On Grace, Melancholy, and Taking Over Our Narratives
Lauren Groff’s new short‑story collection *Brawler* delves into generational trauma, melancholy, and the Buddhist concept of bardo, framing life’s impermanence as a creative portal. In the interview she explains how her Florida bookstore The Lynx, which displays banned titles, serves as a political stand against rising book bans. Groff ties her competitive‑swimmer discipline to a structured yet liberating writing process, describing swimming as “active dreaming.” The conversation weaves personal narrative with broader cultural anxieties, emphasizing the power of owning one’s story to move from regret to repair.
How Buddhism Came to Éliane Radigue
Éliane Radigue, the French pioneer of musique concrète and analog electronic music, died at 94, leaving a legacy that intertwines sound art with Tibetan Buddhist practice. Her three‑hour *Trilogie de la Mort*—spanning eight years of composition for the first movement...
Doorways to Awareness
The article explains Dzogchen’s concept of rigpa—an innate, primordial awareness that precedes ego and conditioning—and argues that awakening can occur instantly when this state is recognized. It contrasts this view with other Buddhist paths that treat enlightenment as a gradual...
The Tassajara Zendo Fire and Impermanence
The historic meditation hall at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in California was destroyed by a recent fire, consuming cushions, monks’ robes, hand‑sewn rakusus, and a rare Gandharan Buddha statue. The blaze follows a pattern of past fires on the site,...
Mediums and Mountain Ascetics
Hiroko Yoda’s new book, Eight Million Ways to Happiness, weaves memoir, history and cultural analysis to introduce readers to Japan’s contemporary spiritual landscape. Drawing on personal grief after her mother’s death, Yoda explores the fluid interplay of kami, Shinto, Buddhism...
No Borders, No Boundaries
The article uses two NASA astronauts stranded in orbit as a metaphor for the mental constraints many people experience. It introduces the concept of "regime‑space," a self‑imposed framework that binds identity to the body, brain, and a fixed sense of...
A Drunken Bee
Sunthorn Phu (1786‑1855), hailed as Thailand’s “Shakespeare,” rose from a working‑class Bangkok background to become the nation’s most celebrated poet, oscillating between court life and monastic retreats. His verses blend Theravada Buddhist ideas with vivid eroticism, portraying desire as a...
My Good Luck African Braiding Sangha
The essay frames African braiding salons as a spiritual ritual, comparing the prolonged, painful process to Buddhist tonsure and Yoruba ori practices. It explores how the act of braiding mirrors meditation, endurance, and self‑renunciation, while also serving as a communal...
The Flow of Life
In a newly translated dialogue, journalist Irmgard Kirchner interviews longtime friend Santacitta Bhikkhuni, a former avant‑garde dancer turned Theravada monastic. The conversation frames Buddhism as a healing path that dissolves delusion and attachment, using the four vipallasa to illustrate how...
‘In a Room of One Thousand Buddhas’
Monica Sok, a Cambodian‑American poet, uses her debut collection A Nail the Evening Hangs On to confront the trauma of the Khmer Rouge genocide and critique U.S. foreign policy. The poem "In a Room of One Thousand Buddhas" weaves Buddhist...
From the Academy: Yogacara
The Tricycle newsletter explores Yogacara, the “mind‑only” school of Mahayana Buddhism that emerged in 3rd‑century India and was systematized by the monk brothers Asanga and Vasubandhu. Its central doctrine, vijñaptimātratā, argues that all experience is a mental construction shaped by...
The Wisdom of Women
Erica Bassani, author of *Women in Love with the Divine*, releases a new book compiling twelve interviews with women spiritual teachers from Buddhism and other faiths. The work, born from her Women Awakening Project, explores themes of divine femininity, the...
The Duties of a Wise Ruler
The article outlines the ten *rajadhamma*—Buddhist virtues that define a wise ruler, ranging from generosity and moral conduct to self‑sacrifice, honesty, kindness, and non‑violence. It argues that these qualities are not only spiritual ideals but practical guidelines for modern leaders,...
Silent Underground
On December 1, 2025 a Triratna Buddhist monk and four sangha members meditated for twelve hours on London’s Circle line to raise funds for a new UK centre and to protest urban noise. The silent sit, filmed and shared by...
The Mindfulness of Tidying Up
Shoukei Matsumoto’s excerpt from *Work Like a Monk* frames everyday cleaning as a form of mindfulness rooted in Japanese Buddhist practice. He describes how collective cleaning in schools, temples, and even stadiums reinforces gratitude, presence, and a sacred bond with...
Future Flowers
Miranda Mellis’s new speculative novel Crocosmia imagines a post‑catastrophic world where decapitated heads of state give way to towering skyscraper flowers, symbolizing ecological renewal. The narrative follows Maya and her artist mother Jane as they navigate an anarchist monastic commune,...
A Place to Land
Dr. Willoughby Britton, a Brown University neuroscientist, founded Cheetah House to support meditators experiencing severe distress such as hyperarousal, dissociation, and psychosis after her research showed meditation outcomes are highly variable. The nonprofit provides evidence‑based peer support, clinician consultation, and...
Turning Back to Place
The essay argues that modern mobility has severed people’s ties to specific places, weakening stewardship of local ecosystems. Citing Gary Snyder and Daniel Wildcat, it highlights how a homogenized consumer culture blinds citizens to climate signals such as pollinator loss. Snyder’s...
Three Teachings by Buddhadasa
Thai forest monk Buddhadasa reshaped modern Theravada by challenging doctrinal orthodoxy, arguing that the Abhidhamma was a later addition and that nibbana is an everyday cooling of reactive emotions. He taught a luminous, "empty" mind free of self‑attachment and reinterpreted...
Liberating the Experience of Impermanence
The article traces Buddhism’s evolving relationship with impermanence, contrasting early dualistic meditations that sought disillusionment and escape from the world with contemporary nondual approaches that embrace change as a path to liberation. Early practitioners meditated in charnel grounds to cultivate...
The Uses of Equanimity
The article explains that equanimity, while appearing as calm concentration, can conceal subtle attachment and delusion. It warns that staying absorbed in a state of equanimity without probing can prevent genuine insight. Practitioners are urged to use equanimity as a...
The Sound of Silence
The essay explores how incessant internal dialogue functions as a form of noise pollution, clouding clarity and driving dualistic thinking. It presents chanting the name of Kanzeon—or any pure, intention‑free sound—as a pathway to a pre‑conceptual awareness that transcends mental...
Finding Our Way
The author recounts a journey from alcohol‑driven darkness in Juneau to a life anchored in Zen practice and recovery. By immersing in the San Francisco Zen Center, he discovers that brokenness, when faced, becomes a source of healing, illustrated through...
All You Need?
The article examines a growing Western interpretation that the four brahmaviharas—loving‑kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity—constitute a complete path to awakening. It contrasts this view with early Pali canon passages that consistently link the brahmaviharas to rebirth in Brahma realms...