Letters to the Editor

On “Taking the Ache Out of Attachment” by Ven. Thubten Chodron, Fall 2023:

I

found the article to be a very potent and evocative teaching. Venerable Thubten Chodron had us contemplate dying and what that might mean beyond the material world of grasping, holding, and clinging.

I was brought to the moment-to-moment ingredients of my life. I turned inward and leaned in, inquiring: What is here? Who am I? What am I becoming as I detangle attachments and loosen into no-self, no other?

It is all gray matter—not quite smoke and mirrors, but clouds. How do I grasp at clouds the way I grasp things that are tangible and seemingly real, and how can I ungrasp them if not by releasing the very notions themselves?

So as I turned toward my suffering, I saw it more clearly—the root of the cause, and the cause of the root. I embrace emptiness in formless form. This too is a practice in grief. Thank you, Venerable Thubten Chodron.

– Kissiah Young

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As the summer went on, I found less and less room for my “things.” Reading Venerable Thubten Chodron’s article gave me some helpful clues to practice minimizing attachment and find more space to enjoy and use. Thank you

– Mary Martell

On “The Big Picture” by Anne C. Klein, Fall 2023:

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Thank you Anne C. Klein for sharing your article in the Fall 2023 issue—I had a strong heart opening while reading it. I once had a similar “serendipitous glimpse of awakening,” and the idea of the present moment being perfect has continued to guide me ever since. Reading your article, I was reminded of the book The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, in which the neuroscientist and philosopher Iain McGilchrist expounds on the right-brain experience of direct unnamed wholeness and interconnectedness. It seems absolutely clear to me that he was talking about the very same “pristine awareness” described in Dzogchen. This noncoincidence points to an experience of awakening available here and now, for all beings. You just have to learn to notice, and your article reminded me of this.

– Sion Williams

On “The Problem of Shape” by Clark Strand, Fall 2023:

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Clark Strand’s commentary in is a wonderful example of how a poem belongs equally to the poet and the reader. To me, a dragonfly is its wings. We do indeed go through life as if we were a wingless dragonfly. But if we open our eyes and flex our shoulders, our near-invisible, horizontal wings can carry us anywhere. And dragonflies never keep to a straight trajectory. Thanks also to Tricycle for its (horizontal) openness to this very American haiku.

– Mary Wilson

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The winning haiku by Mariya Gusev in the Fall 2023 issue is magnificent. As is the accompanying art by Matthew Richardson. They made my day!

– Lois Rodenhuis

On “An Academic Like No Other” by Sarah Fleming, Fall 2023:

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Thank you so much for this wonderful profile of Professor Robert Buswell. I chanced upon Dr. Buswell’s book The Zen Monastic Experience a few years ago and learned so much from it—and “unlearned” even more, given that most of my reading about Zen and Chan consisted of books by Western practitioners who had neither the scholarship nor the depth of practice of Professor Buswell. And while I’d had a little exposure to Korean Buddhism, I had no idea that for depth, profundity, and diversity it was fully the equal of the better-known Chinese and Japanese traditions.

I so appreciate Tricycle’s going out of its way to feature great scholar-practitioners, from Donald S. Lopez Jr. to Anne C. Klein to Dr. Buswell. Humble lay practitioners like myself, with no grasp of the primary languages, would have nothing to practice and no context for it were it not for these amazing teachers. Thank you, Sarah Fleming!

– Kevin Knox

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