Sharon Salzberg speaks with Tricycle
A teaching story of anonymous origins from Once Upon a Time, a collection of ear-whispered tales that pass among Western students. a young Tibetan lama was living in the West. He was a very high-ranking tulku. In addition, he had always manifested an unusual inclination for the wisdom and compassion of the dharma; and the […]
From A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life
Tired of anger and bitterness an African-American attorney describes the roots of her rage and the experience of going beyond them.
Anger was carefully modulated in my family. As a small child, my supreme act of rage was to hurl my father’s toothbrush to the bottom of the carpeted stairs. For a long time, looking back, I saw this as a rather pathetically impotent gesture. But now I can see the power in that small act: […]
For a Buddhist on death row, anger always wears the same expression
NOI CAN’T STAND IT ANYMOREI CAN’T STAND IT ANYMOREPure explosion of rageBig bangPrimordial furyAtoms of angerExplodingStreaming out from chestLungsStreaming photonsLightYou don’t turn the lightOff in the bathroomCritical voiceYou don’t don’t don’t don’t don’tNO! STOP!I CAN’T STANDITNO – the great NoThe primordialNoI don’t want to stayI want to goooooYou don’t touch meYou don’t love meNoI scream […]
Gelek Rinpoche speaks with Tricycle’s Amy Gross
On the constant motion of the mind
A short story by Helen Tworkov
A teacher, translator, and disciple of Kalu Rinpoche speaks with Tricycle about how the Tibetan lojong or “mind training” teachings can shift the soil in which anger grows. Lojong is usually translated as “mind training,” but “mind refining” is also an accurate description. In the Mahayana tradition, mind training doesn’t try to “deal” with the […]
A Tibetan lama on defusing the worst evil there is
Mark Epstein, psychiatrist and author of Thoughts Without a Thinker and Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart (Broadway Books) speaks with Tricycle about expressing, transforming, and dissolving anger. As practitioners, we sometimes feel as if we must behave as diplomats for Buddhism, always acting gentle and not getting angry. Do you think Buddhists have more […]
An American woman’s horseback sojourn in Buddhist Mustang, where villages are protected by god-ponies. Midsummer in Mustang is bright days and early starts. We’d been riding since dawn. Too many stops for tea the day before had slowed us, yet we needed to reach Jomosom from Lo Monthang in two days and intended to […]
Amy Gross interviews Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck about everyday practice, American Buddhism, and making koans out of monkeyshines.
“A special section on anger? But I thought Buddhists weren’t supposed to get angry?” I kept hearing this as we prepared “Seeing Red: Practicing with Anger.” Often enough, the verbal response was followed by a giggle, or a twist of embarrassment around the mouth, as if the witness had just, deliciously, become privy to some […]
Two new books unveil the complicity of Zen and the Japanese military in one of the bloodiest chapters of WWII
By Donald S. Lopez, Jr.
Robert A.F. Thurman speaks with Tricycle contributing editor Jeff Zaleski
The Dorje Shugden Debate, Part II Shugden controversy. You have once again proved your commitment to open dialogue and fearlessness and have raised the controversy to the level of an honest debate—a time-honored tradition of settling disputes in Tibetan Buddhism. Within the debate, we must ask the question: Are Tibetan Buddhism and the Tibetan political […]
By Andrew Cooper
In a coda to Sitting: A Guide to Buddhist Meditation, Diana St. Ruth describes the fruits of freedom.
One of the occupational hazards of being a professor of Buddhism, at least in the United States, is that one is inevitably asked at some point during the semester, “Are you a Buddhist?” Sometimes at the end of a lecture, I will ask, “Any questions?” and a student will raise her hand and say, “Are […]
A few miles north of Green Gulch Farm is Muir Woods National Monument, a pristine stand of old-growth redwoods. Lately, I’m there a lot helping to pickax open the seized soil in Bohemian Grove so that broad-rooted native grasses can reclaim the tight ground. For the last five years, it’s been my civic duty to […]
Dirty Laundry: 100 Days in a Zen MonasteryRobert Winson and Miriam SaganLa Alameda Press: Albuquerque, 1997200 pp., $14.00 (paper) On New Year’s Day 1992, a Zen priest named Robert Winson and his wife, the poet Miriam Sagan, packed up the car and drove with their three-year-old daughter from Santa Fe to Crestone, Colorado, where Winson […]
By Keith Downman
Ananda, the Buddha’s cousin and attendant, was renowned among the great disciples for his zealous devotion and for preserving the teachings intact. He served the Buddha loyally for twenty-five years, accepting no privilege, and was designated best in learning, memory, goodness and resolution. He pressed the Buddha to found an order of nuns and undertook […]