ROBERT NEUBECKER

Robert Neubecker’s award-winning illustrations have been published in the New York Times, Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, Time magazine, and many more outlets. He helped establish slate.com, where he was a staff member for nearly 20 years, and he won the 2004 Key Art Award for Best Comedy Poster for the movie Sideways. Neubecker’s interpretation of the Shin Buddhist concept of “inner togetherness” appears both on this issue’s cover and on page 66. “I loved painting the Buddha with the cool greens and blues,” Neubecker told Tricycle. “It was very meditative and calming—something I try to do every day.” A longtime New Yorker, Neubecker now lives with his family and their moose in Park City, Utah.

Image of Wendy Joan Biddlecombe Agsar
Photo by Sam Agsar

WENDY JOAN BIDDLECOMBE AGSAR

Wendy Joan Biddlecombe Agsar, Tricycle’s Audience Development Editor, began her career in journalism covering crime, courts, and local politics for the Tampa Tribune. She then worked as a general assignment reporter in New York City and as a local contributor to her neighborhood newspaper in the Bronx. Her debut book, Cults that Kill, was published in December 2018. For this issue, Biddlecombe Agsar dons her reporter’s hat to tell the little-known story of Richard H. Robinson, the Canadian academic who pioneered Tibetan Buddhist scholarship in the United States and produced a generation of leading thinkers before his untimely death in 1970.

Image of Bernhard Pörksen
Photo Courtesy Peter-Andreas Hassiepen

BERNHARD PÖRKSEN

Bernhard Pörksen, a professor of media studies at the University of Tübingen, Germany, contributes regularly to both scholarly and popular periodicals and is an active participant in public conversations about media and democracy and media ethics. In “Unmasking the Guru,” Pörksen discusses in an interview the role of digital media in fueling and publicizing scandals about spiritual leaders and its implications for the future of spiritual communities.

Image of Koshin Paley Ellison
Photo Courtesy Wisdom Publications

KOSHIN PALEY ELLISON

Koshin Paley Ellison is a Soto Zen Buddhist teacher. In 2007, he and his husband, Robert Chodo Campbell, founded the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, the first Zen-based organization to offer accredited clinical chaplaincy training in the US. In an excerpt from his new book, Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up, Koshin explains why the next pair of stylish shoes won’t lead to everlasting happiness.