Contributors Spring 2010

KHENPO TSÜLTRIM GYAMTSO is a Buddhist master who trained extensively with yogis living in the remote monasteries and caves of Tibet. In 1959, local nuns asked him for protection from the invading Communists, and he led them to safety in Bhutan. In 1977, he began teaching worldwide about the path of wisdom and compassion, which he continued to do for the next thirty years. His latest book, “Stars of Wisdom,” (excerpted here) is a compilation of these teachings. He currently lives in Nepal and Bhutan. He enjoys singing joyful yogic songs.

SENSEI NANCY MUJO BAKER is a dharma successor of Roshi Bernie Glassman and runs the No Traces Zendo, in New York City. She is also a professor of philosophy at Sarah Lawrence College, where she specializes in the later philosophy of Wittgenstein. Several years ago, Roshi Glassman empowered her and two other lay teachers to transmit the Zen precepts. During a nine-month study with her sangha in 2004-2005, she gave a dharma talk on each precept: “First,” she told her students, “we need to find out precisely what aspect of the precept is alive for anyone of us, and, second, we need to get to know ourselves deeply and with no judgment in relation to that precept.” Her article “On Not Being Stingy” investigates the eighth precept.

CLARK STRAND writes: “For ten years I would wake for one or two hours in the middle of every night. I’d have taken sleep medication if I hadn’t had a hunch that I was onto something. Did I find it in the end? Not really. It found me.” Hidden in the earliest texts of traditions such as Zen, Strand discovered the traces of an ancient tradition that he calls “Green Meditation.” Recovering those older, greener teachings is essential if we want to regain our sanity as a species, he says. The good news is, we can find them simply by turning out the lights. The author of “How to Believe in God: Whether You Believe in Religion or Not” (Doubleday), Strand teaches meditation using the “green dharma” of various traditions.

DOUGLAS ADESKO, who photographed Vinny Ferraro, the Teacher Training Director of the Mind Body Awareness Project, takes pictures for the New York Times Magazine, Discover, and Popular Mechanics. Over the past few years, he’s travelled all around the country photographing families eating together. He recently began a new project focused on the Interstate 80 corridor through California’s Central Valley. If things go well, he will own a laundromat someday. He lives in Brooklyn.