the cultural and religious heritage of Tibet, as well as to the Chinese takeover. Indeed, the hope of both screenwritersMelissa Mathison and Becky Johnston is that their movies will catalyze a grass-roots movement capable of influencing the Clinton administration’s policy toward China—specifically, […]
By Colin Hester
Upright, well-mannered gardens, with tidy beds of manicured lettuce corseted by tightly clipped boxwood hedges, make me itch. I have a naughty mind that wants to scratch rank pigwood seed between all neat and trim rows. Give me a wild garden any day. One of the most inspiring autumn gardens I ever saw was just […]
THE GOLDSMITH Shakyamuni Buddha THERE ARE THESE GROSS IMPURITlES in gold: dirty sand, gravel, and grit. The dirt-washer, having placed the gold in a vat, washes it again and again until he has washed them away. When he is rid of them, there remain the moderate impurities in the gold: coarse sand and fine grit. […]
Theravada Monk and Pioneer Publisher
Even though we practice, we continue to fall for pleasant feelings. Feelings are illusory on many levels. We don’t realize that they’re changeable and unreliable. Instead of offering pleasure, they offer us nothing but stress—yet we’re still addicted to them. This business of feeling is a very subtle matter. Please try to contemplate it carefully, […]
Aide to Tibet In a move that marks a new era in American diplomatic relations with Tibet, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright announced in July that she would appoint a “special coordinator” to handle American policy toward the beleaguered Himalayan nation. In October, Albright named State Department Director of Policy Planning Greg Craig to […]
Edited by Donald Lopez, Jr.
Re: When do you lie?