Featured Contributors

Palden Weinreb

“The idea of an invisible framework for our existence fascinates me,” says artist Palden Weinreb, whose spiritually-informed drawings, paintings, and lithographs are featured in this issue’s portfolio and on the cover. A Tibetan American, he was born and raised in New York City, where he lives and works. After graduating from Skidmore College, he traveled to Tibet to connect with his heritage; along with his Buddhist practice, it is among the main influences on his work. Once a volunteer at the Rubin Museum of Art, Weinreb now has art on permanent display there and has exhibited at many museums across the country.

Haemin Sunim

The Zen monk Haemin Sunim, who teaches us the value of setting boundaries in “The Courage To Say I Can’t,” is a well-known public figure in South Korea. Originally from Daejeon, he came to the US to study at UC Berkeley, Princeton, and Harvard. After earning his PhD, Haemin taught Buddhism at Hampshire College and wrote the bestsellers The Things You Can Only See When You Slow Down and Love for Imperfect Things. Returning to South Korea, he founded the nonprofit School for Broken Hearts in Seoul. By 2020, he had amassed more than 1 million followers on social media and faced intense scrutiny for his secular lifestyle.

Emma Varvaloucas

Haemin Sunim’s controversial past is the topic of  “The ‘Twitter Monk’” by Tricycle’s former executive editor Emma Varvaloucas. Varvaloucas studied journalism at NYU and Tibetan Buddhism at Rangjung Yeshe Institute in Nepal before joining Tricycle in 2011. After a decade of writing and editing for Tricycle, she became the executive director of the Progress Network at New America. There, she oversees the organization, writes the What Could Go Right? newsletter, and co-hosts the WCGR? podcast. She has also edited two Buddhist books: Touching Ground by Tim Testu and Wholehearted by Koshin Paley Ellison. She has been living and working in Athens, Greece for three years.

Satya Robyn

Satya Robyn is a Pure Land Buddhist minister, psychotherapist, and writer from Malvern, Worcestershire, UK. Satya runs the Bright Earth network in Malvern as a head teacher alongside her partner, Kaspa Thompson. An animal lover, Robyn has been an active member of the environmental movement Extinction Rebellion since 2019. Her dog Ralph is prominently featured in her dharma talk, “On Wanting to Look Good,” which discusses the importance of coming back to ourselves. Robyn has written two Buddhist books—Just As You Are, co-authored with Thompson, and Coming Home: Refuge in Pureland Buddhism­—as well as novels, poetry, and reflections on climate grief and activism.