Tenzin Gyurmey
Tenzin Gyurmey Dorjee, the 36-year-old Tibetan artist featured in “Memories in Exile,” came to an interview with the writer Adele Tomlin in a sweater that said “I like boring things.” For Gyurmey, that Andy Warhol quote references not the banality but the beauty of quotidian life. Raised in Himachal Pradesh, a Tibetan enclave in northern India, he paints family and friends with the diaspora an underlying theme. “My work delves into the realm of anticipation, the moments of love in the family that go unspoken,” he says, “and an identity that is always changing.”
Kamilah Majied, PhD
Kamilah Majied, PhD, who pays tribute to the late jazz musician Wayne Shorter in “The Wonderful Sounds of Wayne Shorter,” called writing about the renowned saxophonist and composer “a beautiful gratitude practice.” Like Shorter a longtime practitioner of Nichiren Buddhism, she said, “I’ve tried to live with a ‘never give up’ spirit, but it was not until I wrote this article that, inspired by Mr. Shorter’s example, I was able to articulate what ‘never give up’ means to me as a Buddhist.” Her conclusion? “It is a call to endless spiritual creativity and power.”
Anne C. Klein
Reflecting on the experience of writing her latest book, On Being Human and a Buddha Too: Longchenpa’s Seven Trainings for a Sunlit Sky, scholar and dharma teacher Anne Klein, aka Lama Rigzin Drolma (“The Big Picture”) said, “I was connecting with something that feels vast and universal. I am eager to share that connectedness with others. At the same time, it feels so intimate and personal that I feel shy at revealing it. Neither of these undercuts the other. They are part of a larger dance. And that wholeness is amazing.”
Sarah Fleming
Tricycle’s audio editor, Sarah Fleming produces the podcasts Tricycle Talks and Life As It Is. “I love coordinating the interviews with people I want to learn about,” she says. For “An Academic Like No Other,” she interviewed scholar-translator-professor Robert Buswell, one of the most distinguished and influential Buddhist academics in the world. “I was struck by his humility and gentleness and kindness,” she recalls. A Harvard Divinity School graduate and Soto Zen practitioner, Sarah is a palliative oncology chaplain at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “Doing end-of-life care is tied to the practice for me,” she says.