Contributors Spring 2001

In his work, Mark Epstein, psychiatrist and author of Thoughts Without a Thinker and the forthcoming Going on Being (see “Platform of Joy“), brings a Buddhist perspective on human suffering to Western psychology’s approach to mental anguish. He lives with his wife, artist Arlene Shechet, and their children in New York City.

Ken McLeod (“Buddhism in a Nutshell“) served as a translator for Kalu Rinpoche, H.H. Karmapa XVI, and Dezhung Rinpoche. He completed two consecutive three-year retreats with Kalu Rinpoche and was given full authorization to teach and guide students in 1985. The translator of The Great Path of Awakening, he is also the founder of Unfettered Mind, a nonprofit organization that takes innovative approaches to teaching Buddhism. 

Three Tricycle staff members met this winter with professor and Zen teacher Nancy Baker to discuss feminism and Buddhism (“Of Samurai and Sisterhood“). Alexis Rubenstein, Tricycle’s coordinator of special projects, studied Tibetan religion and language at Columbia University; Tammy Greenstein is a musician and Zen student in charge of classifieds and dharma center listings for the magazine; and Christine Dzialo is a student at The Tibet Center and the new director of the Tricycle ExChange.

At the time he sat down to read The Education of Henry Adams, Henry Whitfield(“Bodhisattva of Rock Creek“) had recently become interested in Zen. This made him attentive to the book’s references to Buddhism and ultimately led to the writing of this article. Born and rasied in the South, Henry now lives and works in Oakland, California. 

James Grauerholz (“Nothing is True“) was William S. Burroughs’ companion and collaborator for twenty-three years, until the author’s death in August 1997. He now lives in Lawrence, Kansas and manages Burroughs’ estate. Unlike Burroughs, Grauerholz is a Buddhist, albeit without any formal discipline. He is working on an in-depth biography of Burroughs, and teaches about the author’s life and work at the University of Kansas. 

A former offshore oil rig worker and private investigator, Alex McKay (“Hitler and the Himalayas“) is now an Indo-Tibetan historian. The author of Tibet and the British Raj (1997), he is a research fellow at the London University School of Oriental and African Studies and the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden. He is editing a three-voume history of Tibet and writing a history of pilgrimage to Mount Kailas.