Personal Reflections

Silhouette of a person looking down at their cell phone

Trike Daily Personal Reflections

Why You’re Addicted to Your Phone

The nonstop novelty of cell phones distracts us from the true root of our suffering, says Zen priest Kurt Spellmeyer.

By Kurt Spellmeyer

Dec 27, 2018

Man standing on pier, silent meditation retreat

Magazine Personal Reflections

Is Silent Retreat Good for Everyone?

Extended contemplative practice can activate buried trauma.

By Josh Korda

Winter 2018

Trike Daily Personal Reflections

Suffering at the Synagogue

A Jewish Buddhist reflects on the pain around the deadly shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

By Matthew Abrahams

Oct 29, 2018

Trike DailyPersonal Reflections

Why Are There So Many Black Buddhists?

A black practitioner struggling with the apparent lack of diversity in American Buddhism finds a vast multi-racial community at Soka Gakkai International.

By J. Sunara Sasser

Oct 16, 2018

Trike DailyPersonal Reflections

5 Things I Miss About Being A Hardcore Meditator

What Brent R. Oliver learned when he tried to “get enlightened or die tryin’”

By Brent R. Oliver

Oct 04, 2018

Trike DailyPersonal Reflections

Gratitude for My Torturers

In this excerpt from Meditation Saved My Life, a Tibetan lama explains how Chinese prison guards taught him more about compassion than his Buddhist teachers.

By Phakyab Rinpoche, Sofia Stril-Rever

Sep 12, 2018

MagazinePersonal Reflections

One Step Removed

Noelle Oxenhandler reviews Tracy Franz’s My Year of Dirt and Water: Journal of a Zen Monk’s Wife in Japan.

By Noelle Oxenhandler

Fall 2018

MagazinePersonal Reflections

What Our Memories Make Us

When people age with memories more or less intact, remembering can be a dreadful burden, laden with fears and regrets, or a precious refuge to come home to.

By Pamela Gayle White

Fall 2018

Image of a worried South Asian woman sitting in a group of light skinned meditators

MagazinePersonal Reflections

Brown Body, White Sangha

A meditation on mindfulness of the body brings to light the painful racialized experiences of many practitioners of color—a reality that white communities often fail to take into account.

By Atia Sattar, Illustration by Loveis Wise

Fall 2018