Anay Ngawang Chodak
The Tibetan painter Anay Ngawang Chodak is this issue’s cover artist and the subject of “A World Within” Formerly the artist-in-residence for His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Anay is now making waves as a contemporary artist with gallery exhibitions in India, Nepal, and New York City. He uses bold colors, smiley faces, and gold and silver leaf on handmade canvas and paper to create a unique form of Himalayan devotional art. Educated in thangka (ornate paintings of Tibetan Buddhist deities and historical figures) at the Modern Art School in Mussoorie, India, and as an apprentice under thangka masters Roshan Shakya and Venerable Jamyang, Anay spent eighteen years making traditional Tibetan Buddhist art in Dharamsala, India, before leaving in 2021. Though his style has since evolved, his modern paintings explore traditional Tibetan themes of equanimity, compassion, interconnectedness, and more.
***
Zim Pickens
Zim Pickens is an associate editor at Tricycle and a Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Buddhism Public Scholar. For much of his 20s, he lived among Tibetan Buddhist communities in Kathmandu, Nepal, and later earned a PhD in South and Southeast Asian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. His first personal essay for Tricycle, “The Impasse,” “explores the tension between my appreciation for Tibetan Buddhism and my need to find new ways of engaging with the tradition,” he says. “Academic perspectives are often viewed by practitioners as dry or disconnected from lived experience, but for me, the opposite is true. I wanted to weave historical information into the piece in a way that felt accessible and relevant to Buddhist practitioners.”
***
Sayadaw U Tejaniya
At his center in Yangon, Myanmar, Sayadaw U Tejaniya teaches yogis how to meditate during retreats. In “Mindfulness Is a Lifestyle Change,” he teaches us how to meditate all the time. Tejaniya is a Burmese Theravada monk, but prior to 1996, he lived as a householder and operated a textile business. His lay background helps inform the way that he teaches and connects with his students. He has taught in countries around the world and authored several books, including When Awareness Becomes Natural (2016) and Relax and Be Aware (2019).
Thank you for subscribing to Tricycle! As a nonprofit, we depend on readers like you to keep Buddhist teachings and practices widely available.
Subscribe now to read this article and get immediate access to everything else.
Subscribe NowAlready a subscriber? Log in.