Podcast: Tricycle Talks

Podcast series featuring leading voices and thinkers in the contemporary Buddhist world

Apr 14, 2021

Tricycle Talks — Episode #56

Grieving Mindfully

With Sameet Kumar

We have end-of-life rituals for a reason—to help us accept loss and fully grieve. With well over half a million lives lost to the pandemic so far, grieving may look different under lockdown but it has no off-switch. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Sameet Kumar, a clinical psychologist, grief counselor, and author, joins Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and co-host Sharon Salzberg for a conversation about grief, how we’ve come to redefine it during this time of social distancing, and the importance of staying present to it.

Listen Now on Tricycle | iTunes | SoundCloud

Mar 10, 2021

Tricycle Talks — Episode #55

Becoming a Buddhist Climate Scientist

With Dekila Chungyalpa

For the last 12 years, Dekila Chungyalpa has worked with religious and indigenous leaders, scientists, and policymakers to design community-based environmental and climate programs. But having grown up in the northeastern Indian state of Sikkim, surrounded by strong women who chose to walk the monastic path, Chungyalpa hasn’t always found it easy to show up as both a devout Tibetan Buddhist and a conservation scientist.

In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Chungyalpa shares with Tricycle’s editor James Shaheen how she’s come to integrate her commitments to science and faith, deal with climate deniers, and head the Loka Initiative, a climate-change outreach program that empowers and uplifts religious communities. In the face of so much eco-anxiety, climate distress, and doom and gloom, it is ultimately Buddhist teachings on emptiness, impermanence, non-attachment, and compassion, she says, that sustain her.

Listen Now on Tricycle | iTunes | SoundCloud

Mar 02, 2021

Tricycle Talks — Episode #54

Inside Tricycle’s Spring 2021 Issue

With Seth Zuiho Segall, Daisy Hernández, and Arthur Sze

Inside<i> Tricycle’s</i> Spring 2021 Issue

In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Editor and Publisher James Shaheen is joined by three contributors—Seth Zuiho Segall, Daisy Hernández, and Arthur Sze—to take a closer look at our Spring 2021 issue.

Listen Now on Tricycle | iTunes | SoundCloud

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Feb 10, 2021

Tricycle Talks — Episode #53

On Being Black and Buddhist in America

With Pamela Ayo Yetunde and Cheryl Giles

Race-based suffering, resilience, and transformation are at the core of a new collection of “freedom stories” written by Black Buddhist voices. In our latest episode of Tricycle Talks, editor and publisher James Shaheen speaks about what it means to be Black and Buddhist in America with Pamela Ayo Yetunde and Cheryl Giles, coeditors of Black and Buddhist: What Buddhism Can Teach Us About Race, Resilience, Transformation, and Freedom.

In this conversation, Yetunde, a pastoral counselor and practitioner in the Zen and Insight traditions, and Giles, a professor of pastoral care and counseling at Harvard Divinity School and clinical psychologist, examine racial ignorance and color blindness in Buddhist communities as well as how their dharma practice has helped them to reaffirm and celebrate their Blackness. Together, they reflect on how this anthology of liberation stories can offer all practitioners, regardless of race, a different way of being—of relating to ignorance, anger, trauma, fear, and pain.

Listen Now on Tricycle | iTunes | SoundCloud

Jan 13, 2021

Tricycle Talks — Episode #52

Buddhist Magic and Why We Shouldn’t Cast It Aside

With Sam van Schaik

In his new book, Buddhist Magic: Divination, Healing, and Enchantment Through the Ages, Sam van Schaik, a textual historian and practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism, makes a compelling case for why we should pay attention to Buddhism’s magical heritage—and what we lose by casting it aside.

In our latest podcast episode with Tricycle’s Editor and Publisher James Shaheen, van Schaik debunks misperceptions about early Buddhism by showing how magical literature can offer a more holistic and realistic view of Buddhism from the ground up. He also paints a vivid picture of the role monks and nuns may have played in the magical-gig economy as well as how we can view mindfulness meditation in a comparable way—as the magic of our current age.

Listen Now on Tricycle | iTunes | SoundCloud

Dec 22, 2020

Tricycle Talks — Episode #51

Is Forgiveness Buddhist?

With Barbara Bonner

In Inspiring Forgiveness: Poems, Quotations, and True Stories to Help with Forgiving Yourself and Others, author Barbara Bonner recounts stories about people who found in it themselves to forgive themselves and others when the stakes were exceedingly high. A mother forgives herself after her son commits a school shooting. Eva Kor forgives the doctors who performed medical experiments on her and her sister during the Holocaust. John Lewis forgives George Wallace. The loved ones of the Emanuel Nine forgive the killer and vow to move toward love.

In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s Editor and Publisher James Shaheen sits down with Barbara and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg to discuss these instances of forgiveness as well as the conditions we need to forgive, and to what extent Buddhists engage with the practice.

Listen Now on Tricycle | iTunes | SoundCloud

Nov 25, 2020

Tricycle Talks — Episode #50

Patience to Make It Through

With Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

Amid the craziness of this year, some Buddhists are returning to the classics to ground themselves and their practice. One such classic is the 8th-century Indian philosopher Shantideva’s The Way of the Bodhisattva, whose sixth chapter gets new treatment in Dzigar Kongtrul’s new book, Peaceful Heart: The Buddhist Practice of Patience.

In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s Editor and Publisher James Shaheen sits down with Kongtrul Rinpoche to discuss turning inward to steady oneself for the world, using humor to combat hurt feelings, and how patience is not passivity.

Listen Now on Tricycle | iTunes | SoundCloud

Oct 28, 2020

Tricycle Talks — Episode #49

Religion As We Know It

With Jack Miles

What is religion? Is Buddhism a religion? How about democracy? And how religious (or not) do you have to be to ask?

In the latest episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s Editor and Publisher James Shaheen speaks to Jack Miles, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and scholar of religion, about what we mean when we say something is a religion and how Miles’s own life has led him back to this question time and again.

Listen Now on Tricycle | iTunes | SoundCloud

Sep 29, 2020

Tricycle Talks — Episode #48

Real Change: A Succession Star on the Power of Empathy

With Arian Moayed

Real Change: A<i> Succession</i> Star on the Power of Empathy

In this episode, Tricycle’s Editor and Publisher James Shaheen sits down with Sharon Salzberg and Succession actor Arian Moayed to discuss the power and practice of both theater and meditation. Arian is the co-founder of Waterwell, an organization working to tackle society’s issues through theater, art, and education. Arian also speaks about loss and growing up as an immigrant in the United States—as well as the hard choices immigrants must make in this country. It’s part of Tricycle Talks’ Real Change podcast series based on Sharon’s new book Real Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and the World, which offers a new perspective on how activism and meditation practice can uplift each other.

Their conversation is the final installment of the five-part series featuring Sharon’s book and the people in it who are creating change in their communities. Make sure to check out our episodes with Sharon Salzberg, Shelly Tygielski, and Michael Kink, and Daisy Hernández.

Listen Now on Tricycle | iTunes | SoundCloud

Sep 23, 2020

Tricycle Talks — Episode #47

Real Change: Finding Our Refuge in Ourselves

With Daisy Hernández

In this episode, Tricycle’s Editor and Publisher James Shaheen sits down with Sharon Salzberg and Daisy Hernández to discuss the personal circumstances that led Sharon and Daisy to Buddhist practice. The author of the award-winning memoir A Cup of Water Under My Bed and the co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism, Daisy is an Assistant Professor in the Creative Writing Program at Miami University in Ohio. This episode is part of Tricycle Talks’ Real Change podcast series based on Sharon’s new book Real Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and the World, which offers a new perspective on how activism and meditation practice can uplift each other.

Their conversation is the fourth in the five-part series featuring Sharon’s book and the people in it who are creating change in their communities. Tricycle Talks will be releasing the other episodes throughout the month. Stay tuned to hear our conversation with Arian Moayed—and make sure to check out our episodes with Sharon Salzberg, Shelly Tygielski, and Michael Kink.

Listen Now on Tricycle | iTunes | SoundCloud

Film Club

Buddhist films and discussion for the Tricycle Community

Planetary

“The really wonderful thing that happened to me when I was in space,” says astronaut Mae Jemison in Planetary, “was this feeling of belonging to the entire universe.” Through stunning footage and wide-ranging interviews, this documentary delivers one central message: Everything on our fragile planet is interconnected.

By Guy Reid