Letters to the Editor

On “Making Friends with the Night” by Noelle Oxenhandler (Spring 2024):

Thank you, Tricycle, for Noelle Oxenhandler’s lovely article on embracing one’s insomnia. For many years, I have explained my middle-of-the-night wakefulness as “bad sleep habits.” Over my career, lack of sleep affected my abilities, and I had noticeable physical symptoms apart from simple tiredness. During the period of my Zen practice in which I engaged with koan study, I used my time awake at night to sit on my cushion and hold my koan before me. I found that very often, my presentation would come to me, and it would always be a presentation that had to do with my own life and how the koan spoke to me in that realm. I suspect that while I wasn’t actually asleep, I was in fact in some liminal state that offered me insights not available to me in normal wakefulness. Now, I am finished with my koan study and simply sit shikantaza, but often still in the middle of the night. That liminal state continues to be available to me during those times, and for that I am grateful to meet what arises with a different mind.

–Mushin Sensei

On “Lighten Up” by Bhikkhu Santi (Spring 2024):

Bhikkhu Santi evokes several images: a hamster on its wheel, loop-de-loops, the cyclic nature of habits. He also evokes images of impossible and delusory events, like the deadening of the mind or an out-of-mind experience. We reside in our mind; it is our only real environment; it is always with us. In meditation above all, it is the vehicle. Dante has the wonderful image of “the lake of the heart.” We have a “lake of the mind.” It can look still but never is still. Thus, the need goes on to find “perfect” equanimity, whether in sitting, splitting firewood, or walking along.

We reside in our mind; it is our only real environment; it is always with us. In meditation above all, it is the vehicle.

–James Carson

On “Perfect Days” by Tim Brinkoff (Summer 2024):

I loved the film Perfect Days so much. And now, thanks to your interview with Wim Wenders, I love it even more and can’t wait to see it again! Until Perfect Days, his film Wings of Desire had been my all-time number one favorite. When I watched the film, I was particularly struck by the moment every morning when Hirayama left his apartment and looked up at the sky through the trees. Now that I know about komorebi [the play of light through trees], that moment is even more heart-expanding. Thank you, thank you!

–Jocelyn Stevenson

As I watched the movie Perfect Days several weeks ago, I was thinking, “Tricycle should review this.” But your article “Perfect Days” (Summer 2024) about the movie was more than just a review.

While watching, I kept thinking, “This is a movie about how to live your life.” We have so many movies about how not to live, it’s refreshing to see one about how to live. Hirayama’s life isn’t perfect—who among us would want to spend our days cleaning toilets?—but he makes something perfect out of it. The film gives us enough of his backstory to let us know that his wisdom comes out of difficulty and pain, but he has overcome them. The movie doesn’t wallow in his difficulties; it barely mentions them. It gives us just enough.

If you want to know how to live your life—however you spend your time—Perfect Days is the movie to see.

 –David Guy

On “The ‘Twitter Monk’” by Emma Varvaloucas (Spring 2024):

This is a powerful piece and so interesting to me as a lay practitioner and clinical psychologist. I did not know of Haemin Sunim before reading this and found his openness and sincerity, as presented here, to be sweet and refreshing. How easy it is to deny wrongdoing or try to clean it up with falsehoods. To simply own it and pivot in order to stay true to one’s vows and values is an example from which all of us can benefit.

–Shielagh Shusta Hochberg

On “Freedom Over Justice” by Thanissaro Bhikkhu (Summer 2024):

Thank you for publishing Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s wonderful treatise “Freedom Over Justice”. He presents an astute yet totally accessible analysis of a very challenging concept that, in my opinion, succeeds in all ways—one of the most enlightening and inspiring things I’ve read in a long time!

–Malcolm Clark

On “Karma and Wish-Making in Buddhist Thailand” by Brooke Schedneck (Spring 2024):

This is a subject I’m very interested in. The vast majority of material on Buddhism I’ve found in the West speaks only about the philosophy of Buddhism and the practice of meditation but rarely discusses how Buddhism is practiced and understood by ordinary people on a day-to-day basis in Buddhist societies. I’m dying to know more!

–Andrew Waybright

On “Translating Time” by Arthur Sze (Spring 2024):

Arthur Sze is exactly right! In Chinese poems, not only the literal translation of a verse matters but also the insinuation from the tone of the words within the verse matters in some cases. Thus, literally translating a poem will lose its true hidden messages. This is one difference between English and Chinese poetry. One same word alone sometimes carries four different tones, which have four different meanings.

–Johny Chang