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Tricycle Talks: Listen to Buddhist teachers, writers, and thinkers on life’s big questions. Hosted by James Shaheen, editor in chief of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, the leading Buddhist magazine in the West. Life As It Is: Join James Shaheen with co-host Sharon Salzberg and learn how to bring Buddhist practice into your everyday life. Tricycle: The Buddhist Review creates award-winning editorial, podcasts, events, and video courses. Unlock access to all this Buddhist knowledge by subscribing to the magazine at tricycle.org/join
The podcast Tricycle Talks is created by Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. The podcast and the artwork on this page are embedded on this page using the public podcast feed (RSS).
Valerie (Vimalasara) Mason-John is a senior teacher in the Triratna Buddhist Community, and their work focuses on how Buddhist teachings can support a sustainable path to recovery. In their new book, First Aid Kit for the Mind: Breaking the Cycle of Habitual Behaviors, they lay out practical tools for uprooting harmful habits, building emotional resilience, and reconnecting with our bodies.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Mason-John to talk about how they first developed a practice of meditation after their experience in solitary confinement, how the Buddha’s teachings have supported their path to recovery, and how they’ve come to understand addiction from a Buddhist perspective.
Please note that this episode includes mentions of sexual assault and suicidal ideation.
Kimberly Brown is a meditation teacher and author based in New York City. In her new book, Happy Relationships: 25 Buddhist Practices to Transform Your Connections with Your Partner, Family, and Friends, she lays out a practical guide to help us cultivate and maintain healthy relationships with the people who matter most to us.
In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sit down with Brown to discuss how mindfulness can help us navigate conflict in relationships, the power of changing how we pay attention to the people around us, and why she believes happy relationships are possible for everyone. Plus, Brown leads a guided meditation.
No-self is a core teaching across Buddhist traditions. Yet what does it look like to actually live without a self? In How to Lose Yourself: An Ancient Guide to Letting Go, scholars Jay L. Garfield, Maria Heim, and Robert H. Sharf present a series of accessible and engaging translations of key Buddhist texts on why we are selfless persons—and why this insight leads to greater freedom and compassion.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Garfield to discuss why our preoccupation with the self causes us so much suffering, how dismantling the self is a project of moral development and spiritual freedom, and what it means to be a person without a self.
After his family home burned down in a California wildfire in the 1990s, journalist Pico Iyer found refuge in an unlikely location: a small Benedictine hermitage outside of Big Sur. Though Iyer initially arrived looking for a bed to sleep in, he soon found the silence of monastic life transformative, and over the course of the past thirty-three years, he has returned to the hermitage more than one hundred times. In his new book, Aflame: Learning from Silence, he explores the profound insights that come from silence—and how sitting in stillness can train us to care for one another in a world on fire.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Iyer to discuss how silence facilitates letting go of the self, why he sees monastic life as the true counterculture, and what his time at the hermitage has taught him about learning to love in the midst of loss.
Oliver Burkeman is an author and journalist based in northern England. In his new book, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts, he lays out a practical guide for living meaningful and fulfilling lives as finite, imperfect humans.
In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sit down with Burkeman to discuss what we gain by letting go of the delusion that life is something we have to solve, how our attempts at avoiding our anxieties often backfire, and why everything is much worse than we think—and why that’s OK.
Noelle Oxenhandler is a writer and longtime Tricycle contributing editor based in northern California. Recently, she has been thinking a lot about what it means to be ready to die—and what will happen to all her belongings when she does. In her article in the November issue of Tricycle called “Everything Is Buddha,” she explores the sense of obligation she has toward the objects she has accumulated over the years, including a rubber zebra in a sailor suit and an intricately carved moose donning flannel trousers. Using the teachings of Suzuki Roshi as her guide, she asks what it means to treat everything around us as Buddha.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Oxenhandler to discuss how to let go of an object without devaluing it, what we can learn from Suzuki Roshi’s notion of everything existing in the right place, and what it means for things to be more than just things.
Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche is a Tibetan Buddhist teacher and author based in southern Colorado. In his new book, Diligence: The Joyful Endeavor of the Buddhist Path, he draws from the teachings of the 8th-century Buddhist philosopher Shantideva to explore how we can meet the world with joy and openheartedness.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Kongtrul Rinpoche to discuss the power of aspiration, how joy and steadfastness can protect us against laziness and low self-esteem, the importance of taking breaks, and how we can learn to find true joy in everything we do.
When Roger R. Jackson was an undergraduate at Wesleyan, he came across the verses of Saraha, a 10th-century mystic known for his fierce exhortations to cut through the layers of delusion in order to experience the true nature of mind directly.
While Saraha is considered one of the founders of the Vajrayana tradition and has been incorporated into a number of Tibetan Buddhist lineages, there have been relatively few academic examinations of his full body of work and its ongoing legacy. With Saraha: Poet of Blissful Awareness, Jackson presents the first thorough treatment of Saraha’s context, life, works, poetics, and teachings, including new translations of nearly all of Saraha’s dohas, or spontaneous songs.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Jackson to discuss the many legends surrounding Saraha, Saraha’s fierce critique of nearly every possible religious and social standpoint, and how to situate Saraha’s radical claims in the context of the Buddhist movements of his time.
Sameet Kumar is a clinical psychologist at the Memorial Cancer Institute and Moffitt Hematology and Cellular Therapy program. His work focuses on mindfulness-based approaches to grief and loss. In his new book, How to Grieve What We’ve Lost: Evidence-Based Skills to Process Grief and Reconnect with What Matters, which he co-wrote with four other therapists, he lays out concrete strategies for finding meaning and cultivating resilience in the face of loss.
In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sit down with Kumar to discuss how we can work with the embodied experience of grief, what feelings of powerlessness can teach us about equanimity, and how distress can motivate us to examine what really matters.
When journalist Katy Butler first committed to the Buddhist precepts, it didn’t occur to her to consider her two abortions in their light. Now, fifty years later, she has come to understand abortion in the context of harm reduction and the alleviation of suffering. In her article in the November issue of Tricycle called “Abortion and the First Precept,” she discusses the Buddhist ethics of abortion and why she believes abortion can be a wrenching, sacred, and even morally necessary act.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Butler to discuss the stigmas and hurdles she encountered in her experience of abortion, how the realities of women’s lives have long been overlooked by Buddhist teachers and communities, and how she thinks about Buddhist ethics in terms of harm reduction.
Vajra Chandrasekera is a novelist based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. His new novel, Rakesfall, follows two characters as they're reincarnated across histories and worlds from the mythic past to modern Sri Lanka to the far future Earth through endless epicycles of love, violence, and betrayal.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Chandrasekera to discuss the weaponization of religious myths in Sri Lankan Buddhism, why he describes himself as an “unbuddhist,” how rituals anchor and retell history, and the role of haunting and possession in his work.
When BJ Miller was a sophomore in college, he climbed atop a commuter train and was immediately electrocuted, causing him to lose both legs and half an arm. In the aftermath of his own near-death experience, he turned to the arts to make sense of his injuries and to grapple with questions of disability and what it means to live a good life.
Miller is now a palliative care physician and the cofounder of Mettle Health, a multidisciplinary group providing support for people confronting illness, disability, and death. He previously served as the executive director of San Franciscos’s Zen Hospice Project and the founder of the Center for Living and Dying.
In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sit down with Miller to discuss how he’s come to view recovery as a creative act, how studying art history and architecture radically shifted how he thinks about disability, what he’s learned from Buddhist approaches to death, and how working with dying patients has changed the way he lives his own life.
Thich Nhat Hanh was one of the most influential figures in contemporary Buddhism, from his founding of the Order of Interbeing and the Plum Village Tradition to his popularization of Engaged Buddhism. Yet his background is often overlooked.
Adrienne Minh-Châu Lê, a Columbia University PhD candidate in international history, is one of the first scholars to examine Thich Nhat Hanh in the context of the global Cold War and Vietnam’s anticolonial movement. In an interview in the August issue of Tricycle, Lê discusses Thich Nhat Hanh’s background and the religious and political landscapes that shaped him.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Lê to discuss the role that Buddhism played in building and promoting Vietnamese cultural identity in the face of colonial rule, the origins of Engaged Buddhism, how exile shaped Thich Nhat Hanh’s approach to teaching, and why he chose to return to Vietnam at the end of his life.
Cortland Dahl is a Buddhist scholar, translator, meditation teacher, and contemplative scientist based in Madison, Wisconsin. In his new book, A Meditator's Guide to Buddhism: The Path of Awareness, Compassion, and Wisdom, he offers an accessible introduction to Buddhist principles and practices through the lens of the three yanas, or vehicles.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Dahl to discuss how meditation allows us to be honest with ourselves, practical methods for experiencing abstract concepts of no-self and emptiness, how different schools of Buddhism understand enlightenment, and what it means to be fully awakened within the messiness of samsara.
Anu Gupta is an educator, lawyer, research scientist, and meditation teacher, and his work focuses on harnessing mindfulness and compassion practices for social change. In his new book, Breaking Bias: Where Stereotypes and Prejudices Come From—and the Science-Backed Method to Unravel Them, he weaves together Buddhist teachings and insights from modern neuroscience to lay out practical tools for dismantling bias within ourselves and in the world around us.
In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sit down with Gupta to discuss what it looks like to imagine a world without bias, how our fundamental ignorance of our interconnectedness distorts our perceptions, the dangers of getting stuck in outdated stories about ourselves and others, and how we can access and strengthen our innate capacity for compassion.
Mindfulness has become ubiquitous as a practice. Yet according to meditation teacher Andrew Holecek, mindfulness is not enough to meet the challenges of the modern world.
Holecek is a teacher in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition who leads workshops on meditation, dream yoga, and preparing for death. In his new book, I'm Mindful, Now What?: Moving Beyond Mindfulness to Meet the Modern World, he lays out the limitations of mindfulness and offers an overview of a variety of meditation techniques that can lead to deeper transformation, including the esoteric practices of reverse meditation and bardo yoga.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Holecek to discuss why meditation is the most natural thing we can do, how we can learn to nurture our meditation by destroying it, and the importance of “waking down” into the messiness of embodied life.
Ada Limón is the 24th Poet Laureate of The United States and the author of six books of poetry. Her most recent project, You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World, is a collection of poetry that she edited in collaboration with the Library of Congress focused on how poetry can help us reconnect to the world around us.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Limón to discuss how poems bring us into the present moment, her practice of loving-kindness and how it influences her writing, why she believes poetry can help us decenter our sense of self, and how writing can be an act of offering something back to the planet. Plus, she reads a few poems from her recent collections.
It can be so easy to get trapped in feelings of jealousy and envy, particularly in the context of competitive environments. According to meditation teacher George Mumford, one of the best practices for working with envy is cultivating mudita, or sympathetic joy.
Mumford has worked as a mindfulness coach and sports psychologist for three decades, and he has taught meditation in a wide variety of settings, from the US prison system to the NBA. In his view, mudita is an inner wellspring that is available under any circumstances, and it can help counter divisions and dualistic thinking.
In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sit down with Mumford to discuss how his history of addiction brought him to Buddhism, the importance of beginner’s mind in the process of recovery, why he believes freedom is a state of mind, and how we can cultivate mudita in our daily lives.
Born in Central Vietnam at the height of the Vietnam War, Sister Dang Nghiem grew up singing made-up songs to comfort herself and express her suffering. After moving to the US, she began writing poetry at the encouragement of an English teacher, and eventually, she ordained as a nun in the Plum Village tradition following the sudden death of her partner. Her latest book, The River in Me: Verses of Transformation, brings together over three decades of her poetry, charting her own journey from turmoil and loss to tranquility and compassion.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Sister D to discuss how writing has helped her process the violence she witnessed, why she hopes her poetry can offer not just a description of suffering but a way out of it, and how gathas, or verses, can transform mundane activities into moments of awareness.
Please note that this episode includes discussion of sexual abuse and suicide.
In tumultuous times, it can be easy to turn to anger. But according to Venerable Thubten Chodron, from a Buddhist perspective, anger is never useful. Venerable Chodron has been a nun in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition since 1977, and she is the founder and abbess of Sravasti Abbey in Washington State. In her book, Working with Anger: Buddhist Teachings on Patience, Acceptance, and Transforming Negativity, she draws from the teachings of the 8th-century Buddhist philosopher Shantideva to offer practical tools for uprooting anger and cultivating patience and compassion.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Venerable Chodron to discuss how anger distorts our perception of reality, why the ultimate root of anger is ignorance of our interconnectedness, how we can learn to abandon negative emotions without suppressing them, and how the wisdom of emptiness can help us eradicate anger entirely.
Enlightenment can often sound like an unattainable goal. But mindfulness teacher and author Susan Kaiser Greenland believes that we can find enlightenment in every moment. In her new book, Real-World Enlightenment: Discovering Ordinary Magic in Everyday Life, she draws from various wisdom traditions to lay out practical tools for easing anxiety and tapping into our innate goodness.
In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sit down with Kaiser Greenland to discuss why she believes that we already have what we need to be free, the power of getting out of our own way, and how we can learn to take ourselves less seriously.
Bruce Tift is a psychotherapist and longtime practitioner of Vajrayana Buddhism. In his book, Already Free: Buddhism Meets Psychotherapy on the Path to Liberation, he lays out why he believes that the approaches of Buddhism and Western psychotherapy are fundamentally irreconcilable—and what we can learn from holding these contradictory energies simultaneously.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Tift to discuss the differences between what he calls the developmental and fruitional approaches to freedom, how attempts at self-improvement distract us from our fundamental liberation, and what it means to know that we’re already free.
At the age of 25, Cristina Moon sat her first ten-day meditation retreat to prepare for the possibility of arrest and torture inside military-ruled Burma. While Moon acknowledges the naïveté of her initial intent, on the retreat she nevertheless discovered not only a method to withstand pain but also a new way of seeing the world that set her on a decades-long spiritual path.
Eventually, Moon found her way to Daihonzan Chozen-ji, a Rinzai Zen temple and martial arts dojo in Honolulu that emphasizes warrior Zen training. Her new book, Three Years on the Great Mountain: A Memoir of Zen and Fearlessness, follows her first three years at Chozen-ji as she learns ferocity and grace through swordsmanship, ceramics, and the rigors of all-night training.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Moon to talk about the importance of learning to face challenges directly, why the highest directive of a Zen priest is to give courage and take away fear, and how she’s learning to take herself less seriously while remaining entirely sincere.
In the midst of constant change, it can be easy to feel knocked around by forces outside our control. In Buddhist terminology, these forces are often referred to as the eight worldly winds: pleasure and pain, praise and blame, fame and insignificance, and success and failure.
According to meditation teacher Ethan Nichtern, working with these pairs of opposites can help us develop genuine confidence in the face of life’s challenges. In his new book, Confidence: Holding Your Seat Through Life’s Eight Worldly Winds, he explores how we can navigate the vicissitudes of life with trust and resilience.
In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sit down with Nichtern to discuss how the worldly winds of pleasure and pain can ground us in felt experience, the interplay between hope and fear, how we can learn to tap into our own enoughness, and what self-confidence looks like in the absence of a stable self.
Kazuaki Tanahashi is an artist, translator, calligrapher, and environmental activist and peaceworker. In his new book, Gardens of Awakening: A Guide to the Aesthetics, History, and Spirituality of Kyoto’s Zen Landscapes, he explores the contemplative art form of Zen gardening and discusses why he believes gardens are an essential instrument of awakening.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Tanahashi to discuss what first drew him to calligraphy and translation, the relationship between his art and his activism, why he believes the qualities of Zen aesthetics are manifestations of awakening, and how we can appreciate the miracle of each moment.
Michael O’Keefe is an actor, poet, and lyricist—and he’s also a former Zen priest. In his article in the Spring issue of Tricycle, “The Lost Robe,” he explores what led him to renounce his vows and leave the priesthood.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with O’Keefe to discuss his path to ordination in the Zen Peacemaker Order, his subsequent disillusionment with the order and its teacher, Bernie Glassman, how becoming a parent transformed his relationship to the priesthood, and how he views the connections between acting and Buddhist practice.
When she was just 11 years old, Kaira Jewel Lingo already knew that she wanted to be a nun. Fourteen years later, she ordained in the Plum Village tradition, where she trained closely with her teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, for fifteen years. In her new book, Healing Our Way Home: Black Buddhist Teachings on Ancestors, Joy, and Liberation, which she co-wrote with Valerie Brown and Marisela B. Gomez, Lingo reflects on her own spiritual path and explores how embodied mindfulness practice can support us in coming home to ourselves.
In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sit down with Lingo to discuss how we can learn to care for ourselves when we feel like we don’t deserve love, the power of calling on our ancestors, and what the concept of store consciousness can teach us about processing inherited grief and trauma.
Helen Tworkov grew up in a family of artists where art was considered the religion. Yet from an early age, she sought another kind of religion—one that would address deeper questions of the nature of truth and the self. After traveling throughout Asia and experimenting with a variety of New Age practices, Tworkov eventually arrived at Buddhism—and went on to found The Tricycle Foundation in 1990.
In her new book, Lotus Girl: My Life at the Crossroads of Buddhism and America, she uses her own spiritual journey to explore how Buddhism has developed in the West over the past sixty years. Set against the cultural backdrop of the Vietnam War and the American counterculture, the book offers a portrait of Tworkov’s search for meaning and truth as she travels through Japan, India, and Nepal and encounters the great Buddhist luminaries of her time, including the Dalai Lama, Pema Chödrön, Chögyam Trungpa, Dudjom Rinpoche, and Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Tworkov to talk about what first brought her to Buddhism, the dangers of exoticizing Buddhist traditions, the radical nature of Buddhist teachings in a relentlessly capitalist economy, and how she understands the bardos of old age and death.
Dr. Kamilah Majied is a mental health therapist, clinical educator, and consultant on advancing equity and inclusion through contemplative practice. In her new book, Joyfully Just: Black Wisdom and Buddhist Insights for Liberated Living, she draws from Black cultural traditions and the teachings of Nichiren Buddhism to lay out a path to liberation that is grounded in courage, curiosity, and deep joy.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Majied to discuss the parallels between Buddhism and Black wisdom traditions, why she believes joy is a mode of self-transcendence, how we can learn to suffer without being insufferable, and the importance of not taking ourselves so seriously.
In the face of global crises and catastrophes, how can we work with our anger effectively? And how can we channel our grief and rage without becoming consumed by it?
These questions are at the core of Jungwon Kim’s practice. Kim is a multidisciplinary communications strategist and advocate who has chronicled frontline environmental and human rights movements for the past two decades. She previously worked at the Rainforest Alliance and Amnesty International, and she also co-founded two BIPOC Buddhist communities.
In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Kim to discuss her work integrating spiritual practice and social action, the importance of embodied practice, the cathartic power of joy, and what we can learn from the Korean concept of han, or inherited grief and rage. Plus, Kim reads a poem by Thich Nhat Hanh.
Unlike many contemporary American poets, Arthur Sze did not attend a traditional MFA program to learn to write poetry. Instead, he turned to translation to hone his craft. His latest collection, The Silk Dragon II: Translations of Chinese Poetry, compiles fifty years of his translations, illustrating the vitality and versatility of the Chinese poetic tradition across nearly two millennia.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Sze to discuss the ruptures and continuities between classical and contemporary Chinese poetry, the destruction and renewal inherent in the process of translation, and why Sze believes that we need translation now more than ever. Plus, he reads a few poems from his new collection.
Gaylon Ferguson is an acharya, or senior teacher, in the Shambhala International Buddhist community and a faculty member in Religious Studies at Naropa University. In his new book, Welcoming Beginner's Mind: Zen and Tibetan Buddhist Wisdom on Experiencing Our True Nature, he uses the classic Zen oxherding pictures as a way of illustrating the stages of the spiritual journey, exploring the paradox of how we can awaken to what we already are.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Ferguson to discuss how he as a teacher of Tibetan Buddhism came to write a book about Zen, why he believes dissatisfaction is actually a sign of awakened intelligence, what we can learn from welcoming and staying with our boredom, and the role of desire on the path to awakening.
Karma Lekshe Tsomo came to Buddhism because of a typo: years ago, her family name had been mistakenly changed from Zinn to Zenn. When her classmates started teasing her about being a Zen Buddhist, she took to the library to learn more about Buddhism and was instantly sold. After deciding to dedicate her life to Buddhist practice, she ordained as a nun and went on to found the Sakyadhita International Association of Buddhist Women and the Jamyang Foundation, which supports educational programs for Buddhist women and girls around the world.
In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sit down with Tsomo to discuss her unlikely path to Buddhism at a young age, her work advocating for women’s education internationally, how she integrates spiritual practice and political activism, and her hopes for the future of women’s ordination.
In March 2008, journalist Amy Yee was assigned to cover a press conference in Dharamsala following the Chinese government’s crackdown on protests throughout Tibet. After an unexpected personal encounter with the Dalai Lama at the conference, she set out to highlight the stories of Tibetans living in exile in Dharamsala and around the world. Her new book, Far from the Rooftop of the World: Travels among Tibetan Refugees on Four Continents, follows the stories of four Tibetans as they forge new lives in exile in India, the United States, Belgium, and Australia.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Yee to discuss how the Tibetan communities she encountered preserve their cultural heritage in exile, what happens when a religious tradition takes root in a new environment, and how she hopes the book will contribute to larger conversations around forced migration.
Haemin Sunim is a Korean Zen monk based in Seoul, where he founded the School of Broken Hearts and the Dharma Illumination Zen Center. In his new book, When Things Don't Go Your Way: Zen Wisdom for Difficult Times, he offers a guide to transforming life’s unexpected challenges into opportunities for awakening.
In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Haemin to talk about the importance of learning to welcome unpleasant experiences, how giving up can actually open us to new possibilities, and how we can find happiness when we stop looking for it.
What does it mean to live an ethical life? And how can cultivating wisdom and virtue support us in navigating the crises of today’s world?
These questions are at the center of Zen priest and psychologist Seth Segall’s new book, The House We Live In: Virtue, Wisdom, and Pluralism. Drawing from Aristotelian, Confucian, and Buddhist ethical traditions, Segall outlines a vision of liberal pluralism grounded in human flourishing.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Segall to discuss what we can learn from comparing Aristotelian, Confucian, and Buddhist understandings of virtue; how he understands the relationship between enlightenment and human flourishing; and how cultivating philosophical wisdom can impact our everyday lives.
Laura Burges is a lay-entrusted teacher in the Soto Zen tradition, and she has been leading retreats on recovery at the San Francisco Zen Center for over twenty years. In her new book, The Zen Way of Recovery: An Illuminated Path Out of the Darkness of Addiction, she brings together Buddhist wisdom and the teachings of recovery programs to lay out a sustainable path to sobriety and freedom.
In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sit down with Burges to discuss her own story of overcoming addiction, the central role of surrender in both Zen and recovery, how atoning for past wrongs can free us to live more fully in the present, and why she believes humor is an essential component of Buddhist practice.
It can be so easy to feel like we’re not enough or that we’re somehow insufficient. According to meditation teacher Tara Brach, this feeling of unworthiness is fundamentally a disease of separation, as it alienates us from ourselves and the people around us. For Brach, one way to free ourselves from this trance of unworthiness is the practice of radical acceptance.
In the twentieth-anniversary edition of her classic book, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha, she uses a blend of psychology and Buddhist insights to lay out a path to freedom in the face of pervasive feelings of inadequacy and isolation.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Brach to discuss what she’s learning by revisiting the book now, why she believes we’re living in a collective spiritual crisis, and how we can learn to recognize our own basic goodness.
Sunita Puri is a writer, a palliative medicine physician, and an associate professor at the UMass Chan Medical School. In her memoir, That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour, she explores her journey of helping patients and families redefine what it means to live and die well in the face of serious illness. In her article in Tricycle’s Winter 2023 issue, “A Gift,” she explores how she has learned to navigate love and loss through the lens of impermanence.
In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Puri to discuss the importance of unlearning our assumptions around death, how language can shape people’s experience of illness, her journey of learning to regard death with reverence instead of fear, and how working with dying patients influences how she lives her daily life.
After the Buddha’s enlightenment, his aunt and adoptive mother, Mahapajapati Gotami, asks him to ordain women and welcome them into his new monastic community. The Buddha declines to fulfill her request. But Mahapajapati Gotami doesn’t give up—accompanied by a large gathering of women, she sets out to ask him again.
In her new novel, The Gathering: A Story of the First Buddhist Women, scholar Vanessa R. Sasson offers an imaginative retelling of the women’s request for ordination, following the women as they travel through the forest together seeking full access to the Buddha’s teachings. Building on decades of research and drawing from the poems of the Therigatha, the novel explores how the women navigate the paradox of seeking ultimate liberation while still bound by social inequality.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Sasson to discuss what we can learn from the first Buddhist women’s resilience, how contemporary women monastics understand this story, why she first started writing fiction, and the role of mythology and storytelling in the Buddhist world.
What is the role of contemplative practice in times of crisis? And how can meditation actually support us in meeting the greatest challenges of our time?
Oren Jay Sofer takes up these questions in his new book, Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love. As a meditation teacher and a member of the Spirit Rock Teachers Council, Sofer has spent decades exploring the relationship between contemplative practice and nonviolent communication. In his new book, he lays out twenty-six qualities of the heart that can expand our capacity to respond to the challenges of oppression, overwhelm, burnout, and injustice.
In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sit down with Sofer to talk about how spiritual practice can help us navigate personal and political crises, the power of everyday devotion, how we can reclaim our right to rest, and how curiosity can open the door to empathy and connection.
Lama Rod Owens is an author, activist, and authorized lama in the Karma Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism. In his new book, The New Saints: From Broken Hearts to Spiritual Warriors, he draws from the bodhisattva tradition to rethink the relationship between social liberation and ultimate freedom, putting forth the notion of the New Saint. In the process, he pulls from the wisdom of the Old Saints of Tibetan Buddhism and the legacy of Black liberation movements.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Owens to discuss why he believes that the apocalypse is an opportunity for awakening, the power of connecting with our ancestors and unseen beings, why the New Saint is not necessarily a good person, and how fierceness can be a form of awakened care.
In her first book, How to Do Nothing, writer and artist Jenny Odell examined the power of quiet contemplation in a world where our attention is bought and sold. Now, she takes up the question of how to find space for silence when we feel like we don’t have enough time to spend.
In her new book, Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock, Odell traces the history behind our relationship to time, from the day-to-day pressures of productivity to the deeper existential dread underlying the climate crisis. In the process, she explores alternative ways of experiencing time that can help us get past the illusion of the separate self and instead open us to wonder and freedom.
In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sit down with Odell to discuss the social dimensions of time, how paying attention can unsettle the boundaries between us, why she views burnout as a spiritual issue, and how love can bring us out of linear time.
Michael Imperioli has a knack for playing mobsters and villains. Best known for his roles as Christopher Moltisanti on The Sopranos and Dominic Di Grasso on The White Lotus, the Emmy Award–winning actor has made a career out of exploring addiction and afflictive emotions on screen. Offscreen, though, Imperioli is a committed Buddhist practitioner. In 2008, he and his wife took refuge with Garchen Rinpoche, and during the pandemic, they began teaching online meditation classes together, exploring Tibetan Buddhist texts like The Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva. Though his practice no doubt influences his creative work, Imperioli prefers to focus on the everyday ways that Buddhism has restructured his life. For him, Buddhism offers a way to liberate harmful emotions and cultivate patience and compassion on a day-to-day level.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Imperioli to talk about the dangers of the instrumentalization of Buddhist practice, what The White Lotus can teach us about craving and dissatisfaction, and whether he believes that liberation is possible in this lifetime.
In 2016, poet Ross Gay set out to document a delight each day for a year. After he published The Book of Delights, his friend asked him if he planned to continue his practice. Five years later, he began The Book of (More) Delights, demonstrating that the sources of delight are indeed endless—and that they multiply when attended to and shared. For Gay, delight serves as evidence of our interconnectedness, and it is inextricable from the fact of our mortality. With characteristic humor and grace, he chronicles his everyday encounters with joy and delight, from the fleeting sweetness of strangers to the startling beauty of the falsetto to the unexpected joys of aging.
In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sit down with Gay to talk about the relationship between delight and impermanence, how he understands faith, and how delight has restructured how he pays attention. Gay also reads an essay from his new collection.
When poet Jane Hirshfield first arrived at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center nearly fifty years ago, a Zen teacher told her that it was a good idea to have a question to practice with. She’s been asking questions ever since. Both in her Zen practice and in her poetry, Hirshfield is guided by questions that resist easy answers, allowing herself to be transformed through the process of asking. With her latest poetry collection, The Asking: New and Selected Poems, she takes up the question, “How can I be of service?,” inviting readers to resist fixity and certainty and instead to dwell in not-knowing.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Hirshfield to talk about the questions she’s been asking recently, why she views poetry as an antidote to despair, and how Zen rituals have informed her creative process. Plus, she reads a few poems from her new collection.
As a young oncologist, Anthony Back turned to Buddhism as a practical way of processing the suffering he encountered each day. Over time, his practice has become an essential support to his work in accompanying patients as they navigate illness and death, and it has radically transformed his understanding of what it means to provide care. Back currently serves as co-director of the University of Washington Center for Excellence in Palliative Care, where he trains clinicians to communicate more openly and effectively about serious illness. In addition, he regularly leads retreats on being with dying at the Upaya Zen Center with Roshi Joan Halifax. In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Back to discuss how he integrates his practice into his work as a physician, how he deals with burnout and moral injury, and what James Joyce and Virginia Woolf have taught him about paying attention.
When Anne C. Klein (Rigzin Drolma) first read that everyone, including her, was already a buddha, she was so shocked that she put down the book she was reading. Now, as a professor of religious studies at Rice University and a teacher at Dawn Mountain Center for Tibetan Buddhism in Houston, she continues to grapple with the relationship between our buddhahood and our humanity. In her new book, "Being Human and a Buddha Too: Longchenpa’s Sevenfold Mind Training for a Sunlit Sky," she takes up the question of what it actually means for each of us to be a buddha, as well as what happens to our humanity when we seek awakening. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Klein to discuss how she has come to understand buddhahood, the difference between wholeness and perfection, and why she believes that we are all backlit by completeness.
These days, with catastrophe after catastrophe, it can be easy to turn to despair and to believe that there is nothing we can do. But writer Rebecca Solnit is determined to change that narrative. Over the course of her career, Solnit has published twenty-five books on feminism, popular power, social change and insurrection, and hope and catastrophe. Her most recent project, "Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility," brings together climate scientists and activists from around the world to address the social, political, and spiritual dimensions of our current crisis—and to envision a path forward. In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Solnit to discuss the power of hope in times of catastrophe, the dangers of hyperindividualism, and why she believes beauty is an essential piece of activist work.
When Tenzin Dickie was growing up in exile in India, she didn’t have access to works by Tibetan writers. Now, as an editor and translator, she is working to create and elevate the stories she wished she had had as a young writer. Her new book, "The Penguin Book of Modern Tibetan Essays," offers a comprehensive introduction to modern Tibetan nonfiction, featuring essays from twenty-two Tibetan writers from around the world. Taken as a whole, the collection provides an intimate and powerful portrait of modern Tibetan life and what it means to live in exile. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Dickie to discuss the history of the Tibetan essay, why she views exile as a kind of bardo, and how modern Tibetan writers are continually recreating the Tibetan nation.
For the past sixty years, composer and interdisciplinary artist Meredith Monk has been expanding the possibilities of the human voice. A pioneer of extended vocal technique and interdisciplinary performance, she has created collaborative performance pieces that stretch the limits of music, inspiring figures from Björk to Merce Cunningham. Her most recent work, "Indra’s Net," draws from her decades of Buddhist practice and explores themes of impermanence and interdependence against the backdrop of our ecological crisis. In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Monk to discuss the relationship between her art and her meditation practice, the importance of listening fearlessly, and why she believes art is a bodhisattva activity.
In July 1813, a young American couple from Boston arrived in the Buddhist kingdom of Burma to preach the gospel. Although Burmese Buddhists largely resisted Christian evangelism, members of minority religious communities embraced Baptist teachings and practices, reimagining both Buddhism and Christianity in the process. In her new book, "Baptizing Burma: Religious Change in the Last Buddhist Kingdom," religious studies scholar Alex Kaloyanides explores this history of power and conversion through the lens of sacred objects. Previously Tricycle’s managing editor, Kaloyanides now serves as an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Kaloyanides to discuss the religious material culture of 19th-century Burma, what we miss when we study religion solely through texts, and how her research has shaped how she thinks about religious conflict today.
Pamela Ayo Yetunde has worked as an activist, lay Buddhist leader, chaplain, pastoral counselor, practical theologian, and teacher. In each of these roles, she has witnessed how our humanity has been distorted and how distraction and delusion keep us from our true purpose of caring for one another. Drawing from Buddhist and Christian teachings on mutuality and liberation, Yetunde believes that we need a compassion revolution to counter the rising tides of oppression and exploitation. In her new book, "Casting Indra’s Net: Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community," she explores how contemplative practices can help us adopt one another as kin. In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Yetunde to talk about how we can become caregivers to our community, what she has learned from Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of mutuality, and how rituals can support us in cultivating community and connection.
Neil Theise is a professor of pathology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and a practicing Zen Buddhist. For the past twenty years, he has been fascinated by the science of complex systems from the infinitesimal level of quantum foam to the vastness of our entire universe. In his new book, "Notes on Complexity: A Scientific Theory of Connection, Consciousness, and Being," Theise provides a comprehensive introduction to complexity theory, outlining its synergies with Buddhist principles and teachings. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Theise to discuss his journey to Buddhism, what it means to live at the edge of chaos, and how complexity theory can help us navigate the unpredictability of our everyday lives.
A world-renowned meditation teacher, Sharon Salzberg is the founding teacher at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. In her new book, "Real Life: The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom," she weaves together Buddhist psychology, her own experiences, and insights from a variety of contemplative traditions to examine how we can live with greater creativity, connection, and joy. Through exploring the forces that keep us trapped in constriction, she lays out a path toward what she calls “real life,” or a life of spaciousness and freedom. In today’s episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Salzberg to talk about what it means to live a real life, how we can break free of our habitual patterns, and how expansiveness makes love more available to us.
For the past forty years, Ken McLeod has worked as a translator of Tibetan texts, practices, and rituals. With his new book, "The Magic of Vajrayana," McLeod takes a more personal approach, drawing from his own experience to provide readers with a taste of Vajrayana rituals and practices. Through practice instructions, evocative vignettes, and stories from his own life, McLeod offers a practical introduction to many of the rituals that may seem obscure to contemporary Western practitioners, including protector practice and guru yoga. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with McLeod to discuss how rituals can take us to the edge of the unknown, what we risk when we ignore the presence of gods, and how Vajrayana helps us uncover the clear, empty knowing that is always present in experience.
It can be so easy to dismiss joy as frivolous or not serious, especially in times of crisis or despair. But for poet Ross Gay, joy can be a radical and necessary act of resistance and belonging. In his new essay collection, "Inciting Joy," Gay explores the rituals and habits that make joy more available to us, as well as the ways that joy can contribute to a deeper sense of solidarity and care. In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Gay to talk about finding joy in the midst of grief and sorrow, the dangers of believing ourselves to be self-sufficient, and how joy can dissolve the boundaries between us.
According to the recently released COVID Response Tracking Study, Americans are the unhappiest they’ve been in fifty years. Between the pandemic, mass shootings, and ongoing environmental catastrophes, it can be easy to feel like we’re always in crisis—and to believe that the world is coming to an end. But journalist Emma Varvaloucas believes that this pessimism can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and if we want to build a better future, we have to change how we relate to the news. Previously an executive editor at Tricycle, Varvaloucas now serves as the executive director of the Progress Network, a nonprofit media organization dedicated to countering the negativity of the mainstream news cycle. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Varvaloucas to discuss how her Buddhist practice informs how she engages with the news, how we can stop doomscrolling, and what can happen when we pay attention to what’s going right.
Charles Johnson is a novelist, essayist, screenwriter, professor, philosopher, cartoonist, and martial arts teacher—and he’s also a Tricycle contributing editor. Over the course of his career, he has published ten novels, three cartoon collections, and a number of essay collections that explore Black life in America, often through the lens of Buddhist literature and philosophy. In the February issue of Tricycle, Johnson published a short story called “Is That So?,” which is a contemporary retelling of a classic Zen tale. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Johnson to discuss his path to writing, how Buddhism finds its way into his work, and why he believes that art should liberate us from calcified ways of thinking and seeing.
The Zen precepts of non-killing, non-stealing, and non-lying can sometimes be presented as a list of rules and regulations. But Zen teacher Nancy Mujo Baker prefers to see them as expressions of enlightened reality. Drawing from the work of 13th-century Zen priest Eihei Dogen, Baker believes that working with the precepts can be a way of revealing our inherent buddhahood. In her new book, "Opening to Oneness: A Practical and Philosophical Guide to the Zen Precepts," Baker offers practical exercises for compassionately acknowledging the liar, stealer, and killer within each of us. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Baker to discuss Dogen’s commentary on the precepts, the importance of getting to know our anger, and how we can cultivate compassion for the parts of ourselves we tend to reject.
As a psychiatrist and Zen priest, Robert Waldinger has devoted much of his professional career to the question of what makes a good life. He currently serves as director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which is the longest scientific study of happiness. The study has tracked the lives of participants for over 75 years, tracing how childhood experiences and relationships affect health and well-being later in life. In his new book, "The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness," Waldinger shares what he’s learned from directing the study. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Waldinger to discuss what makes a good life, the common regrets that people have toward the end of their lives, and how his Zen practice informs his work as a psychiatrist.
For 50 years, Pico Iyer has been traveling the globe, seeking out sacred sites from the hidden shrines of Iran to the funeral pyres of Varanasi. Iyer believes that travel can help us confront questions that we tend to avoid or bypass when we’re at home, forcing us out of our usual routines and bringing us into contact with the “crisscrossing of cultures.” In his latest book, "The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise," Iyer investigates how different cultures have understood the notion of paradise, recounting his travels to contested places including Jerusalem, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, and Ladakh. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor in chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Iyer to discuss the risks of the commercialization of paradise, the power of not knowing, and how we can find paradise in the midst of impermanence.
This past fall, writer Sandra Cisneros published her first book of poetry in 28 years, "Woman Without Shame." Cisneros, best known for her 1984 novel "The House on Mango Street," is a poet, novelist, performer, and artist—and she’s also a Buddhist. In her new poetry collection, she offers insightful and characteristically blunt meditations on desire, memory, and how she has learned to love her aging body. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor in chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Cisneros to discuss her writing process, how she combines Buddhist practice with the indigenous spirituality of her childhood, and what it means to be a woman without shame. Plus, at the end of the episode, Cisneros reads two poems from her new collection.
Over the course of the past century, many scholars have published historical biographies of the Buddha, attempting to present a simplified, chronological narrative. But according to Bernard Faure, these attempts to uncover the historical Buddha neglect the rich literary, mythological, and ritual elements of the story. Faure, a professor of Japanese religion at Columbia University, believes that the Buddha’s life story is one of the great myths of modern times. In his new book, "The Thousand and One Lives of the Buddha," he traces how the life story of the Buddha has been told across cultures, from early Buddhist texts to contemporary art forms of manga and science fiction. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor in chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Faure to discuss his favorite myths about the Buddha’s life, the risks of searching for a historical Buddha, and the creativity of the Buddhist tradition.
Over the course of the past few years, many of us have found ourselves dealing with loss. Yet our contemporary culture often doesn’t allow us the space we need to grieve. Meditation teacher Kimberly Brown believes that mourning takes time, and she works as a grief counselor to support people through difficult and complicated losses. In her new book, "Navigating Grief and Loss: 25 Buddhist Practices to Keep Your Heart Open to Yourself and Others," Brown lays out concrete tools to help us become better friends to ourselves as we grieve. In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor in chief, James Shaheen, and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Brown to talk about how we can learn to stay with our grief, why it can be so hard to ask for help, and how rituals can help us honor the losses in our lives.
When poet Ben Okri was just seven years old, he and his family moved back to Nigeria on the eve of civil war. Ever since, he has been fascinated by what he calls “cusp moments,” the periods just before catastrophe strikes. His new novel, "The Last Gift of the Master Artists," takes place in an African society just before the Atlantic slave trade. In the book, he sets out to examine the spirit of a culture on the eve of its destruction. In today’s episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor in chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Okri to discuss how writing can help us face what we refuse to see, how Buddhist teachings have influenced his work, and why he believes that art is most powerful when it brings us to a point of crisis.
For twenty years, Valerie Brown worked as a lawyer lobbyist, persuading politicians on Capitol Hill. But after a chance encounter with the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, she began searching for a deeper sense of meaning and purpose. Eventually, she quit her job and became ordained as a dharma teacher in the Plum Village tradition. In her new book, "Hope Leans Forward: Braving Your Way toward Simplicity, Awakening, and Peace," Brown shares her journey through personal loss and how she has grappled with the question, “Where is hope now?” In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief James Shaheen and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Brown to talk about the distinction between active and passive hope, her unique blend of Buddhist and Quaker traditions, and how she has learned to listen to her soul’s voice.
When Koshin Paley Ellison was just eight years old, he already knew that he wanted to become a Zen Buddhist monk. He began practicing meditation after a karate teacher insisted that he could never be free until he could be still with his pain. Now, Ellison serves as a Zen teacher, chaplaincy educator, and cofounder of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, and in these roles, he helps others learn to be still with their pain. In his new book, "Untangled: Walking the Eightfold Path to Clarity, Courage, and Compassion," Ellison lays out how Buddhist practice can free us from our destructive patterns and help us access a greater sense of pleasure. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Ellison to talk about the tangles that ensnare us, the power of learning to become intimate with our suffering, and how every aspect of our lives can become a place of practice.
It can be so tempting to be pessimistic about our present moment. But poet Diego Perez believes that we live in an unprecedented time of global healing. Perez publishes his poems using the pen name Yung Pueblo, or “young people,” because he believes that humanity as a whole is still young and has a lot of maturing to do. In his new book, "Lighter: Let Go of the Past, Connect with the Present, and Expand the Future," Perez shares his personal path to healing from addiction and lays out practices to help us cultivate what he calls structural compassion. In today’s episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief James Shaheen and cohost Sharon Salzberg sit down with Perez to talk about the connection between personal and global transformation, the difference between self-love and narcissism, and what gives him hope about our present moment.
There are lots of reasons to be angry right now. It’s often said that if you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention. But according to scholar Allison Aitken, anger only leads to further harm, no matter how justified it may feel in the moment. As a professor of philosophy, Aitken believes that Buddhist texts offer valuable resources for working with our anger and healing contemporary divisions. Drawing from the work of the eighth-century Indian philosopher Shantideva, she positions compassion as a substitute attitude for anger and lays out methods for moving beyond righteous rage. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Aitken to talk about how anger distorts our perceptions, why anger can be so seductive, and how we can transform our rage into compassion.
Catherine Burns is a firm believer in the power of stories. For the past 20 years, she has served as the artistic director at The Moth, a nonprofit dedicated to the art of storytelling. In this role, she has helped hundreds of people craft their stories, including a New York City sanitation worker, a Nobel Laureate, a jaguar tracker, and an exonerated prisoner. For Burns, listening to stories can be a way of cultivating empathy and healing from trauma. In today’s episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Burns to talk about how to tell a good story, how we can break free from harmful narratives, and how stories can help us find community in the midst of isolation.
A few days before the eminent scholar Lance Cousins passed away in 2015, he revealed to one of his students, Sarah Shaw, that he had been working on a book on Buddhist meditation. After his death, with the permission of his family, Shaw found the manuscript on his desktop and prepared it for publication. The book, "Meditations of the Pali Tradition," is the first comprehensive exploration of meditation systems in Theravada Buddhism, and it offers an in-depth analysis of the ritual, somatic, and devotional aspects of Theravada practice that are often overlooked. In today’s episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Shaw to discuss a system of Buddhist meditation known as the jhanas, a strain of Buddhist mysticism called Tantric Theravada, and the underappreciated role of joy in meditative practice.
Over the past few years, the pressures placed on healthcare workers have mounted steadily, and rates of burnout and exhaustion are on the rise. According to Jan Chozen Bays, a pediatrician and Zen priest, mindfulness practices can provide an antidote to burnout and support those who are working on the frontlines of human suffering. In her new book, "Mindful Medicine: 40 Simple Practices to Help Healthcare Professionals Heal Burnout and Reconnect to Purpose," Bays presents short, simple practices to help healthcare workers reconnect with themselves and their patients in the midst of demanding workdays. In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Bays to discuss her own experience of burnout, her work in creating supportive communities for physicians, and how we can experience a greater sense of presence and flow in our daily lives.
Ritual is a foundational component of many Buddhist traditions, yet Western Buddhists are often reluctant to engage in ritual practice. According to Buddhist teacher and professor Anne Klein, this resistance can actually be generative. In fact, Klein believes that working with our resistance to ritual can open us to spaces of wonder, liberation, and belonging. In today’s episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle editor-in-chief James Shaheen sits down with Klein to discuss why so many of us are resistant to ritual, the types of freedom that ritual makes possible, and how ritual practices can support us in the face of loneliness and alienation.
For chaplain Sumi Loundon Kim, sangha, or community, is the foundation of Buddhist practice. As a child, Kim grew up in a Soto Zen community in rural New Hampshire, and her immersive experience of Buddhism has informed her understanding of how we engage with the dharma. Kim later went on to found Mindful Families of Durham, a meditation community that supports parents, caregivers, and children. She currently serves as the Buddhist chaplain at Yale University, where she has been experimenting with alternative models of sangha. In today’s episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle editor-in-chief James Shaheen and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Kim to discuss how to tap into the collective wisdom of a sangha, the power of storytelling, and how spiritual friendship can support us in facing the crises of our world today.
The idea that we are born again after death has been a source of fascination within and beyond the Buddhist world for millennia. Yet the history and scope of Buddhist approaches to rebirth hasn’t been widely explored by Western scholars. In his new book, "Rebirth: A Guide to Mind, Karma, and Cosmos in the Buddhist World," scholar Roger Jackson offers the first complete overview of Buddhist understandings of rebirth. Jackson has dedicated much of his professional life to examining interpretations of rebirth in different Buddhist contexts across cultures, including how Buddhists today wrestle with the concept. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle editor-in-chief James Shaheen sits down with Jackson to discuss views of rebirth across Buddhist traditions, how you can be reborn without having a self, and whether you have to believe in rebirth to be a Buddhist.
On March 14, 2020, just after COVID was declared a national emergency, meditation teacher and activist Shelly Tygielski wanted to find a way to support her community in South Florida. She created two simple Google forms—one to give help and one to get help—and shared both on social media. The next morning, each form had over 500 responses from around the country, and the mutual aid organization Pandemic of Love was born. Since Pandemic of Love’s conception, the organization has connected over 2 million donors with individuals and families in need and has responded directly to global crises including hurricanes, mass shootings, and the ongoing war in Ukraine. Just this past month, Tygielski returned from the Poland-Ukraine border, where she was supporting Ukrainian refugees displaced by war. In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle editor-in-chief James Shaheen and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Tygielski to discuss her work in Ukraine, the history of mutual aid movements, and the radical power of just showing up.
In contemporary American culture, the Korean War is often referred to as the “Forgotten War,” but according to Korean American novelist Marie Myung-Ok Lee, the war is still very much alive for those who lived through it—and their descendants. In her new novel, "The Evening Hero," Lee examines the forgotten history of the Korean War and the ensuing displacement and loss that so many Korean families were forced to endure. Weaving together an exploration of Korean religious traditions, contemporary political commentary, and a critique of the commercialization of healthcare, the book follows the story of a middle-aged Korean American obstetrician, Yungman Kwak, as he navigates a changing world. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle editor-in-chief James Shaheen sits down with Lee to discuss Korean rituals of honoring one’s ancestors, the generational impact of wartime trauma, and her own journey through diverse spiritual traditions.
For Buddhist poet and novelist Ocean Vuong, being an artist requires a willingness to get close to what scares him. As a writer, he sees language as an architecture to reckon with loss, both personal and communal, and his poetry is informed by his decades-long practice of death meditation. His latest collection, "Time Is a Mother," was written in the aftermath of his mother’s death from breast cancer in late 2019 and offers an intimate portrait of grief, loss, and survival. In today’s episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle editor-in-chief James Shaheen and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Ocean to discuss Buddhist rituals of mourning, the poem as a death meditation, and how he protects his sense of wonder. To close, Ocean reads a poem from his new collection.
We often hear about the Buddhist teaching of no-self. But what does it actually mean to live without a self? In his new book, "Losing Ourselves: Learning to Live Without a Self," scholar Jay Garfield argues that shedding the illusion of the self can actually make you a better person. Drawing from Buddhism, Western philosophy, and cognitive neuroscience, Garfield unpacks how the notion of self is not only wrong but also morally dangerous. Once we let go of this illusion, he argues, we can lead healthier and more ethically skillful lives. In today’s episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle editor-in-chief James Shaheen sits down with Garfield to talk about the ethical perils of the self illusion, the freedom that can come from moments of selflessness, and how we can let go of our selves to reclaim our humanity.
In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle editor-in-chief James Shaheen and co-host Sharon Salzberg are joined by journalist, professor, and Tricycle contributing editor Daisy Hernández. Daisy’s latest book, "The Kissing Bug," blends together memoir and investigative journalism to tell the story of Chagas disease, an insect-borne illness that disproportionately impacts marginalized communities. The book recently won a PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the National Book Foundation Science + Literature Award. Today, James and Sharon catch up with Daisy to reflect on the past two years of the pandemic, her practices of equanimity, and how she finds refuge in times of war.
After giving birth to twins, playwright Sarah Ruhl was diagnosed with Bell’s palsy, a paralysis of the seventh cranial nerve that severely limits facial expression, even—and especially—one’s ability to smile. Though most suffering from this condition get better within a year, for Ruhl, the road to recovery has been much slower. In her new memoir, "Smile: The Story of a Face," Ruhl reflects on her journey of reoccupying her body and reclaiming her capacity for joy. In today’s episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle editor-in-chief James Shaheen sits down with Ruhl to discuss Zen koans, the overlooked beauty of asymmetry and imperfection, and how Tibetan Buddhism brought her back to her Catholic roots.
Born in Saigon, poet and novelist Quan Barry grew up in Danvers, Massachusetts and currently teaches creative writing at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. Her latest novel, "When I’m Gone, Look For Me in the East," follows the story of two telepathic twins as they journey across the vast Mongolian landscape in search of a tulku, or reincarnate lama. Along the way, the twins grapple with questions of desire, doubt, and the place of faith in a changing world. In today’s episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle editor-in-chief James Shaheen and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Barry to discuss the joys and responsibilities of writing fiction, the tensions between monasticism and modernity, and her travels across the Mongolian steppe.
The Theravada tradition of Buddhism is typically associated with monastic purity and austerity. But according to Trent Walker, a scholar of Southeast Asian Buddhist music, this is only a half-truth, as it ignores the rich and vast traditions of Theravada liturgical music. In his article in the spring issue of Tricycle, “Dharma Songs to Stir and Settle,” Walker offers an introduction to the Cambodian dharma song tradition, with a particular emphasis on the affective states that dharma songs elicit. For Walker, dharma songs strike a balance between aesthetic expression and monastic austerity. In today’s episode of Tricycle Talks, you’ll hear Walker perform a couple of dharma songs and discuss classical South Asian theories of emotion, his hopes for the future of Buddhist studies, and how music and aesthetics fit into the Buddhist path to salvation.
On September 15, Buddhist monastic Sister Clear Grace Dayananda set out across the United States in the Great Aspiration, a Chevy van she has converted into a portable meditation hall. This mobile monastery is the centerpiece of a project she calls the Traveling Nunk, which aims to make dharma teachings accessible to marginalized communities. Through chanting in public parks, collaborating with local faith groups, and giving out meals to those in need, she aspires to act with compassion and equanimity. In today’s episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle editor-in-chief James Shaheen and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Sister Clear Grace to talk about her travels through the American South, the practice of meeting people where they are, and how we can learn to love those with whom we disagree.
Psychotherapist Mark Epstein is often asked how he incorporates his Buddhist practice into his therapy sessions. His latest book offers an answer to that question. In "The Zen of Therapy: Uncovering a Hidden Kindness in Life," Epstein documents dozens of therapy sessions over the course of a year, tracing the Buddhist themes that arise. Weaving together psychoanalytic theory, Zen poetry, and the music of John Cage, Epstein presents a compelling model of therapy as spiritual friendship. In today’s episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle editor-in-chief James Shaheen sits down with Epstein to discuss Zen koans, the improvisational nature of therapy, and the art of listening.
We often hear meditation described in terms of mindfulness. But Buddhist teacher and writer Martin Aylward playfully offers bodyfulness as an alternative. In his latest book, "Awake Where You Are: The Art of Embodied Awareness," Aylward invites readers into their own embodied experience, offering what he calls “a guidebook for an embodied life.” In today’s episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief James Shaheen and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Aylward to discuss the power of embodied attention, how the pandemic has changed our relationship with our bodies, and how we can work with physical pain and discomfort in our practice.
In this special series of episodes of Tricycle Talks, editor-in-chief James Shaheen sits down with three contributors to the Winter issue of Tricycle. In today’s episode, he’s joined by Suzannah Showler, a writer, cultural critic, and poet. In “Bechdel’s Quest,” Showler reviews Alison Bechdel’s new graphic memoir, "The Secret to Superhuman Strength." Shaheen and Showler talk about exercise obsessions, toxic work habits, and the dangers of the American myth of self-reliance.
In this special series of episodes of Tricycle Talks, editor-in-chief James Shaheen sits down with three contributors to the winter issue of the magazine, out this month. In today’s episode, he’s joined by Zen teacher and writer Lew Richmond. Richmond’s article in the magazine, “Food Is Very Important,” offers a Buddhist approach to disagreement based on a line he heard from his teacher, Suzuki Roshi. Shaheen and Richmond discuss strategies for working with disagreement and conflict inspired by Suzuki Roshi’s example.
In this special series of episodes, editor-in-chief James Shaheen sits down with three contributors to the winter issue of the magazine, out this month. In today's episode, he's joined by Sarah Ruhl, an award-winning playwright and poet interviewed in the issue. Shaheen and Ruhl discuss the relationship between the face and the self, the role of theater in building empathy, and the power of not praying for outcomes.
It can be so easy to become demoralized or even apocalyptic about the state of our planet. But entrepreneur and activist Paul Hawken believes we have less reason to despair than we think. In fact, Hawken asserts that if we act together, we can end the climate crisis in decades to come. In his new book, "Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation," Hawken offers a model of climate activism that puts life at the center of every act and decision. After all, writes Hawken, if we want to save the world, we have to create a world worth saving. In today’s episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief James Shaheen and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Hawken to discuss the Buddhist teachings that underpin his activism, the role of reverence in solving the climate crisis, and how he stays motivated in the face of burnout.
Sallie Tisdale is a Zen teacher, writer, and Tricycle contributing editor—and she has seen nearly every season of the award-winning reality TV show Survivor. In her latest book, "The Lie About the Truck: Survivor, Reality TV, and the Endless Gaze" (out October 26), Sallie brings her keen eye and characteristic wit to the series, which she calls “the greatest social experiment on television.” In today’s episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief James Shaheen sits down with Sallie to talk about the dharma lessons of Survivor and what it can teach us about perception, performance, and surviving ourselves.
When her closest childhood friend was diagnosed with cancer, writer and interfaith minister Barbara Becker set out on a quest to live a year of her life as if it were her last. Drawing from a variety of wisdom traditions, Becker explored questions of what it means to be mortal and how turning towards death can help us live more fully. This journey eventually led her to train as a hospice volunteer and interfaith minister, accompanying patients at the bedside and helping families make sense of their loss. In today’s episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief James Shaheen and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Becker to discuss the power of ritual in coping with loss, the Buddhist teachings that help her turn towards death, and how the pandemic has changed the way we grieve.
“A book must start somewhere. One brave letter must volunteer to go first, laying itself on the line in an act of faith, from which a word takes heart and follows, drawing a sentence into its wake. From there, a paragraph amasses, and soon a page, and the book is on its way, finding a voice, calling itself into being. A book must start somewhere, and this one starts here.” So begins Ruth Ozeki’s new novel, "The Book of Form and Emptiness," which follows the story of a young boy, Benny Oh, who starts hearing voices after his father’s death. In this poignant exploration of grief, Ozeki weaves together Zen Buddhism, pop culture, environmental politics, and the writings of German philosopher Walter Benjamin—not to mention a cacophony of voices that calls into question our understanding of what is “real.” In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief James Shaheen sits down with Ozeki to reflect on the redemptive power of writing, the interplay between creativity and madness, and relational modes of healing.
For many of us, this past year has felt like an in-between state, as our usual routines and realities have been upended. Tricycle contributing editor and writer Ann Tashi Slater likens this suspension to the bardo journey, the transitional path between death and rebirth outlined in "The Tibetan Book of the Dead." Born in Andalusia, Spain to an American father and a Tibetan mother, Slater, who was raised in the US, is no stranger to navigating in-between spaces. In her writing, Slater explores themes of ancestral pilgrimage and the bardo journey, and her connection to the bardos has deepened in recent years through personal encounters with illness and loss. In today’s episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle editor-in-chief James Shaheen and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Slater to discuss near-death experiences, end-of-life rituals, and what the living can learn from "The Tibetan Book of the Dead."
After months of isolation, many of us are in a moment of transition, whether we’re attending larger social gatherings again, seeing relatives, or preparing to head back to the office for the first time in months. While there’s a lot to be excited about, such changes are also likely to stir some fear and anxiety. If anyone can explain how anxiety grips us, it’s Josh Korda, a counselor and the guiding teacher of Dharma Punx NYC. In today’s episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief James Shaheen sits down with Korda to unpack what he calls the “anxiety of return.” Drawing from early Buddhist teachings, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology, Korda offers a more skillful way to manage life’s stressors and live with greater ease.
In this special episode of Tricycle Talks, editor-in-chief James Shaheen is joined by three contributors to Tricycle’s 30th anniversary issue, out this August. First, Jordan Quaglia, a neuroscientist and experimental psychologist who runs the Cognitive and Affective Science Lab at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, talks about a video game he reviews in the issue that teaches unexpected lessons on impermanence. Quaglia and Shaheen discuss virtual friendships, cultivating compassion in the digital world, and the unique opportunities video games can offer contemplative practitioners. Next up is Vanessa Zuisei Goddard, a Zen teacher and writer based in New York City. In “Just Love Them,” Goddard writes about a time when her job at a Buddhist monastery was getting in the way of what she calls the “real work.” She joins Tricycle Talks to talk about the dangers of perfectionism, the transformative power of lovingkindness, and practical tools for dealing with burnout. Finally, Ira Helderman, a religious studies scholar, psychotherapist, and lecturer at Vanderbilt University, comments on his feature article, “The McMindfulness Wars: What’s a Psychotherapist to Do?,” which lays out contemporary debates about the ethics of mindfulness-based interventions. Shaheen and Helderman explore the long histories of these debates, as well as possible paths forward. Also in this issue: Stephen Mitchell demonstrates the thrill of “dharma combat” and how it can reveal a student’s understanding of the truth—until the truth changes again; teacher and writer Stephen Batchelor explores the rituals and mysteries of creativity with novelist and Zen priest Ruth Ozeki; we learn how some of Tricycle’s contributing editors’ opinions have evolved over the last 30 years; and psychologist and science journalist Daniel Goleman speaks with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Welcome to Tricycle’s new podcast series, Life As It Is. Each month, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief James Shaheen and co-host Sharon Salzberg will speak with Buddhist practitioners about their work, practice, and everyday life—and, perhaps most importantly, how they're navigating these uncertain times. In today’s episode, Sharon and James sit down with Buddhist writer, cultural activist, and Tricycle contributing editor Daisy Hernández to discuss her new book, "The Kissing Bug: A True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation's Neglect of a Deadly Disease." Equal parts memoir and investigative journalism, "The Kissing Bug" tells the undertold story of a parasitic disease that disproportionately affects Latinx communities.
We often look to buddhas and bodhisattvas as the heroic protagonists of the Buddhist cosmos. But even the most wretched creatures can teach us a thing or two about the dharma. Andy Rotman, a scholar of South Asian religions at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, is one of the few academics researching the history of hungry ghosts—the denizens of hell who suffer from greed and envy cultivated in past lives. Rotman and Tricycle’s editor-in-chief James Shaheen discuss ancient ghost stories in today’s episode of Tricycle Talks. Together, they reflect on how these cautionary tales and nightmarish images reveal not only some of the fears and concerns of early Buddhist communities but also many of our own. What these tormented souls are meant to do, according to Rotman, is to shock us out of selfish complacency and delusion and wake us up to a more compassionate way of being.
The day after the Sandy Hook tragedy in 2012, Shannon Watts, a former communications executive and stay-at-home mom of five, founded Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. Since then, the grassroots initiative has matured into a nationwide movement with over 6 million supporters fighting to end gun violence. Now the largest gun-prevention organization in the US, Moms Demand Action has had major successes at the ballot box, on school boards, city councils, in state legislatures, and in corporate America. In the latest episode of Tricycle Talks, Watts tells Tricycle’s editor-in-chief James Shaheen and cohost Sharon Salzberg about what it’s like to work with communities afflicted by gun violence and how her Buddhist meditation practice has kept her in the fight despite Twitter trolls and fierce pushback from the National Rifle Association.
Not too long ago I attended an online retreat with Joseph Goldstein, cofounder and guiding teacher at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. I've sat with Joseph on retreats before, but what really struck me this time were the repetitive patterns playing out in my mind and body, whether it was getting lost in stories and caught up in self-judgment, or simply being distracted by physical pain—all pretty common experiences on a meditation retreat. In today’s episode, I sit down with Joseph, who recently emerged from a 3-month silent retreat himself, to ask him some questions that have been at the top of my mind. We’ll talk about the value and challenges of a long retreat, the wisdom of investigation and curiosity, and why we need to make more room for joy and humor on retreat and off. At the end of our conversation, Joseph will lead us in a brief mindfulness meditation to re-ground ourselves in the present moment. —James Shaheen, editor-in-chief of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.
In the latest episode of Tricycle Talks, editor-in-chief James Shaheen sits down to talk with four contributors to Tricycle’s Summer issue out this May. First up are psychotherapist Mindy Newman and translator and musician Kaia Fischer. Together over the past year they have presented a series of teachings from a newly translated Tibetan sutra. Through their collaborative writing practice, Mindy and Kaia have been able to explore psychology and scriptural exegesis, Buddhist storytelling, and guru devotion in the Tibetan tradition. Poet and short story writer Souvankham Thammavongsa is a rising star in the literary world. Born in a Lao refugee camp in Thailand and raised in Toronto, Thammavongsa is known for her nuanced reflections on immigrant and refugee experiences. In this episode, she joins us to talk about her family’s history, the power and limits of language, dislocation, and loss—themes woven throughout her short story How to Pronounce Knife, which appears in the current issue. In his feature article, “The Land of Many Dharmas,” Kenneth Tanaka, a Jodo Shin Buddhist priest and professor emeritus of Buddhist Studies at Musashino University in Tokyo, discusses how, for the first time, Buddhists from virtually every tradition can be found living side by side in North American cities. He explores America as a site of unprecedented religious pluralism and asks what this means for the future, especially in light of the recent wave of anti-Asian violence. Also in this issue: Pamela Ayo Yetunde and Cheryl A. Giles—the editors of the anthology Black and Buddhist—discuss what the dharma and the experience of Black people in America can teach us about the nature of suffering and freedom; scholar Donald S. Lopez writes about how, for most of its history, Buddhist teachings have had little to offer social activism; and the photography of Burmese artist Nge Lay captures the collision of Myanmar’s past and present.
Many years before the COVID-19 pandemic began, Toni Bernhard was thinking and writing about the isolating experiences of illness—and what it really means to be “well” in our society. After an acute viral infection led to a chronic condition, Bernhard was forced to retire from her long career as a law professor and dean of students. She learned to live within her body’s new limitations, and even wrote four books in the process. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief James Shaheen talks to Bernhard about her Buddhist practice, how her journey to self-acceptance and authorship began, and what advice she would give to people who are “too young to be sick,” or those who are suffering from long-haul COVID-19 symptoms. Toni Bernhard is the author of the award-winning How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers, which is now available as a pocket guide. She’s also written two other books on living well with chronic illness.
We have end-of-life rituals for a reason—to help us accept loss and fully grieve. Of all the rituals disrupted by the pandemic, the loss of funerals and other communal spaces that allow us to support those dealing with the death of a loved one has been one of the hardest to cope with. Virtual gatherings can mitigate feelings of loss and isolation to a certain extent, but there is no real substitute for being with others. With well over half a million lives lost to the pandemic so far, grieving may look different under lockdown but it has no off-switch. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Sameet Kumar, a clinical psychologist, grief counselor, and author, joins Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and co-host Sharon Salzberg for a conversation about grief, how we’ve come to redefine it during this time of social distancing, and the importance of staying present to it. Buddhist teachings, breathing techniques, and meditation, Kumar tells us, have shown him how to hold great pain and make it bearable for himself and for those he counsels.
For the last 12 years, Dekila Chungyalpa has worked with religious and indigenous leaders, scientists, and policymakers to design community-based environmental and climate programs. But having grown up in the northeastern Indian state of Sikkim, surrounded by strong women who chose to walk the monastic path, Chungyalpa hasn’t always found it easy to show up as both a devout Tibetan Buddhist and a conservation scientist. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Chungyalpa shares with Tricycle’s editor James Shaheen how she’s come to integrate her commitments to science and faith, deal with climate deniers, and head the Loka Initiative, a climate-change outreach program that empowers and uplifts religious communities. In the face of so much eco-anxiety, climate distress, and doom and gloom, it is ultimately Buddhist teachings on emptiness, impermanence, non-attachment, and compassion, she says, that sustain her.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Editor and Publisher James Shaheen is joined by three contributors to take a closer look at our Spring 2021 issue. First, James speaks with Zen priest and psychologist Seth Zuiho Segall, whose feature article, “The Best Possible Life,” situates ancient Greek ideals of human flourishing against Buddhist enlightenment. Seth talks about what’s lost—and what’s gained—when practices from one culture find a home in a new one. Next, James and writer Daisy Hernández discuss the Buddhist concept of mudita, or sympathetic joy, and why it matters more than ever to take pleasure in other people’s happiness. Daisy’s article “The Joy of Joy” addresses the initial skepticism she felt about the term—and how that changed as she continued to practice mudita. Finally, the poet Arthur Sze talks with James about his poem “Wang Wei,” his artistic process, selections from his National Book Award-winning collection, Sight Lines, and the relationship between poetry and meditation. Also in this issue: Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara’s dharma talk, “Bodhisattvas Have More Fun,” which emphasizes the delight that comes with helping others; what video games can teach us about karma, written by the head writer for the Onion, Mike Gillis; an essay by Buddhist teacher Fred Eppsteiner about the time he spent with Thich Nhat Hanh outside Paris in 1975; and a portfolio of Buryat artist Dashi Namdakov’s eerily fantastical sculptures.
The United States and the world watched in shock last month, when on January 6, a mob of Trump supporters, many of them white and motivated by racist and nativist ideologies, laid siege to the US Capitol as lawmakers were certifying the 2020 presidential election results. As the US tries to rally around unity instead of division, Tricycle has been taking stock of recent events by looking inward—at why we, as a nation, need to deal with the roots of suffering first, before we can move toward collective healing.
Race-based suffering, resilience, and transformation are at the core of a new collection of “freedom stories” written by Black Buddhist voices. In our latest episode of Tricycle Talks, editor and publisher James Shaheen speaks about what it means to be Black and Buddhist in America with Pamela Ayo Yetunde and Cheryl Giles, coeditors of Black and Buddhist: What Buddhism Can Teach Us About Race, Resilience, Transformation, and Freedom.
In this conversation, Yetunde, a pastoral counselor and practitioner in the Zen and Insight traditions, and Giles, a professor of pastoral care and counseling at Harvard Divinity School and clinical psychologist, examine racial ignorance and color blindness in Buddhist communities as well as how their dharma practice has helped them to reaffirm and celebrate their Blackness. Together, they reflect on how this anthology of liberation stories can offer all practitioners, regardless of race, a different way of being—of relating to ignorance, anger, trauma, fear, and pain.
When we think about Buddhism, we don’t often think about monks and nuns conjuring spells or curses to break up lovers, exorcise demons, prevent unwanted pregnancies, or kill enemies. But for over two and a half millennia, magic and healing rituals have been an integral part of everyday Buddhism. They were also key to Buddhism becoming a cosmopolitan religion, flourishing in areas beyond the Indian Buddhist heartland. The magical aspects of Buddhist history, however, have been ignored or dismissed by scholars of Buddhism and by Buddhists themselves, resulting in a distorted view of the traditions we may study and practice today. In his new book, Buddhist Magic: Divination, Healing, and Enchantment Through the Ages, Sam van Schaik, a textual historian and practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism, makes a compelling case for why we should pay attention to Buddhism’s magical heritage—and what we lose by casting it aside. Having previously worked for the International Dunhuang Project, van Schaik currently heads the Endangered Archives Programme at the British Library in London. He is the author of Tibet: A History, Tibetan Zen, The Spirit of Zen, and The Spirit of Tibetan Buddhism. In our latest podcast episode with Tricycle’s Editor and Publisher James Shaheen, van Schaik debunks misperceptions about early Buddhism by showing how magical literature can offer a more holistic and realistic view of Buddhism from the ground up. He also paints a vivid picture of the role monks and nuns may have played in the magical-gig economy as well as how we can view mindfulness meditation in a comparable way—as the magic of our current age.
In a year of intense suffering, forgiveness may be the last thing on our minds. Some of us may be harboring resentment for family members, government leaders, or maybe the grocery store cashier who didn’t look like they were smiling under their mask this morning. But a new book encourages our capacity for reconciliation by retelling the stories of people who forgave under seemingly impossible circumstances. In Inspiring Forgiveness: Poems, Quotations, and True Stories to Help with Forgiving Yourself and Others, author Barbara Bonner recounts stories about people who found in it themselves to forgive themselves and others when the stakes were exceedingly high. A mother forgives herself after her son commits a school shooting. Eva Kor forgives the doctors who performed medical experiments on her and her sister during the Holocaust. John Lewis forgives George Wallace. The loved ones of the Emanuel Nine forgive the killer and vow to move toward love. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s Editor and Publisher James Shaheen sits down with Barbara and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg to discuss these instances of forgiveness as well as the conditions we need to forgive, and to what extent Buddhists engage with the practice. Committed to a life of Buddhist study and practice, Barbara Bonner has her own consulting practice supporting nonprofit leadership. She’s also the author of Inspiring Generosity and Inspiring Courage.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s Editor and Publisher James Shaheen sits down with Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche to discuss turning inward to steady oneself for the world, using humor to combat hurt feelings, and how patience is not passivity. Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche is a Tibetan teacher and the founder of Mangala Shri Bhuti, an organization in the Longchen Nyingtik lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. He’s also the author of eight books, including Training in Tenderness: Buddhist Teachings on Tsewa.
What is religion? Is Buddhism a religion? How about democracy? And how religious (or not) do you have to be to ask? In the latest episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s Editor and Publisher James Shaheen speaks to Jack Miles, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and scholar of religion, about what we mean when we say something is a religion and how Miles's own life has led him back to this question time and again. Miles’s latest book, Religion As We Know It: An Origin Story, was released in 2019. In it, he explores the commonsense understanding of religion as one realm of activity among many, and how this definition serves and fails us. Miles is also the author of God: A Biography, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1996, as well as the general editor of the Norton Anthology of World Religions and professor emeritus of English and religious studies at the University of California, Irvine.
Arian Moayed is perhaps best known for his role as Stewy in the HBO series Succession. So for fans of the show, it may seem strange that for almost two decades, he’s been working to build a more empathic world through art and outreach. Arian is the co-founder of Waterwell, an organization working to tackle society’s issues through theater, art, and education. In this episode, Tricycle’s Editor and Publisher James Shaheen sits down with Arian and Sharon Salzberg to discuss the power and practice of both theater and meditation. Arian also speaks about loss and growing up as an immigrant in the United States—as well as the hard choices immigrants must make in this country. It’s part of Tricycle Talks’ Real Change podcast series based on Sharon’s new book Real Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and the World, which offers a new perspective on how activism and meditation practice can uplift each other. Their conversation is the final installment of the five-part series featuring Sharon’s book and the people in it who are creating change in their communities. Make sure to check out our episodes with Sharon Salzberg, Shelly Tygielski, and Michael Kink, and Daisy Hernández.
“Equanimity” might seem like just another Buddhist buzzword, but Daisy Hernández doesn’t think so. The author of the award-winning memoir A Cup of Water Under My Bed and the co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism, Daisy is an Assistant Professor in the Creative Writing Program at Miami University in Ohio. Through her meditation practice, Daisy found refuge in her body and also discovered that it was possible to practice the Buddhist concept of equanimity—even when it felt like her life was falling apart. In this episode, Tricycle’s Editor and Publisher James Shaheen sits down with Daisy and Sharon Salzberg to discuss the personal circumstances that led Daisy and Sharon to Buddhist practice. It’s part of Tricycle Talks’ Real Change podcast series based on Sharon’s new book Real Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and the World, which offers a new perspective on how activism and meditation practice can uplift each other. Their conversation is the fourth in the five-part series featuring Sharon’s book and the people in it who are creating change in their communities. Tricycle Talks will be releasing the other episodes throughout the month. Stay tuned to hear our conversation with Arian Moayed—and make sure to check out our episodes with Sharon Salzberg, Shelly Tygielski, and Michael Kink.
Buddhism’s four noble truths start with the truth—and the inevitability—of suffering. So what does that mean for an activist? For Michael Kink, suffering became the fuel to power action for justice. The executive director of the Strong Economy for All Coalition, a labor-community organization focused on income inequality and fighting for a fair wage for all workers, Michael has been on the frontline of changemaking for decades. But Michael found that practicing Buddhism radically improved how he showed up to work. Meditation, he discovered, is something that is always helpful and always available—even in the midst of chaos. In this episode, Tricycle’s Editor and Publisher James Shaheen sits down with Michael and Sharon Salzberg to discuss how Michael’s practice empowers his work. It’s part of Tricycle Talks’ Real Change podcast series based on Sharon’s new book Real Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and the World, which offers a new perspective on how activism and meditation practice can uplift each other. Their conversation is the third in the five-part series featuring Sharon’s book and the people in it who are creating change in their communities. Tricycle Talks will be releasing the other episodes throughout the month. Stay tuned to hear conversations with Daisy Hernandez and Arian Moayed—and make sure to check out our episodes with Sharon Salzberg and Shelly Tygielski.
Since the pandemic began earlier this year, mutual aid funds have become a major resource for people suffering from the burden of job loss and financial strain. One mutual aid fund, Pandemic of Love, has helped thousands of people access funds for things like food, health insurance payments, and even money for funerals for loved ones who have died from COVID-19. The fund, started by mindfulness teacher, writer, and organizer Shelly Tygielski, has matched over 292,000 individuals and families with patrons, garnering over $38.4 million in direct transactions since March 14. But Shelly never expected an organization that she started for her local community to have such a nationwide reach. In this episode, Tricycle’s Editor and Publisher James Shaheen sits down with Shelly and Sharon Salzberg to discuss how Shelly turned grief into action. They also talk about the retreats the two of them have held for victims of mass shootings. It’s part of Tricycle Talks’ Real Change podcast series based on Sharon’s new book Real Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and the World, which offers a new perspective on how activism and meditation practice can uplift each other. Their conversation is the second in the five-part series featuring Sharon's book and the people in it who are creating change in their communities. Tricycle Talks will be releasing the other episodes throughout the month. Stay tuned to hear conversations with Michael Kink, Daisy Hernandez, and Arian Moayed.
Some Buddhists would say that the proper response to the current suffering of the world is to turn inward—to use the tools of meditation to develop skillful states of mind. Others might say this isn't enough, that we should be out there—helping others in our communities and demanding action from our representatives. But these two options do not preclude each other, says meditation teacher and author Sharon Salzberg. Her new book, Real Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and Our World, provides a guide to freeing ourselves from negative emotions in order to summon the courage to act against injustice, as well as ways we can sustain ourselves through activist burnout and feelings of despair. In this episode, Tricycle’s Editor and Publisher James Shaheen speaks to Sharon about the making of the book and how her meditation practice provides an emotional anchor in difficult times. This month, Tricycle Talks is releasing five podcasts featuring people who are creating change in their communities. Stay tuned for episodes with four other changemakers—Shelly Tygielski, Michael Kink, Daisy Hernandez, and Arian Moayed—who are using their unique platforms to bring about real change in the world.
What does it mean to belong? Many of us come to Buddhist practice because we feel we don't. But Sebene Selassie, a meditation teacher in the Insight meditation tradition, uses Buddhist teachings to explain how we can be—wherever we are—truly at home in the world. Growing up in the nation's capital as the daughter of Ethiopian and Eritrean immigrants, Selassie herself spent much of her life on the outside looking in. In her new book, You Belong: A Call for Connection, she mixes personal narrative with classical Buddhist teachings on interconnectedness to make a compelling case for why we all—without exception—do belong. Coming to know this is like coming home—to our deep connection to others and, most importantly, to ourselves. In this episode, Tricycle’s Editor and Publisher James Shaheen talks with Selassie to discuss You Belong and what it means to be alive in a time when our separateness is more emphasized than our connection.
For many of us, the past several months have been a time to get reacquainted with one of the Buddhist truths that has always guided our lives: impermanence. But while this may provide a philosophical compass to help us weather the storms of a pandemic, pronounced racial and economic inequality, and acts of police brutality, we may still find ourselves asking: how do we help the next generation? In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s Editor and Publisher James Shaheen sat down with Charles “Chuck” Johnson to discuss his latest work, Grand: A Grandparent’s Wisdom for the Next Generation, a book of advice for his grandson, Emery. Much of the advice is rooted in Buddhist wisdom. Charles Johnson is a scholar, an award-winning novelist, an essayist, a cartoonist, and a martial arts teacher, whose works include Middle Passage and The Way of the Writer.
As this episode goes live on May 9, 2020, many of us have been sheltering in place for the past few months, and some of us are experiencing the myriad effects of solitude on the human psyche. Stephen Batchelor’s new book, The Art of Solitude, was released in mid-February of this year, right before most of us were forced into isolation due to COVID-19. The book documents his explorations of solitude—and how he learned to live in ease with our fundamental aloneness. Stephen is co-founder of Bodhi College, a UK-based organization dedicated to contemplative learning, and is the author of many books on what he has called secular, or agnostic, Buddhism, including After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age. Tricycle’s Editor and Publisher James Shaheen sat down with Stephen in front of a live audience at New York Open Center in Manhattan on February 19—a few weeks before social distancing measures went into effect.
In recent weeks, reporters, activists, and others have drawn parallels between the global pandemic and the climate crisis. It seems early to say, but we can sense that the two problems are more related than we think, as they are both challenges that we all must face together. Despite the fear, panic, and pain that rages on in our world, Joanna Macy says that she’s lucky to be alive in this moment—because when everything starts to unravel, we have an opportunity to rediscover our deep belonging with the Earth. No voice has been as clear or as compelling as Joanna Macy's in the intersection that lies between Buddhist practice and ecological movements. An environmental activist, author of eight books, and a scholar of Buddhism and deep ecology, Joanna has been on the front lines of the environmentalist movement for decades. In recent years, as our impact on the environment has become both more apparent and more perilous, activist groups like Extinction Rebellion and others have been turning to Joanna’s work as a source of inspiration. A new book, A Wild Love for the World: Joanna Macy and the Work of Our Time, out today, celebrates her contributions with a selection of Joanna’s essays as well as writings by the many people she has inspired. Tricycle’s Editor and Publisher James Shaheen talks to Joanna about how she believes we can move forward in a time of great despair—and how we can transform our despair into action.
Many in the Buddhist world were shocked at the death of Insight Meditation and yoga teacher Michael Stone in 2017. He was only 42 years old, and few were aware that he had been struggling with bipolar disorder. It was later revealed that he had died from an opioid overdose. His death brought up many questions about the stigmas against mental illness, and the responsibility of teachers to reveal their personal challenges. Here, Michael’s wife Carina Stone sits down with Tricycle’s Editor and Publisher James Shaheen to discuss Michael’s legacy. Last year, Carina finished working on "The World Comes to You: Notes on Practice, Love, and Social Action," a collection of Michael’s teachings. While editing the book, Carina grappled with difficult questions about Michael’s life, all while working through her own grief around his death.
Buddhism is not a religion at all––at the same time, it’s the true essence of all religions. And yet it is also compatible with science, or even a “mind science” itself. Do these ideas sound familiar? They’re part of a constellation of claims that scholar Evan Thompson calls “Buddhist exceptionalism,” the idea that Buddhism stands apart from all other religions as uniquely rational. Evan is a professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia as well as a longtime fellow at the Mind and Life Institute, which examines the intersection of science and contemplative wisdom. However, in his new book—provocatively titled Why I’m Not a Buddhist—Evan argues that Buddhism and science are not uniquely compatible, despite what many have claimed, and challenges the popular modernist belief that science can validate Buddhism’s soteriological and ontological goals. Here, Evan talks with Tricycle Editor and Publisher James Shaheen to discuss the problems with Buddhist modernism, his own spiritual and philosophical journey, and why he is, in fact, not a Buddhist.
Many of us struggle to silence our inner critic on a daily basis. According to meditation teacher Tara Brach, that’s because we are living in a “trance of unworthiness,” and are addicted to self-judgment. Tara is the the founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, D.C., a best-selling author, and a clinical psychologist who has been at the forefront of blending Buddhist meditation and therapeutic methods. She is perhaps best known for her teachings on RAIN, an acronym that stands for Recognize, Acceptance, Investigation, and Nurturing, and that describes a method for applying mindfulness to difficult emotions. In her new book, Radical Compassion, she focuses on using RAIN to cultivate compassion—beginning with compassion for ourselves.
When we begin a Buddhist practice, we often set our sights on lofty spiritual goals. Yet the day-to-day problems we face can be stepping stones to deeper understanding. For Zen monk Haemin Sunim, helping regular people with low self-esteem, feelings of loss, or career failure is an integral part of his monastic duties, and a way to spread the dharma in his home country of South Korea, where Buddhism has been on the decline. Dubbed the “Twitter monk” after his account garnered more than 1 million followers, Haemin Sunim in 2015 founded the School of Broken Hearts in Seoul, where he offers both traditional Buddhist instruction and classes designed to help people with the painful parts of life—such as bullying, bereavement, anger management, and dating violence. His latest book, Love for Imperfect Things: How to Accept Yourself in a World Striving for Perfection, is an international best-seller. Here, Haemin Sunim sits down with Tricycle Editor and Publisher James Shaheen to discuss his journey from US college professor to Korean household name, and how he teaches people to let go of their ideas about perfection.
So often we succumb to our narratives about the people in our lives without taking a moment to examine what’s really going on, and this mindset leaves us feeling isolated. Koshin Paley Ellison calls this state of existence “zombieland,” and says that the habits that keep us locked in our mental stories—and glued to our devices—are rooted in a deep-seated fear of awkwardness and discomfort. Koshin is a Zen chaplain and teacher and co-founder of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, a non-profit that offers training programs in clinical chaplaincy meditation and spiritual counseling. His recent book Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up, is a reflection on how the 16 Zen precepts can apply to life today and help us enter into compassionate relationships with ourselves and others. Here, Koshin sits down with Tricycle Editor and Publisher James Shaheen to discuss his journey from “lone wolf” to Zen chaplain and how being with people who are dying has taught him to live a more meaningful life.
The Lotus Sutra is one of the most important Buddhist texts, but for the uninitiated reader, it can make little to no sense. Our guests are two of the foremost scholars in Buddhist studies, Donald Lopez, Jr., Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan, and Jacqueline Stone, who recently retired from her position as Professor of Japanese Religions at Princeton University. They have written a chapter-by-chapter guide to the Lotus Sutra called Two Buddhas Seated Side by Side: A Guide to the Lotus Sutra (October 2019, Princeton University Press). The book is a highly readable commentary and introduction to the sutra that flips between ancient India, when the sutra was written, and medieval Japan, when it took on a new meaning for the Buddhist priest and reformationist Nichiren. Here, Stone and Lopez sit down with Tricycle Editor and Publisher James Shaheen to discuss the issues, such as religious meaning, reinvention, and adaptation, that this book brings to the surface.
Law professor and mindfulness instructor Rhonda Magee says the recent resurgence of overt racism shows that we failed to address its root cause—our own racial biases. Magee is a professor at the University of San Francisco’s School of Law, where she teaches about racial justice and uses mindfulness to help students surface their own prejudices. She has written about her work in a new book, The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities Through Mindfulness.
Writer and longtime Zen student Lawrence Shainberg joins Tricycle Editor and Publisher James Shaheen to discuss his new book, "Four Men Shaking: Searching for Sanity with Samuel Beckett, Norman Mailer, and My Perfect Zen Teacher." They talk about Shainberg’s struggles as a practitioner and an author and how he brings them together in his new memoir, which recounts his conversations with his literary heroes, Samuel Beckett and Norman Mailer, along with his teacher, Roshi Kyudo Nakagawa. You can read an excerpt from Four Men Shaking in our Fall 2019 issue.
Ronald Purser is a professor of management at San Francisco State University and a longtime Buddhist practitioner who popularized the term McMindfulness in a piece he wrote for the Huffington Post in 2013. In it, he argued that mindfulness practice has been commercialized, and reduced to a mere “self-help technique.” His new book, McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality, offers an argument against the mindfulness movement, claiming that corporations have embraced the practice in order to advance a neoliberal agenda. Here, Purser strikes a more balanced tone and discusses the good and bad of the mindfulness movement, explains what he means by the catch-all term McMindfulness, and presents his view that mindfulness has an untapped potential to bring about real social change.
At the age of 36, the Tibetan Buddhist meditation master Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche sneaked out of his monastery in Bodhgaya, India, in the middle of the night to live as a beggar and traveling yogi. The story of how he left behind his privileged lifestyle for a four-year wandering retreat is told in the new book, In Love With the World: A Monk's Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying, which he co-wrote with his student and Tricycle’s founding editor, Helen Tworkov. Tworkov sits down with James Shaheen, Tricycle’s publisher and editor, to discuss how she helped Mingyur Rinpoche tell his story, the near-death experience that transformed his life and teachings, and how seeing the small deaths we experience each day can help us alleviate our fears of dying. They also discuss the origins of the magazine and how the Western Buddhist landscape has changed over time.
In recent years, school mindfulness programs have sprung up across the country, setting off a debate about whether the nominally secular programs derived from religious practices violate laws about the separation of church and state. In her new book, Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools, Indiana University Bloomington religious studies professor Candy Gunther Brown takes a look at the history of the separation of church and state and the mindfulness movement and makes the case that mindfulness programs have overstepped their bounds. While she does not recommend that the programs should be banned, she argues that making them mandatory is unconstitutional and that students must be asked to opt-in to the classes. (Even opt-out options, she claims, place an illegal burden on the students.) Here, Brown talks with Tricycle Editor and Publisher James Shaheen about how her view, the legal precedents set from the school prayer debate, and the claims that mindfulness is a form of “stealth Buddhism.” This episode is sponsored by Maitripa College. www.maitripa.org
Acclaimed travel and spirituality writer Pico Iyer has written two new books about his life in Japan, Autumn Light (Penguin, April 2019), and the forthcoming A Beginner’s Guide to Japan: Observations and Provocations (Penguin, September 2019). Iyer views the books as complimentary: while Autumn Light describes his experience within the culture, A Beginner’s Guide offers his perspective as an outsider. Since marrying and moving in with his wife in her home city of Nara three decades ago, Iyer has become one of the foremost translators of Japanese culture to Western audiences. Iyer discusses his latest books as well as the way impermanence colors Japanese life and what it means to try to understand other cultures at a time when the term globalist has become, in many parts, a dirty word.
On February 19th, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued an executive order designating military zones along the West Coast and laying the groundwork for US authorities to remove citizens of Japanese descent from their homes and imprison them in camps. While it is widely acknowledged that racism was central to this shameful chapter of American history, the role of religious discrimination cannot be overlooked, says scholar and Soto Zen priest Duncan Ryuken Williams. Here, Williams joins Tricycle Editor and Publisher James Shaheen to discuss his new book, American Sutra, how Japanese Americans stood up for religious freedom, and how this disturbing legacy of persecution has taken on new relevance.
Acclaimed scholar of religion Elaine Pagels discusses the role of faith today, the practical consequences of religious ideas, and what led her to ask, "Why Religion?" with Tricycle's editor and publisher, James Shaheen. Pagels is the Harrington Spear Paine Foundation Professor of Religion at Princeton University, a MacArthur Fellow, and a best-selling author who won the National Book Award for her groundbreaking 1989 work, "The Gnostic Gospels." Her latest book, "Why Religion? A Personal Story" explores why religion has persisted through a blend of meticulous research and an earnest exploration of her own struggles with faith and grief.
Feeling burnt out does not make you a failure. That’s the first thing Buddhist teacher and former tech executive Lawrence Levy would want you to know. Burnout, Levy says, is a healthy response when our human needs aren’t being met. As the former Chief Financial Officer of Pixar, Levy knows what it means to have a demanding job. But it was during his many years practicing in the Gelug lineage of Tibetan Buddhism that Levy began to find a way to apply Buddhist principles to the difficulties that we face in our everyday lives, leading him to co-found Juniper, an organization devoted to making meditation and the dharma accessible in a modern context. Here, Tricycle Editor and Publisher James Shaheen talks to Levy about the importance of continuous self-care in a mutually supportive environment and how meditation, learning, and connection can help us tend to the conditions that lead to burnout.
Women have a lot to be angry about. A history of inequality and violence in the Buddhist world and beyond persists to this day. The question remains: what can we do with that anger? Lama Tsultrim Allione says that we have the ability to transform it into a source of strength and clarity—and that goes for all of us, not just women. Known in good part for her work exploring feminine power in Tibetan Buddhism, she examines the figure of the dakinis, fierce feminine embodiments of wisdom, and how they challenge the dominant role models for femininity in Western culture. Lama Tsultrim, who was once Allen Ginsberg’s meditation teacher, has written a new book called Wisdom Rising: Journey into the Mandala of the Empowered Feminine. Here, Lama Tsultrim talks to Executive Editor Emma Varvaloucas about mandala meditation as well as her personal struggle to rediscover Buddhism’s fierce female role models and advocate for equality in a male-dominated culture.
In recent years, ethno-nationalist movements have had an apparent resurgence. What can we do to counter the hateful ideologies that have led to so much harm? Arno Michaelis, an ex-neo-Nazi, and Pardeep Singh Kaleka, whose father was murdered by a white supremacist, say that a combination of lovingkindness (Pali, metta) and relentless optimism (Punjabi, chardi kala) is the only path forward. The pair came together after the 2012 Sikh temple shooting in a Milwaukee suburb that left Kaleka fatherless. The gunman, Wade Michael Page, who killed Pardeep’s dad and five others, was a member of the white power group that Arno had founded years earlier. (Arno had since left the organization and later became a Buddhist.)How Arno and Pardeep met and began working together to spread their anti-hate message is the subject of their new book, The Gift of Our Wounds. Here, they talk to Tricycle web editor Matthew Abrahams about their lives and their mission.
Altruism. Empathy. Integrity. Respect. Engagement. These five psychological states are keys to living a compassionate, courageous life, according to Buddhist teacher, anthropologist, and social activist Roshi Joan Halifax. However, each has the potential to become counter-productive: altruism can become pathological, empathy can prevent you from seeing another’s situation clearly, and engagement can become an endless to-do list. In her latest book, Standing at the Edge, Roshi Halifax likens these states to ecosystems that are the most instructive when we work from their edges. Here, Roshi Joan Halifax speaks to author Sandy Boucher about how “edge states” have been vital to her work as a change-agent, and how they might help us nourish love and justice in society today.
The second of the four noble truths teaches that craving leads to suffering. But that would be obvious to anyone struggling with addiction. Psychiatrist Judson Brewer, who is the director of research at the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, brings mindfulness practice to the treatment of addiction. Here, Brewer talks to Tricycle contributing editor Amy Gross about the mechanisms in the brain that activate when we have cravings and how Buddhist teachings can help combat a wide variety of addictions.
In the 13th century, Muslim soldiers attacked the Buddhist monastery Nalanda in India. This event is held up as an example of how Muslim invaders were responsible for the eventual destruction of Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent. But it is far from the full story. Here, history professor and Chair of Religious Studies at Southern Methodist University, Johan Elverskog, talks to Tricycle editor and publisher James Shaheen about common misconceptions about the history of Islam and Buddhism, which are often rooted in stereotypes. Elverskog also debunks the assertion that the Mughal invasions were the sole cause of Buddhism’s waning on the subcontinent, a long-held narrative often used to justify Islamophobia.
The Buddha had a prescription to end suffering—the eightfold path. But can the Western tradition of psychotherapy build upon these essential steps? Here, Buddhist psychotherapist and bestselling author Epstein talks with Tricycle contributing editor Amy Gross about how the two realms of wisdom view the idea of self as both problematic and helpful. Drawing from his new book, Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself, to discuss the ways meditation illuminates aspects of ourselves that we’re afraid or ashamed of, allowing us to let go of the identities that constrict us.
The foundational Buddhist concept of "no-self" can be a headbanger. What does it mean that our self is fundamentally empty? And if that’s true, who are we? In our latest Tricycle Talks podcast, Insight meditation teacher Guy Armstrong explains the concept to Tricycle contributing editor Amy Gross. Drawing from his book Emptiness: A Practical Guide for Meditators, he breaks down what happens when we stop constructing a sense of “I, me, mine” and begin to let go of the extraneous mental activity that leads to unnecessary suffering.
In this two-part Tricycle Talks episode, Tricycle’s web editor, Wendy Joan Biddlecombe, speaks with Acharya Fleet Maull at the Engaged Mindfulness Institute in Deerfield, Massachusetts, about his work, and why he’s moving beyond prisons to train the next generation of mindfulness teachers. Facing 30 years on a drug smuggling conviction, Maull viewed prison as his “monastery time,” devoting himself to practice and serving others.
Tricycle’s web editor, Wendy Joan Biddlecombe, speaks with Acharya Fleet Maull at the Engaged Mindfulness Institute in Deerfield, Massachusetts, about his work, and why he’s moving beyond prisons to train the next generation of mindfulness teachers. In the second part of this Tricycle Talks episode, you'll go behind the scenes at a recent retreat with Fleet Maull and hear from four people going through the training about why they practice mindfulness and how it helps the populations they serve.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, best-selling author Robert Wright speaks with Tricycle’s web editor, Wendy Joan Biddlecombe, about how evolutionary psychology supports what the Buddha taught us about suffering and not being satisfied in the present moment. In the talk, Wright explains why we haven’t evolved past difficult emotions such as anxiety and how mindfulness meditation can provide a way to work through—and maybe even free us from—them.
Shozan Jack Haubner, the pen name of a Zen monk, went to the monastery in search of wisdom—and left with a sex scandal. Haubner joins Tricycle’s executive editor Emma Varvaloucas in this podcast to discuss how writing helps him unravel the “big things” in life; the patterns of behavior commonly seen in communities where sexual abuse occurs between teacher and student; and his advice for any group that has a problem that’s been driven underground. “It’s alive,” he says, “and it’s calling for you to deal with it.”
We live in a world of fear. But need we be driven by it? In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Dr. Pilar Jennings, a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner and psychotherapist, speaks with Michael Kinnamon, former Dean of the Lexington Theological Seminary and author of the The Witness of Religion in an Age of Fear, about the restlessness, anxiety, and even panic characteristic of contemporary society. Tune in to learn about the differences between healthy and unhealthy fear and the role that each of us can play in bringing peace to both ourselves and a fearful world.
Love isn’t just a feeling, says meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg. It’s an ability. This ability to love is inherent in all beings, but it’s up to us whether we develop it or not. Listen in to our newest Tricycle Talks podcast for a conversation with Sharon, author of the just-released Real Love, about the keys for cultivating this innate, indestructible ability, which can help deepen and open up our relationships with everyone from our partner to a stranger on the street—not to mention ourselves.
“Anger is like electricity: it is just as powerful and just as useful, but only if you use it intelligently.” So told Mahatma Gandhi to his grandson Arun Gandhi, who lived with the political and spiritual giant on his ashram between the ages of 12 and 14. In our latest podcast, Tricycle's executive editor Emma Varvaloucas sits down with Arun to discuss the lessons that he’s learned from his grandfather about working with anger and cultivating peace.
A pioneer in end-of-life care, Frank Ostaseski brings his Buddhist practice—and a startlingly respectful compassion—to the bedsides of people who are face to face with dying. In his new book, The Five Invitations: What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully, he has learned lessons that “are too important to be left to our final hours”: By turning away from death, he says, we also turn away from the preciousness of life and our ability to live fully. Ostaseski guides us through what is otherwise scary territory with kindness, warmth, wisdom and humor. As Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., writes in her exquisite introduction, “Death, like love, is intimate, and that intimacy is the condition of the deepest learning.” Contributing editor Amy Gross sits down for a conversation with Ostaseski about his work in our latest Tricycle Talk. Gross teaches mindfulness-based stress reduction at the Open Center in New York City. His lessons can help all of us—the sick and the well, the old and the young—live a life of bravery, intimacy, honesty, and ease, even alongside our fear of dying.
In the debut episode of Tricycle Talks, contributing editor Amy Gross speaks with practicing psychiatrist Mark Epstein on Buddhism and psychotherapy. Epstein emphasizes that there is dukkha (suffering) in every place at every time and that psychotherapeutic practices can help alleviate this suffering. Epstein's new book, The Trauma of Everyday Life, also explores this topic.
Tricycle contributing editor Amy Gross speaks with author Katy Butler about modern medicine's often misguided approach to end-of-life care. Butler's bestselling book, Knocking on Heaven's Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death, chronicles the author's own experience of her father's slow decline following a devastating stroke. "There comes a point," Butler says, "when death becomes a blessing and living becomes a burden." In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Butler tells us what we need to know—and conversations we need to have—to make responsible medical decisions for ourselves and loved ones as we approach the end of life.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle's founding editor Helen Tworkov speaks with the Tibetan Buddhist teacher and writer Andrew Holecek about how to prepare for what he calls the “once in a lifetime opportunity” of death and dying. Holecek explains how the practices that ensure a peaceful death are vital to a well-lived life. His latest book is Preparing to Die: Practical Advice and Spiritual Wisdom from the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition.
In the latest episode of Tricycle Talks, contributing editor Amy Gross speaks with Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara, Abbot of the Village Zendo in New York City, on how to cultivate compassion for ourselves through honest reflection, breaking down any sort of “fixed self-identity,” and living in the present moment. Enkyo is the Co-Spiritual Director of the Zen Peacemakers Order and is known for her social activism and teachings on sexuality, race, class, and health.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, contributing editor Amy Gross speaks with renowned meditation teacher and best-selling author Sharon Salzberg. Co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, Salzberg was among the first to bring mindfulness meditation practice to the West. Her new book, Real Happiness at Work, helps us cultivate mindfulness, compassion and awareness at work. In this podcast, Gross and Salzberg speak on the practices that can help us bring these qualities into our workplace and infuse our work with greater meaning.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, two Tricycle contributors—David Urubshurow and international political consultant Joel McCleary—speak to associate editor Alex Caring-Lobel about their teacher, Geshe Wangyal, America's first lama. Politicized at a young age in Soviet Russia, Geshe Wangyal immigrated to New Jersey to develop the telecode for the CIA that would aid the Dalai Lama's escape from Tibet, work to lift political proscriptions on US visits by the Dalai Lama, and train, after the Tibetan resistance, the first generation of Tibetan Buddhist scholars in America. The story of how Tibetan Buddhism first came to the West is a little-known slice of Americana that brings together Cold War intrigue, Buddhist philosophy, and the Gong Show.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Allan Badiner and Don Lattin discuss the complex relationship between spiritual practice and psychedelic experiences. They also examine a new wave of clinical research that uses psychedelic drugs to treat PTSD, addiction, depression, and other mental illnesses. Badiner is the editor of Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics, an inquiry into the moral, ethical, and spiritual implications of blending Buddhist thought with the use of hallucinogens. Lattin is a reporter and author of the bestselling book The Harvard Psychedelic Club.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Pamela Gayle White, a Tricycle contributing editor who recently completed her residency as an interfaith chaplain at the University of Virginia (UVA) Medical Center, shatters the taboo as she speaks with four of her former colleagues at UVA about what they've learned from their years of working with the dying.
In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle managing editor Emma Varvaloucas speaks with author and Tricycle contributing editor Jeff Wilson about how Buddhism influences and is appropriated by minority-Buddhist cultures in the United States and elsewhere. Wilson explains how an evangelical impulse has overtaken some mindfulness advocates. His latest book is Mindful America: The Mutual Transformation of Buddhist Meditation and American Culture.
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