From exploring the beginner meditator’s mind to the idea that journaling, Pilates, and colon cleanses won’t help with your impending mortality, here are 15 articles and talks from Tricycle in 2015 that you shouldn’t miss.

From the blog 

5 Things That Might Surprise You About Meditation Retreats
Retreats aren’t all calm and cosmic-flavored bubblegum, Brent R. Oliver writes. 

It Needs Saying
Buddhism is not a philosophy, science, psychotherapy, or culture. It is a religion. 

The Zen of Not-Knowing
Beginner’s mind is Zen practice in action. It is the mind that is innocent of preconceptions and expectations, judgments and prejudices. Beginner’s mind is just present to explore and observe and see “things as they are.”

Turning Intention into Motivation
Thupten Jinpa writes that we can change our lives by “framing our days between intention setting and joyful dedication.” 

Living by Meditation Alone
Why Buddhism reduced to meditation is a spiritual dead end. 

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Image by Jonathan Pozniak

From the magazine

Self-Care for Future Corpses
“You’re going to die, so stop being a whiny baby,” advises Sallie Jiko Tisdale.

A New Way Forward
Buddhist tradition and modernity are in many ways incompatible. But one Western intellectual tradition may hold a key to bringing the two into meaningful dialogue.  

On the Path with Thay
One students reflects on 30 years with the Vietnamese master Thich Nhat Hanh. 

Religion Resurrected
A secular Buddhist, recoiling from the ills of both theism and atheism, suggests that we move beyond both. 

After Buddhism

Tricycle editor and publisher James Shaheen talks with Stephen Batchelor, the most prominent proponent of secular Buddhism. 

Expiration Date
Every story ends with a death sentence. But the story doesn’t end there. 

After the Future
Rediscovering the meaning of rebirth. 

Taken Away and Given
Encounters in old age.

Online Retreats

Cultivating Emotional Intellegence with Josh Korda 

Radical Reflections for Freeing Your Mind with Kittisaro and Thanissara